PBS' "The Pluto Files"

One week ago, I was pleasantly surprised while watching the PBS documentary "The Pluto Files," which was billed as a broadcast version of Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson's book of the same name, published a little over a year ago.The hour-long show, done in the form of a road trip by Tyson intended to uncover why people on both sides of the debate feel so strongly about Pluto, differed from the book in several ways. First, it centered less on Tyson's views and more on the views of people with strong connections to Pluto. There were no statements that "Pluto is just a large comet," that the four percent of the IAU who voted on the demotion were an accurate representation of the organization, or overlooking of the fact that the IAU definition specifically precludes dwarf planets from being planets--all of which are characteristics of the book.Instead, this was a fair--and humorous--work that made it very clear the planet definition issue is a debate in progress and gave equal time to representatives of both sides of the issue. It was definitely "fair and balanced."Watching it was a very unusual experience for me personally because this was the first time I ...