Speculative Documentary

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"The result is speculation built on fact. What I offer is not a firm prediction - more an exploration of possibilities." —Dougal Dixon, After Man, A Zoology of the Future, Author's Introduction

This genre openly combines elements of traditional documentaries with Speculative Fiction. While the pure Documentary is entirely based on fact, the Speculative Documentary adds elements which are either an interpretation of actual events based on a combination of speculation and extrapolation from known science, or completely fictional. While a Speculative Documentary can also be Hard SF, a Documentary of Lies, or Mockumentary, the Speculative Documentary takes a very scientific approach to asking "what if" that differentiates it from other fiction. While Hard Science Fiction focuses on Characters, Plots and justifying fantastical elements, and the Mockumentary uses a documentary style to tell a dramatic or comedic fictional story, the Speculative Documentary handwaves any fantastical elements and downplays characters and plots to focus on implications and educating viewers about real science.

Examples of Speculative Documentary include:

Envisioning the Distant Past

• Clash of the Dinosaurs
• Deadliest Warrior, a show that uses SCIENCE! to figure out who would win in a fight between ancient or modern warriors who would never normally meet on the battlefield.
• Dinosaur Planet
• Planet Dinosaur
• Jurassic Fight Club
• March of the Dinosaurs
• Walking with Dinosaurs and its various sequels, spinoffs, etc.
• When Dinosaurs Roamed America
• Dinosaur Revolution
• Monsters Resurrected

Envisioning the Distant Future

• After Man a Zoology of The Future (1981) by Scottish paleontologist and geologist Dougal Dixon
• Animal Planet's The Future Is Wild TV series, created with feedback from Dixon. Something of an updated Spiritual Successor and Adaptation Expansion of After Man.
• Life After People
• Hyperland (Ironically, or maybe not coincidentally, the Internet boom made Hyperland a near-reality just a few years later).
• The collaborative Orions Arm sci-fi setting.
• The Weather Channel's It Could Happen Tomorrow: A Speculative Documentary series where the results of a serious weather incident like a hurricane or tornado, or natural disaster like an earthquake or levee break, would affect a major American city.

Envisioning Alien Worlds

• Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
• The 1990 Mockumentary book Expedition by Wayne D. Barlowe.
  • Your Mileage May Vary on the scientific plausibility of the alien ecosystems and creatures, but it was very imaginative and subversive for its time (when Rubber Forehead Aliens and smeerps were still the norm in sci-fi). Like Dixon's After Man a Zoology of The Future, it helped give birth to a lot of Inspired By / In the Style Of projects over the years.
• Alien Planet, the 2005 Discovery Channel adaptation of Barlowe's Expedition
• Extraterrestrial, made by National Geographic
• The Snaiad project has lots of vividly imagined alien vertebrates from an Earth-like planet (sadly, the website seems to be currently down and available only via archived form)

Envisioning Alternate Realities

• Dougal Dixon's third speculative book, The New Dinosaurs (1988) and Specworld show what life might be like if dinosaurs never went extinct.
• Ivory Extraordinaire: Deadly safaris on an alternate Earth where elephants out-competed all other big herbivores, and carnivores have grown larger to keep up
• Aftermath: Population Zero explores what would happen to Earth if humans disappeared without a trace. High source of Nightmare Fuel.
  • Like the aforementioned Life After People, that is also based on the book The World Without Us.
  • They also made other "what if" style Aftermath documentaries, which explore topics like what if the world suddenly stopped spinning, what if we completely ran out of oil, and others.
• CSA: Confederate States of America
• The Death of a President conjectures the consequences to the United States of America if George W. Bush had been assassinated.

Reverse Engineering Fantasy using Real Science

• Star Wars Tech.
• Science of Star Wars
• The Science Of Star Trek
• The Science of Harry Potter.
• Batman Tech
• Sci Fi Science

Mockumentary supported by real science, also known as (in The Other Wiki) a Docu Drama

• The Day Britain Stopped.
• Earth 2100 details the events that led to the creation of the After the End Crapsack World that the protagonist, Lucy, lives in on June 2nd, 2100.
• Animal Planet's The Last Dragon aka Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real aka Dragon's World.
• Prehistoric Park.
• Supervolcano.
• The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades: a joke "natural history treatise" on a non-existent group of mammals that walk on their noses. A popular in-joke among comparative anatomists is to cite this book in their texts.
• Threads and its predecessor, The War Game
• After Armageddon, a hypothetical After the End scenario.