The Discovery Channel here in Canada — boom di yah dah — last night ran an innovative little special via the UK’s Channel 4. It was called The Great Sperm Race and any science-minded parent with a flare for allegory, metaphor, and “suggestive themes” should track down a copy and watch it.

What I enjoyed most was not that it made science quote-FUN-AND-COOL-unquote — because that rarely works and it’s a bit of a pet-peeve of mine — but rather that it made science EPIC. Yes, epic science. No really. You need to watch it.

The Great Sperm Race tells the story of human conception as it’s never been told before. With 250 million competitors, it is the most extreme race on earth and there can only be one winner. ^[1]

With the use of many, many actors dressed full-on in white (and some respectable special effects) the documentary chronicled the journey of a mass of male gametes towards the lone egg in the depths of fallopian tubes, but there was a twist: each sperm was represented (at scale) by a full sized human being. Huh? Imagine this: the sperm army storming the mountain pass that is the vaginal canal, doing pitch battle against the numerous obstacles and defense forces guarding the female reproductive system, and navigating a course that seemingly works counter to the mission of the invaders towards a single, monumental, life-creating goal. Imagine that to the scale of mountain ranges and cityscapes, fields of death and ladders ascending into clouds, and you can likely picture the — yes, epic — visual impact of the show.

In fact, if I was still teaching biology, I’d probably be hunting down a copy of it on DVD right now instead of blogging about it here. You can thank me later.

[1] http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-sperm-race