Season 1
James May's Big Ideas is a British technology documentary mini-series produced by the BBC and the Open University in which James May, a journalist and self-acknowledged geek, travels the globe in search of implementations for concepts widely considered science fiction.
The series aired in the UK on BBC 2 from 28 September to 12 October, 2008. There are three hour-long episodes in the series.
James May's Big Ideas premiered in South Africa on DStv's BBC Knowledge channel on Wednesday 15 July 2009, at 21h30.
Repeats
Thursdays: 05h00, 09h00, 14h30
Sundays: 16h00
Synopsis
James May hosts three episodes looking at three different and distinct future concepts in James May’s Big Ideas. Each episode looks at a specific idea close to James' heart, but with the 21st century firmly in mind.
James has driven loads of amazing cars, but now he gets to try a few vehicles that are a little bit different to the usual Top Gear models.
These include the aerocar (the legendary flying car from from 1950s), and James ponders the question of flying vehicles as a solution to congestion on the roads; the Russian ekranoplan; and he even risks strapping on a rocket pack.
Robots, cyborgs, bionic men...we've seen them all in the movies, but are they becoming a reality? James explores the fusion of man and machine with a female Robocop and bionic implants. Is resistance futile?
Finally, James questions why our sources of energy are so last century. A trip to Mexico gives him the opportunity to explore how a car might run on thin air, or whether a solution to our energy crisis may be "out of this world".
Episodes
Episode 1: Come Fly with Me
In the first of this series, James May travels the globe in search of his ultimate flying machine. He begins by heading into the frozen wastes of Russia to pilot one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War.
He then heads to the US to fly the world's only surviving flying car.
After watching a man struggle with his tiny chopper in Japan, he gets back to the suburban gardens of Sussex to turn himself into a human rocket - all in pursuit of finding a better way to get from A to B.
Finally, in California, James encounters his ultimate dream - a flying car capable of vertical takeoff, and one so simple that anyone can pilot it, but is the world ready for a flying car?
Episode 2: Man-Machine
James May sets off to discover if his childhood vision of a world populated by robots will ever become a reality.
He begins in Japan, where he is charmed by a woman wearing an electro-mechanical jumpsuit that can double her strength, before having a close encounter of the weird kind with a robot that's almost human - it's designed to look and behave exactly like its creator.
In the US, he meets the two million dollar bionic woman, and, in the unlikeliest of laboratories, he is astonished by the most sophisticated walking robot in the world, not because it can climb stairs and run, but because it walks straight into a door.
But is James' vision of the future just a little old-fashioned? To find out, he takes his first nervous step into a world where he becomes a ghost within a machine.
Episode 3: Power to the People
In this, the last of his Big Ideas episodes, James tries to find smarter, brighter and bolder ways of powering the planet for future generations, and sets off on a global search to find people who share his dream.
It takes him from Guildford, where he takes a solar powered car to its limit at night, to the US where he joins some aerospace engineers who are trying to build an 'elevator' into space.
In Holland, James meets the first Dutchman in space who has put away his rockets and has swapped them for kites as he tries to harvest the power of the jet-stream.
And finally, in the deserts of New Mexico, he seeks out some modern-day alchemists, who offer the promise of allowing him to drive his car on petrol conjured out of thin air.