Big Lizard is a children's cartoon made by Aardman Animations for CBeebies.
The series follows Cosmina (Lois Sefton), a seven-year-old astronaut, and her Dad (Josh Widdicombe), who crash-land on Proxima B, a prehistoric world, and meet Big Lizard (Dan Chambers), a member of a species based on an 8-fingered amphibian ancestor of humanity, the aconthostega.
Whilst Dad tries to mend the damaged ship and fix its glitching computer, DORIS (Mandip Gill), Cosmina and Big Lizard help their friends Ammon the ammonite, Twig the millipede, Rex the trilobite, and Dunk the dunkleosteus solve problems.
Big Lizard provides examples of the following tropes
- Asteroid Thicket: Flying through one of these, combined with Dad's coffee spilling on the computer, leads the ship to crash.
- Edutainment Show: As well as entertaining children, the show is designed to teach about science and prehistory. The characters (aside from Cosmina, Dad, and DORIS) are all based on prehistorical animals.
- Explosive Instrumentation: Dad's coffee spilling on DORIS causes her to blow a fuse.
- Comm Links: DORIS can communicate with the characters through wristComs, which look like smartwatches.
- Dub Name Change: In French, DORIS is called SOPHIE.
- Unnamed Parent: Cosmina's dad.