by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
The eleven-part Discovery documentary Planet Earth is a stunning film chronicle of the beauty and majesty of our planet. Five years in the making, the series features breathtaking vistas and rare never-before-photographed animal behavior, such as a snow leopard on the hunt high in the Himalayan mountains. The leopard races down the side of the mountain, almost vertically, and pounces on a mountain goat. They also capture footage of a Panda bear in its den nurturing a cub–another never-before-photographed sight.
The series puts our lives in perspective. As the Earth orbits the sun, it dictates our lives, creating the seasons that trigger one of the awe-inspiring spectacles in the world–the mass migration of animals. The series points out that one-fifth of the Earth’s land surface is mountains. The Himalayan mountain range is so vast it can be seen from space. The series solves one of Earth’s mysteries that, up until a few decades ago, was unknown–the secrets of how the mountains were formed. The geologists show how volcanoes build themselves higher with their own lava and make landmasses even in the deep ocean.
It’s important to note that the series is produced in an entertaining way. Sigourney Weaver narrates segments of humor that break up the grandiose overview of the series. The music is reminiscent of Richard Rogers’ Victory at Sea suite–very uplifting and magnificent. Of course, the photography is mind-blowing, especially in HD, if you’re lucky enough to have an HD television. Still, it looks great on an old tube television set like mine.
The series makes you want to strap on a backpack and head out to the wilderness to commune with nature. Then you come to your senses and realize that the outdoor life requires the ability to take deprivation and doing without modern conveniences. My idea of a camping trip is a four-star motel with a pool and cable TV. Furthermore, I hate going to the bathroom in the wild; some creature might bite me on the ass.
The Deep Ocean segment is one of the most fascinating of the series. The ocean is the largest habitat on our planet and only a tiny portion of the deep has been explored. The episode scans the ocean’s surface and views its depths, revealing daytime hunters and nighttime feeders. It’s survival-of-the-largest-creatures-who-eat-the-smaller-creatures. One of the largest deep sea sharks eats only microscopic animals, sucking them into its mouth like a large vacuum cleaner. The strange world of creatures that live without sunlight near the deep ocean vents, such as a special species of shrimp, are featured with amazing photographs taken at a depth of 10,000 by a remote-controlled deep sea vehicle.
Our planet’s vast deserts never looked so foreboding as in this spectacular episode. Despite the deserts’ lack of rain, they teem with life and have a complex ecosystem. The animals that live in this environment have adapted to need very small amounts of water. The aerial shots were taken from hot air balloons so as to not disturb the animals. We see the wild Bactrian camel of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, which eats snow instead of drinking water, and we visit Chile’s guanaco, which lick dew from cactus spines.
The series also presents the polar extremes of our planet, exploring vast frozen worlds. We see glaciers so large they can be seen from space. We know from An Inconvenient Truth that all the glaciers are melting, even the gigantic ones seen in this series, and that knowledge is underscored by the spectacle of polar bears venturing long distances to find food for their young as the polar icecaps melt. Global warming is indeed an unavoidable truth, and although this series doesn’t dwell on it, the problem is part of the narrative. Indeed, it shows the beauty of what we are destroying with our inability to face our destructive nature.
There is so much to our planet to see and explore, only an eleven-part series with such unlimited scope as Planet Earth can do it justice. And to think that we have ravaged the planet with our machines, toxic gases and wars are just some of the most striking truths to learn from this series. The best part of this series is: you can view it all On Demand or watch the episodes when they air every Sunday on The Discovery Channel at 8 pm.
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