Earth is an incredible, exceptional planet with an amazing life story full of cataclysmic disasters, eleventh hour coincidences that save it from extinction and an astonishing power to continually regenerate. This landmark series uses breathtaking footage and specialist imaging to tell the story of the great forces that shape the planet ¡s volcanoes, the ocean, the atmosphere and ice.
Travelling from Ethiopia¡¦s unique lava lake to an ice cave under a glacier in Greenland and a host of amazing locations in between, we examine the forces that have helped create and foster life on Earth ¡V from the volcanic eruptions that shaped the land to the development of the unique formula of the air that we breathe.
We discover how these forces have not always been benevolent: the oceans belched poisonous gas into the atmosphere; encased in ice, the Earth nearly froze to death; and a great m......
No title I have to say that during the first 5 minutes of the first episode I thought "O, no, this is going to be horrible". The presenter of this series, Iain Stewart, has a strong Scottish accent, and it seemed as if he did his best to act enthusiastically and hip. I expected a trendy, MTV-cut, scientifically numbed, kiddy documentary; of the sort the Discovery channel has too much of nowadays. I am very glad to say that I was couldn't be more wrong.
This series is very informative. No endless speculations, covering just one small topic with mostly stock footage and babbling scientists saying the same things over and over again. No, every episode is full of exploration, explanation and discovery about what makes our planet tick. It was also clear that Iain did not *act* enthusiastic, he *is* enthusiastic about this field of planetary science. And contagiously so. The accent issue faded for me very quickly.
The series never takes the easy way out, no over simplified explanations, but every subject is explored in full detail and in logical and understanding steps. I personally learned a lot from this documentary, and I think this would hold for most people. Iain has traveled the world to show every detail of the working of our planet firsthand and everything is captured beautifully on film. BBC proves once again that they have superior camera quality, as well as superior camera men who know how to film. It was simply breath taking.
It is documentaries like this that are vital for science, as it rouses the interest of people. I also loved the way it portrayed science. Iain joins some scientist that are doing research. But not fabricated tests with known outcomes: at some point a test fails because of an unexpected technical problem that made it necessary to refine the used instrument. That is how science works! Is this series 100% perfect? No, not perfectly. I personally found that a couple of times that hypothetical ideas, even though favored by the scientific community, were presented too much as science fact. I don't like that and I also don't think that the documentary needed that. But luckily this is only a minor issue in this series, for the rest I just wished there would be more episodes!
