Customer Reviews

Alien Planet

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Imagine a world like our own, just 6.5 light years away - but teeming with life forms unlike anything found on Earth.

Take a simulated journey into the near future, where astronomers and biologists alike marvel at the potential of Darwin IV, a nearby planet with two suns, 60% gravity and an atmosphere capable of supporting life. Having identified Darwin as a likely home for life, scientists send a series of unmanned probes to the planet. Initially, the expectation is to find microscopic life. But the probes soon find themselves in the middle of a developed ecosystem, teeming with diverse creatures of all sizes.

Peering through the "eyes" of the probes, marvel at the planet's bizarre inhabitants - like the lumbering Groveback, which supports a mini forest of vegetation on its back; deadly Prongheads who hunt in packs like wolves; and the graceful Gyrosprinter, an elk-like creature with a body dotted by luminescent biolights. The look and biology of each animal is based on the laws of evolution and physics, then modeled to fit the hypothetical environment of Darwin IV. Leading minds in the fields of paleontology, astrophysics and astrobiology explain how these creatures might evolve otherworldy characteristics like hollow bodies, "jet" propulsion and piercing tongue skewers.

One of the best shows I have ever seen. The attention to detail both in the environment and in the creatures is amazing. As both a scientist and a computer artist I can find no fault with any portion of this production other then it comes to an end and leaves my wanting more. The fact that there can possibly be life on another planet and we will soon have the technology to observe that is mindblowing. It has really gotten me interested in space and the creation of life. I thought it was very educational to watch. It fits in right along with Dinosour Planet, Future Is Wild, and the Walking With Series. Also good entertainment value, I hope they make a sequel

First, let me say I did enjoy the DVD, but it could have been better. First off, it is 94 minutes long, but some of that is overlap because they took out the commercials but left in the commercial breaks. The interviews do make for nice extras but they have only one with Stephen Hawking and a few seem to be repeating what the scientists said in the show.
Also, Alien Planet seems to drag and there seems to be very few alien creatures in the show with little or no details about these creatures. I have to agree with the kid's review that said the book by Wayne D. Barlowe is better.
It's almost as if it was tossed together to try to make a quick profit. I might view it a few more times in the future but I would suggest YOU get it used.

Finally! Someone has gotten it right! Regardless of your beliefs on life on other worlds, this is a truely epic adventure for all of humanity.

As the alien world unfolded before me, I was a little skeptical about the scope and purpose of this film. But after the first twenty minutes or so, I couldn't help but to become emmotionally attached to the AI probes as if they we're the children of us all.

If you have any sort of interest in cosmology or have even a shread of imagination, this excellent ride across the cosmos is for you.

I hope that each one of us carry's with them this sort of spirit in their souls. It will perhaps be the only way Earth's humanity will be remembered.

It was a very fun and interesting concept and I did enjoy the movie, although if you are a parent purchasing it for a child under the age of 10 be advised it might be a little slow paced for them. And be prepared to answer plenty of questions! There is a fair amount of scientific info and narrative that younger kids don't find quite as interesting. That being said, I know my son still enjoyed it and I would recommend it to others who would like to encourage their child to find something different to entertain their brain! It's a wonderful opportunity to open an interesting dialogue with your child.

The animations were beautifully done, but I did not enjoy the DVD. The story is about a robot ship that goes to a planet
6 and 1/2 light years away. The ship sends research pods that look like cute dirigible wall-e type robots, with flexible necks and heads,
no less, and nicknamed Leo and Ike. They are sent down to the planet, named Darwin IV. The pods are supposed to investigate the
life forms on the planet. Fauna are dinosaur-like bipeds, bird-like animals, giant walking Groveback's, a living sea,
and other forms that the creators of the video believe are sufficiently alien to our form of life. Many scientists that I respect,
Michio Kaku and Jack Horner, for example, give opinions and blather on about the animals in the video. I am a layman, but the planet
and life-forms seem more like bad science fiction and not believable to me at all. This episode is supposed to be about science and not art.
The planet has no water, the seas have dried up. The trees seem more like cactuses with few leaves, yet supports herds of wide-ranging
herbivores and predators. There are giant animals. At the end of the DVD a note identified the landscape as Iceland. The land is
not even a tundra, but seems like arctic scrub, with little obvious flora. There seems a disconnect, at least to me, between the appearance of the planet and animals and what the authoritative scientists say about it. The probes are supposedly guided by a supercomputer yet seem incomprehensibly stupid. They show a screen projection of humans to dumb brutes, and act in a way that seems inappropriate, for an extensively researched and expensively funded expedition. Many of the scientists repeat themselves, action or other statements that seem not well edited I did not buy it and that affected my experience of the DVD

I thought this movie was very entertaining. The movie has great graphics, great imaginative creatures and biomes, and entertaining plot. The creatures on this program even I can't imagine or speculate myself and yet were quite possibe on another planet suited for life. The cast of this show knew science and physics with the great desighn in the probes. Although Alien Planet has a scientific appraoch it has enteartaining graphics and as I said before interesting imaginative creatures. I recomend this show for those people who long to veiw a show that does not lose your interest while is a little bit educational and scientific although it was quite short and fast paced.

+++++

This program is based on the book "Expedition" by Wayne D. Barlowe. (He was also executive producer and he makes comments in this program.) It is narrated by John C. McGinley (of the TV show "Scrubs"). The program was filmed entirely on location in Iceland and Mono Lake, California.

This computer-animated program simulates a voyage or mission to an exoplanet (a planet not of our solar system). Here are the particulars of this mission:

(1) Exoplanet name: Darwin 4, an Earth-like planet.
(2) Location: In a binary solar system. (This is a system where a pair of stars orbit about each other, held together by their mutual gravitational attraction.)
(3) Distance from Earth: 6.5 light years. (A light year is the distance light travels in a year, namely 5,880 billion miles).
(4) Decision: to send a robotic spaceship to Darwin 4.
(5) Reason for Decision: To investigate for possible life, especially microscopic life. If any intelligent life is found, attempt contact.
(6) Ship's name: Van Braun.
(7) Speed or velocity of ship: 20% of c. ("c" is the speed of light, namely 186 thousand miles per second.)
(8) Number of probes with artificial intelligence to be deployed once Darwin 4 is reached: 3.
(9) Names of probes: Balboa, Da Vinci ("Leo"), and Newton ("Ike").

Once the probes are on Darwin 4, they encounter much more than just microscopic life. They find themselves in the middle of a developed ecosystem teeming with a diversity of life of all sizes.

Throughout the program are comments made by mainly scientists. Noteworthy scientists include Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku. A noteworthy non-scientist was George Lucas. All their comments are interesting.

The computer animation in a word is--fantastic. Except for a few spots, I found it difficult to believe the creatures etc. I was seeing were computer generated!

I found that some of the comments made in this program were debatable. As well, I did find one numerical error: we are told that the robotic ship would take about 42 years to reach this exoplanet. But if you plug in the appropriate numbers (see above) into the equation: Distance = (Speed X Time), you get about 32 years! Also the creatures on this planet are blind relying on sonar. But oddly, communication is attempted through visual means! However, since this program is so absorbing, most viewers will probably not notice these problems.

Finally, the DVD itself is perfect in picture and sound quality. It has two extras. The first extra is interviews with four scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku. These are interesting but Hawking gives more of an extended commentary than an interview. Strangely, the second extra is a preview of a motorcycle customization show. Why this was included, I do not know.

In conclusion, this program can be summarized in an equation: (Science + Speculation + Imagination) = Unique Show!!!

(2005; 95 min; wide screen; first televised on the Discovery Channel; 12 scenes)

+++++

If you are at all interested in the possibilities of life on other worlds, evolution, interstellar travel or the very creative art of Wayne Barlowe (Barlowe's Guides to Extraterrestrials and to Fantasy, Barlowe's Inferno, Brushfire...), you have to get a hold of this dvd. I do not have cable or satellite television, and so did not see this when it aired on Discovery Channel, but I knew about it, and I was so excited that they finally decided to do a CG "documentary" of Barlowe's incredible Expedition (1990), which is, as another reviewer observed, the first and only really serious 'what if'- type exploration of the possibilities of an extraterrestrial ecosystem - not about little green men - an entire world crafted lovingly and exquisitely by a master painter. Expedition was created in the great alternative/speculative-evolution tradition of Dougal Dixon's After Man, New Dinosaurs and Man After Man (Dixon, by the way, helped create The Future is Wild). So, I've been dying to see Alien Planet and got a copy yesterday when it was released. I was worried, however, that they would mess up such a complex and beautiful thing as Expedition by trying to bring it to the screen, especially when I saw that the thing was only about $10.

I needn't have worried! It surpassed all my expectations. Though they understandably changed the 'story' a little (perhaps for the better), Alien Planet is very faithful to the look and vision of Expedition. Darwin IV looks crisp and alive and glorious and real! The computer animation is so well done. They left out some of the animals shown in the book, but not many. I liked the idea of the robotic probes. By the way, for those who haven't seen the book Expedition (which is presented the same way he later presented the landscapes and denizens of Hell in Barlowe's Inferno - as something like a far-traveling naturalist's journal with accompanying paintings, much like an expedition notebook of, say, Audubon or Charles D. himself or one of the pioneer naturalists of the past centuries), Darwin IV is a life-filled Mars-sized planet that we explore a couple of centuries from now, filled with wild and beautiful vistas and populated with a vast and sometimes deadly array of unprecedented echolocating animals, some of them, due to the lower-than-Earth gravity, achieving sizes many times that of the largest sauropod dinosaurs of Earth (I might add, also, that the aliens in the movie Pitch Black certainly seem to be extremely Barlowesque!). My only reservation about Alien Planet is that, although it does say "based on the book Expedition by Wayne Barlowe" at the opening and closing, they do not go to great lengths to make this evident: Wayne's screentime commentary segments are very minor compared to those of the more famous scientists such as Horner and Hawking, who are only trying to help lend the credibility of scientific authority to this speculative vision of a creative genius interested in the possibilities of an alternative natural history to that of our own world. This is not those scientists' creation at all, but one man's brainchild. When he is shown, it merely says "author and artist", and viewers might be thinking "who is this guy?" Anyway, this dvd ranks right up there with the Walking With... series, Dinosaur Planet, When Dinosaurs Roamed America and The Future is Wild, and though it is shorter than most of those, it may be my favorite. What a bargain for ten bucks!

"Alien Planet" is pure science fiction, don't try to make it something it is not. I see where the comparisons to "Future is Wild" are drawn as they are both fun, animated visions of what fantasy artists/writers can dream up. In reality, like future geographic constructions, life in the future or life on other planets is strictly unpredictable. Most of the organisms on this alien planet seem to be amalgams of extant Earth creatures. Most are bipedal or arboreal, bearing strong resemblances to modern animals on our own planet. I got the impression that the artists may have watched the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" a few times before inventing these creatures as many resemble the Vacuum Beast that sucks up everything! Even the two droids exploring the planet are very anthropomorphic in their appearance. Most scientists agree that life on other planets will probably not resemble anything on our planet and may not even be carbon-based. Certainly, exploratory probes will look like typical NASA constructs: very mechanical.
That is why this film should be viewed for fun. It is not based on any data or any scientific expectation. In fact, only a handful of astrobiologists are included as interviewees. The diversity of scientists seems to be an attempt to validate the project since none of these great minds has any inkling of what could be out there. Besides, what do Stephen Hawking, Jack Horner and Michio Kaku know about astrobiology? In fact, I would say that the scientific interviews were more of a drawback than anything else. Many were out-of-sequence, or had nothing to do with the subject at hand. I often phased out during those interludes. It did seem that many were having fun, however.
The animation was great, and the DVD looks good on the big screen, but the sound fades out in a few places. Another reviewer commented on the commercial breaks and, I must admit, that is a big problem with this disc. Where the commercials were, the producers have left in the "...when we return, this will happen..." segues and this is very distracting.
If the sound was consistent, the commentaries and commercial breaks were left out and a few more creatures were added, I would give this DVD five stars. Unfortunately, those factors reduce my evaluation to only three. It is still a lot of fun to watch.

Is a good fiction-documental. But only a few a creatures are shown, the planet is a little plain (lack of scenarios), but i enjoy it. I just see it once.

If i need to choose, i prefer "The Future is Wild". Is longer and interesting stuff in there.

PS. They should include english subtitles.