Product Details

• Actors: Bernard Hill
• Directors: Dave Allen
• Writers: Nik Sopwith, Jamie Smith
• Producers: Ceri Barnes, Gaynelle Evans, Kera Rennert, Martin Davidson, Nik Sopwith
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Warner
• DVD Release Date: December 12, 2006
• Run Time: 116 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HLDF9K
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #30,608 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Television > BBC > Nature & Wildlife

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Do you know what lies at the bottom of the ocean? From the makers of the Walking With... series comes an enthralling exploration of Earth's final frontier seen through the eyes of its greatest inhabitant and the worlds largest predator, the sperm whale. Following a young male from infancy to old age, the marinescape comes vividly to life: the impossibly deep canyons, the underwater volcanoes, and the spectacular mountain ranges. The inhabitants of opaque depths are no less impressive ? black dragonfish that cast an eerie red glow, jellyfish shaped like giant footballs ? but the whale is only interested in one creature, the colossal squid. When the two meet, it is the ocean's ultimate battle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best CG-animated documentary yet!, December 18, 2006

By	Brendan M. Howard (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you like the "Walking With" series, you'll love Ocean Odyssey. But for someone like me who hasn't seen a "Walking With" and doesn't feel particularly motivated to glory in the gigantic extinct saurians or their hairy, club-wielding mammal conquerors, well, Ocean Odyssey blew me away.

This world is not extinct and millennias old. This world is not light years away. This world is right here, right now: the highest mountains in the world, the most volatile volcanic activity, and creatures larger than brontosauruses and Tyrannosaures Rex. Squids three times longer than your car fight sperm whales bigger than your upstairs rooms. Animals whom we see only as skeletons in the museum or glistening, air-blowing humps are brought to life in 3-D. Their dark underwater world is lit up for our depressingly human eyes by the imagined view of an animal with powerful sonar. The sperm whale sees thousands of feet ahead through the murky waters where light doesn't reach, and the plant life and wildlife survive on the heat only from the core's molten activity.

The epic tale, a true odyssey, is told in two segments of one sperm whale bull who lives from the birth of man's Industrial Age into the 21st century. He travels farther than any land-borne creature in all of the world's history, traversing the Atlantic to the Pacific across the Horn of Africa and then up into the freezing water and seemingly impenetrable ice of the slowly melting Antarctic icecap. He is protected by adults, off to fight and protect himself in young adulthood, and then off to fight off other comers to mate to make sure the end of his life, beached on the New Zealand coast, is not the end of his DNA.

This is a world that's real and happening every day, but we will never see it in our lifetimes, a world where light doesn't penetrate, but the most epic combat is fought and lives are lived.

NOTE: Amazon is pairing this with my favorite documentary series of recent time: Life in the Undergrowth. Ocean Odyssey brings to life a world we can't see because we're too small and weak; Undergrowth brings to life a world we can't see because we're too big. Both are mind-altering visions.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get this!, April 14, 2007

By	M. Menefee "farm boy" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ocean Odyssey is awesome. There has never been a documentary that deals with the life history of whales. The documentary goes indepth in to the 80 year life of a sperm whale, know as "the bull".
From Infancy to Twilight, we see the ocean thru "the bull's eyes". Facinating, and from the same folks who did the Walking with series. CG animation mixed with actual footage make an amazing mix. The only problem with the content is that some of the social interactions between sperm whales is incorrect, or otherwise out dated.
Interestingly, a segment is devoted to Mesonychotuethis, the recently named "Colossal Squid". Okay, well watch it, and you'll enjoy it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you BBC Video, May 12, 2007

By	Billy Matrakis (Toronto, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

for another brilliant attempt to educate the public about the world we live in. Kudos. So well done.