Halfway through the latest episode of the Discovery Channel series Planet Earth, the camera tosses light onto a vampire squid, an animal that looks as foreboding and frightening as it sounds. Then it went dark, and an eerie blue glow emanated from the eyes and from the tip of each of its eight tentacles.
The episode, Ocean Deep
explored the floor of the oceans: six-foot tubeworms, shrimp feeding on bioluminescent bacteria, lobsters patrolling the vastness for fallen carcasses and finding a meal in a decaying sperm whale.
This 11-part series is a monumental, even majestic, achievement in documentary work ' in scope, in detail and in its commitment to storytelling. After five years of visiting the oddest destinations and most bizarre creatures the documentarians could find, they packed all of it into a mere 11 hours.
It struck a chord with the audience and has become one of the most popular programs that Discovery Channel has ever produced.
The narration, recorded with a quiet passion by Sigourney Weaver, never tries to make a point from what it shows. No one interrupts the explanations of Amazonian fungi with statistics about disappearing rainforest or dislodged indigenous tribes.
It purports to show only what is happening, without commentary and, often, without the slightest indication that humans have anything to do with this strange but beautiful world.
Perhaps, what is more impressive than the shots themselves are the means by which they were gathered. In one episode, viewers witness a frenzied and bloodied Piranha thrashing, knowing that someone jumped into the water with a camera, watching it all happen.
One crew spent 10 days a mile below the surface in a Mexican cave. The limestone formations they found ' formed by thousands of years of sulfuric acid burning a path through the rock ' resemble the grand chandeliers of old. Their splendor, however, is natural, an accidental sculpture hidden away until now.
Anyone who hasn't seen the show misses a spectacular view of nature's wonders. Somehow ' maybe because the series is split into one-hour episodes ' it manages to stay vibrant and interesting, never droning too long on any place or animal, no matter how weird it might be.
This, it would seem, is what nature television is about ' insights and peaks into what the world has to offer outside what we see day to day. It's about predators and prey; parasites and hosts; mountain ranges and caverns; oceans and ponds. It's about the biggest and the smallest and every creature that flaps, flutters and fights to stay alive in between.It's about planet Earth. 17
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Justin Thompson
