The Blue Planet, David Attenborough (The Blue Planet (DVD))

Member Name: imsooosickofu

Product:	The Blue Planet (DVD)
Date:	08/12/06 (830 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: interesting images, informative, good price

Disadvantages: can be repetative, dull in places

The blue planet is the comprehensive tv series, on the history of the oceans. Narrated by David Attenborough, there are some fantastic images and you will discover creatures that you have never seen or heard of before. This series looks at the various different types of habitats and how each of the creatures living in them survive.

The soundtrack is composed by George Fenton and really fits in well with the images adding drama and suspense when needed.

There are eight episodes in the series;

1: The Blue Planet
This is basicly an overview of all the different aspects of the oceans to show the scale, force and complexity of our planet.

2: The Deep
This was by far my favourite episode it explores the depths of the ocean where no sunlight reaches, the fish down here are well, ugly, really ugly and id never seen anything like them before. The footage they have managed to capture, using a special submarine that can withstand the pressure so far down, is amazing.

3: Open Ocean
Ok well like it says this one was on the open ocean, the huge areas of water with land nowhere in sight. The main preditors in this area are the killer whale, dolphins and tuna. By then end of it i did get a bit sick of hearing about tuna, to be honest im not interested in tuna, i eat tuna, i wanted to see more about whales, sharks etc etc.

4: Frozen Seas
This ones about the Artic and the Antartic. It did tend to focus on the polar bears, pengiuns and birds around these areas and not whats in the water. This is beacuse, i believe most of the water is frozen, but it was a bit dull to be honest nothing new really.

5 Seasonal Seas
Tuna, tuna, dolphins, tuna, dolphins, tuna you will hear that a lot. This again wasn't a great episode, compared to the others that is, it was interesting hearing about how the seasons change the oceans and influence where the fish go. But after being told ten times previously in the series, i know that a lot of fish feed on plankton so if there is plankton someplace there will be a lot of fish.

6: Coral Seas
Ah now i was looking forward to this one, it mainly focused on the corals of the red sea. I was happy about this because ive been scuba diving there a few times and it was amazing. Although it wasn't so much about the fish in the corals, more about what a coral is, how it reproduces etc. It was really interesting actually, it wasn't what i expected but i learnt something new.

7: Tidal Seas.
This one looks at tides and how the influence when breeding with happen. Quite interesting but there was a lot of repeted footage from the previous episodes.

8: Coasts
Bit of a dull end to the series really, this one mainly focused on the little creatures that live at the coasts and how they survive when the tide goes out.

Thats it for the tv series, but there are 5 other documentarys in the set, Making Waves, Deep Trouble, The Abyss, Amazon Abyss, Dive to Shark Volcano. All of these are well worth watching, a lot of the information is repeted from the tv series but there is some different footage which is good.

Overall i would say this is a good thing to have, i bought it for just £15 and its over 10 hours of footage. If you like Attenborough you'll like this, its the kind of thing you watch on a rainy sunday when there is nothing to do and its dull and miserable outside.

I did get a bit fed up with his obsession with tuna, dolphins and plankton and found that a lot of the information in the TV series episodes was repeted over and over. Still its good entertainment for a really good price

Summary: 10 hours of interesting entertainment for £15, not bad