Life begins
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
Today the BBC screened the first episode of their latest landmark wildlife series. This time around they’ve called it, quite simply, Life.
I must admit that back in 2006 when trailers for Planet Earth came out I was a little skeptical that we were really about to witness ‘planet earth as we’ve never seen it before’ as was promised. Surely we’ve seen it all by now?
But no. I was swept away from the opening scene to the closing credits. Planet Earth is undeniably stunning and when I watch it again and again on DVD there are still bits of my mind that get blown away.
And now we have Life. Once again, a little part of me is whispering ‘we’ve seen it all before, we’ve seen it all before’.
And once again, I have to admit that we obviously haven’t seen it all before.
Take, for example, the giant pacific octopus.
Perhaps I should already have known this, but the pregnant female finds herself a safe crevice deep down somewhere out of sight, lays a hundred thousand eggs and slowly starves as she tends and cares for them. By the time the tiny, spotty babies hatch, mother octopus has passed away. Yes it does sound a little sad, but that’s semelparity for you.
Giant Pacific Octopus (Enteroctopus dolfeini)
The first episode offers up other oceanic treats like bottlenose dolphins stirring mud rings off the Florida coast and extraordinary slo mo shots of flying fish as they try to escape sailfish (with footage that for the first time convinces me where the sailfish get their name from). These guys alone are definitely worth tuning in for (it’s on again tomorrow and on Saturday) or watching again on BBC iplayer.
This episode did feel a little bit like a quick fire round. We see a carnival of snippets without going into too much detail. For example we whiz through madagascar and catch a tantalizing glimpse of a leaftail gecko’s foot with no mention of who it belongs to.
Mossy leaftail gecko from Madagascar. Helen Scales.
But perhaps this was a starter show parading things we’ll see later in the series. We’ll see next week.
And there were a couple of things that I’m sure we have seen before, like the poison arrow frog carrying its tadpoles one-by-one up a tree and plopping each one in a different water-filled bromeliad. These guys hopped through another BBC show a while back I think. But nevertheless they are still quite extraordinary.
We get some gnarly scenes of a leopard seal eating young chin strap penguins, flinging them about like rag dolls. But we are left with the oh-so-cute images of a baby orang utan with its mum while David Attenborough reminds us what life is all about.
So, in my humble oppinion, Life was good. I wonder if next week will be even better. I look forward to finding out.
Today the BBC screened the first episode of their latest landmark wildlife series. This time around they’ve called it, quite simply, Life.
I must admit that back in 2006 when trailers for Planet Earth came out I was a little skeptical that we were really about to witness ‘planet earth as we’ve never seen it before’ as was promised. Surely we’ve seen it all by now?
But no. I was swept away from the opening scene to the closing credits. Planet Earth is undeniably stunning and when I watch it again and again on DVD there are still bits of my mind that get blown away.
And now we have Life. Once again, a little part of me is whispering ‘we’ve seen it all before, we’ve seen it all before’.
And once again, I have to admit that we obviously haven’t seen it all before.
Take, for example, the giant pacific octopus.
Perhaps I should already have known this, but the pregnant female finds herself a safe crevice deep down somewhere out of sight, lays a hundred thousand eggs and slowly starves as she tends and cares for them. By the time the tiny, spotty babies hatch, mother octopus has passed away. Yes it does sound a little sad, but that’s semelparity for you.
Giant Pacific Octopus (Enteroctopus dolfeini)
The first episode offers up other oceanic treats like bottlenose dolphins stirring mud rings off the Florida coast and extraordinary slo mo shots of flying fish as they try to escape sailfish (with footage that for the first time convinces me where the sailfish get their name from). These guys alone are definitely worth tuning in for (it’s on again tomorrow and on Saturday) or watching again on BBC iplayer.
This episode did feel a little bit like a quick fire round. We see a carnival of snippets without going into too much detail. For example we whiz through madagascar and catch a tantalizing glimpse of a leaftail gecko’s foot with no mention of who it belongs to.
Mossy leaftail gecko from Madagascar. Helen Scales.
But perhaps this was a starter show parading things we’ll see later in the series. We’ll see next week.
And there were a couple of things that I’m sure we have seen before, like the poison arrow frog carrying its tadpoles one-by-one up a tree and plopping each one in a different water-filled bromeliad. These guys hopped through another BBC show a while back I think. But nevertheless they are still quite extraordinary.
We get some gnarly scenes of a leopard seal eating young chin strap penguins, flinging them about like rag dolls. But we are left with the oh-so-cute images of a baby orang utan with its mum while David Attenborough reminds us what life is all about.
So, in my humble oppinion, Life was good. I wonder if next week will be even better. I look forward to finding out.