Thread: Alien Planet

Came across this video and found it interesting.

Alien Planet is a 94 minute special on Discovery Channel about two internationally built robot probes searching for alien life on the fictional planet Darwin IV. It was based on the book Expedition, by sci-fi/fantasy artist and writer Wayne Douglas Barlowe, who was also executive producer on the special. It premiered on May 14, 2005.
The show uses sophisticated computer-generated imagery, which is interspersed with interviews from such notables as Stephen Hawking, George Lucas, Michio Kaku, and Jack Horner. The show was filmed in Iceland and Mono Lake in California.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet

Enjoy.

Nice, thanks!

I'll have to watch this!

Awesome.

Btw O, love the new avatar.

I remember watching that, that was really cool

Yeah, I'm surprised I hadn't seen it, until now.

I was checking up on that movie Avatar, on IMDB, and someone had asked if the director was influenced by that documentary. After seeing it, I wonder if he might have been, too. What I've read about that planet in the movie, and the planet they talk about in this video are very similar. I haven't finished the video yet, though. About to watch the rest of it now.

Originally Posted by Aquanina

Btw O, love the new avatar.

Thankya, luv.
It was just my Thanksgiving one, but I think I'll rock it for a lil while. Heh.

You definitely should. It's hawt.

Duly noted.

*puts his Christmas ava on the back burner*

Its actually not that good. Its a whole lot of speculation and very few cg'd sequences repeated over and over again. Actually, that about sums up a lot of discovery channel specials.

^ sounds more like history channel really.. I dont think discovery does as many like that

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Its actually not that good. Its a whole lot of speculation and very few cg'd sequences repeated over and over again. Actually, that about sums up a lot of discovery channel specials.

I have seen it, and I was a bit disappointed. So I agree.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Its actually not that good. Its a whole lot of speculation and very few cg'd sequences repeated over and over again. Actually, that about sums up a lot of discovery channel specials.

I'm actually not sure what you mean by implying "a whole lot of speculation" is a bad thing.

The film isn't meant to make any prediction about what life on another planet will be like. It's meant to explain the protocol of the probe(s) and how it will go about interacting with life that it might find. The planet in the film is admittedly fictional, and only serves as a means to demonstrate what the probes are intended to do. Of course it's speculative, seeing as how none of it has actually happened yet, but who better to speculate on how the search for alien life will go, than some of the well-accredited names they have in the video?

Personally, I just found it interesting to see how we're progressing in the search for extra-terrestrial life.