Glaciers, deserts, waterfalls, forests and polar ice pass by in about thirteen minutes in this montage of scenery from Planet Earth, the 2006 BBC series that changed how nature documentaries are filmed. It is a fast tour of the planet's landscapes, cut from five years of filming by the BBC Natural History Unit.
Planet Earth: the 2006 BBC series
Planet Earth premiered on BBC One on 5 March 2006, narrated by David Attenborough and made under executive producer Alastair Fothergill. It took five years to make and was the most expensive nature documentary series the BBC had ever commissioned. In the United States, the Discovery Channel began its run on 25 March 2007 with Sigourney Weaver as narrator.
It was also the first nature documentary series filmed in high definition, and its opening episode became the first scheduled programme on BBC HD on 27 May 2006. The first episode, "From Pole to Pole", drew 9.41 million viewers in the UK, and the first five episodes averaged 11.4 million.
The eleven episodes, from Pole to Pole to Ocean Deep
The series is organised by habitat, which is why a montage like this one can jump from ice to sand in a single cut:
- From Pole to Pole
- Mountains
- Fresh Water
- Caves
- Deserts
- Ice Worlds
- Great Plains
- Jungles
- Shallow Seas
- Seasonal Forests
- Ocean Deep
Each episode takes one habitat and follows it across the continents. The landscapes in the montage, from glaciers to waterfalls and dunes, are drawn from across that range.
Watching the Planet Earth landscape montage
The montage was uploaded to YouTube by Robert Revol, with all footage from the BBC production. It works like a trailer for the whole planet: no narration, just one landscape after another, each shown at the scale that made the series famous. Aerial shots give mountains and ice fields their true size, and time-lapse sequences turn clouds, light and seasons into movement.
A line attributed to Aristotle fits the video perfectly: "In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous." Pick one scene, then find the full episode it comes from, and the story behind the image opens up: why the ice moves, how the desert formed, what lives in the forest.
Awards and the Planet Earth sequels
Planet Earth won four Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series, a Peabody Award in 2008 and a Royal Television Society award for science and natural history. Its success led to Planet Earth II (2016), a six-part sequel that was the first BBC series produced in 4K, again narrated by Attenborough, and to Planet Earth III in 2023.
For more moving landscapes, watch a time-lapse focused on Yosemite, or go deeper into frozen worlds with a documentary focused specifically on ice.
Video: ► Planet Earth: Amazing nature scenery. (published by Robert Revol).
Sources
- Wikipedia, Planet Earth (2006 TV series): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_(2006_TV_series)
- Video: Planet Earth: Amazing nature scenery, uploaded by Robert Revol
- Image: BBC Natural History Unit / Planet Earth (2006)
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