Alien Planet | |
---|---|
Format | Speculative Fiction/Sci-Fi |
Run time | 2 hours with commercials 94 minutes without commercials |
Creator | Wayne Barlowe |
Music composed by | Dean Grinsfelder |
Starring | Various astronomers and scientists |
Country | USA |
Network | Discovery Channel |
First aired | May 14, 2005 |
Alien Planet is a 94-minute docufiction, originally airing on the 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 the film's executive producer. It premiered on May 14, 2005 in the United States. The show uses computer-generated imagery, which is interspersed with interviews from such notables as Stephen Hawking, George Lucas, Michio Kaku, and Jack Horner. The show's landscape was filmed in Iceland and Mono Lake in California.
Plot[]
Alien Planet begins with an interstellar spacecraft named Von Braun leaving Earth's orbit. Traveling at 20% the speed of light (37,000 miles/s), it reaches its destination, Darwin IV, after about 42 years. Upon reaching orbit, it deploys the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter, which looks for potential landing sites for the probes. The first probe, Balboa, explodes along with its lifting body transport during entry, due to one of its wings failing to unfold. Two backup probes, Leonardo da Vinci (nicknamed Leo) and Isaac Newton (nicknamed Ike), successfully land on the planet and learn much about its bizarre indigenous lifeforms through the course of the documentary, including an apparently sapient species.
The robotic probes sent out to research on Darwin IV are called Horus Probes. Each Horus probe consists of 8 foot high, 40-foot long, hydrogen-filled inflatables, which are covered with solar receptors, a computer 'brain' and 'head' covered with sensors and several smaller robots that can be sent to places too dangerous for the probes themselves. The probes have a limited degree of artificial intelligence, comparable to the 'mental capacity' of a 4-year-old child. All the real thinking and information transmission are done by a supercomputer in the orbiting Von Braun. The probes are deliberately programmed with different personalities; Ike is more cautious, while Leo is the risk-taker. The two probes are also equipped with a holographic message that can be projected to potentially intelligent life found on Darwin.
After the two probes inflate their gas-bags and confirm the functionality of their equipment, they encounter a voracious arrowtongue, a bipedal Tyrannosaurus-sized predator, pursuing a herbivorous gyrosprinter. Later that night, the twins find the wreckage of Balboa and are ordered to split up, Ike studying the unique plant life and Leo going after large and megafaunal creatures. Ike's voyage takes him to one of Darwin IV's pocket forests, where he encounters a flock of trunk-suckers and their predator, the daggerwrist. Before his research is finished, a massive hurricane-like storm hits and Ike must take to the sky, launching weather balloons. Leo goes to the mountain ranges and finds a herd of bison-like bipedal unths engaged in 'rutting' courtship behavior. Afterward, Leo finds a pair of mountain-dwelling bladderhorns engaging in territorial combat. He tries to communicate with one, but a nearby sonic ping interrupts the interaction and scares off the animal, and he is knocked out by the unseen creature. Ike ventures to the meadows and gullies of Darwin IV, encountering a massive herd of grovebacks and armored littoralopes. It is here that he also encounters a pair of massive flying skewers on the hunt.
Leo gets destroyed by a mysterious and evasive creature, and Ike, ordered by the Von Braun to search for Leo's attacker, hopes to find a new sentient species. Ike's route takes him across perilous terrain, and across the Amoebic Sea in his quest for Leo. As he embarks on his journey, one of the grovebacks seen earlier falls victim to a swarm of beachquills, colonial ambush predators that hide and 'launch' themselves from the sand into prey on a powerful mollusk-like foot. Ike then finds a pack of prongheads hunting a gyrosprinter, and crosses the Amoebic Sea (which attempted to attack Ike), encountering a herd of giant Emperor Sea Striders. Ike manages to find Leo after a harrowing experience with a skewer that tries to attack him, but before it could it was killed by a spear that was thrown by the newly discovered Eosapien. Shortly afterward, Ike communicates with the Eosapien tribe and discovers that they are truly intelligent. Ike launches a camera disk to record the moment, or perhaps "to assess the threat" due to a third Eosapien appearing; however one of the Eosapiens mistakes it as an act of aggression and destroys the camera disk as the other two descend on Ike. Before shutting down, the wrecked camera disk records the Eosapien tribe carrying Ike away, dismantled and limp.
List of Species[]
The following list contains only the species that appeared by name in the documentary, any other that has appeared in the book can be inferred to also exist, however, there is no way to verify this for the moment. In certain aspects, some organisms were changed in relation to their book counterparts, like the Emperor Sea Strider, Eosapiens and Groveback being much smaller in comparison to their Expedition representations.
Fauna[]
- Amoebic Sea
- Arrowtongue
- Beach Quill
- Bladderhorn
- Daggerwrist
- Emperor Sea Strider
- Eosapien
- Flipstick
- Keeled Groveback
- Gyrosprinter
- Jetdarter
- Littoralope
- Pronghead
- Skewer
- Trunk-sucker
- Unth
- Butchertree
- Yma
- Ebony Blister-wing
Flora[]
- Aerophyte
- Basket Plant
- Beachfinger
- Blue whipweed
- Darwin Moss
- Darwin Tomato
- Electrophyte
- Gourd Tree
- Hillvine
- Jelly-bladder Plant
- Plaque-bark Tree
- Snow-bulb
- Stickball Plant
- Tube Grass