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Alien Planet (Mark's Take)
01/12/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
The Discovery Channel's special Alien Planet blurs the distinction between science and science fiction, but for good purpose. Alien Planet, based on Wayne Barlowe's book Expedition is a dramatisation of a plausible visit by mechanical probe Van Braun to the earth-like planet Darwin IV. Buy Alien Planet in the USA - or Buy Alien Planet in the UK  Darwin IV has life forms that may have evolved in the planet's earth-like environment. Two sub-probes descend to the surface of the planet and explore. The probes are given the names Leo for Leonardo Da Vinci and Ike for Isaac Asimov. As the story proceeds it several scientists comment on what is happening in the story.
The scientists include string theorist and science populariser Michio Kaku, paleontologist Jack Horner, and Stephen Hawking. Supplementing the scientists are science fiction filmmaker George Lucas and artist Wayne Barlowe, whose specialty is scientifically and artistically representing alien life forms. The probe Leo floats like a dirigible and has a birdlike head on the end of a long neck, much like an ostrich. Leo crawls on the surface.
Darwin IV is in what the scientists call the Goldilocks Zone. It is so called because small environmental changes manifest themselves in giant changes in the life that could develop on these planets. Things have got to be "just right." The program considers only very earth-like planets. "Alien Planet" seems to presuppose that life will be what "Star Trek" would call "life as we know it." It may in fact be true that we will consider life will have to be very earth-like to be recognizable as life. There might well be some sort of plasma-based intelligent lifeform living at the centre of the sun. Could we recognize it if there was? Would we have anything to say to such a different life form?
The program shows very strongly that it is a product of Wayne Barlowe and is illustrated with a menagerie of different sorts of alien beasties. Fourteen different creatures are described with varying degrees of scale up to huge by earthly standards. At each step in the process we have inserts with the scientists commenting on the animals and how they function.
One assumes that Barlowe updated the animals in his 1990 book with feedback from the scientists and they are all reasonably credible, but that does not prevent it from being amusing. It is all a lot of fun and is even more so because it is presented absolutely deadpan. We see some creatures that look like futuristic life forms and a thing that looks like a mesa that walks on elephantine legs. The CGI effects are not as photo-realistic as those are in programs like "Walking with Dinosaurs," but we get the point of what we are seeing.
The program has been run before, but will be repeated on Thursday, November 10, at 8 PM EST and then again four hours later at midnight.
There is a web site that goes along with the program and illustrates it. However, I would recommend that it should not be visited until after seeing the program since it is full of spoilers.
The site is http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/alienplanet/splash.html.
The program is also available on DVD, which would be more enjoyable than watching it on Discovery where the commercial breaks come a little too frequently.
This is a program that should be of a fair degree of interest by just about any science fiction readers.
Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2005 Mark R. Leeper
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