Review of Alien Planet

Science is something best learned about in the cold reaches of space. Alien Planet is one of the most memorable tv documentaries that comes to mind for me. I remember seeing a few parts of this here and there back when it came out in 2005. Back then, I wasn't as interested because I didn't understand all the complicated terms the people that are interviewed were using, but I look at this program with a different set of eyes now. It doesn't really count as a movie, but it does have something of a storyline. A human made spaceship called the Von Braun has traveled 6 light years from earth to an alien world called Darwin IV. The ship took about 40 years to travel the immense distance, and scientists who were children when the ship left earth now announce its arrival at the strange world. In order to get a better understanding of the planet and what life it has (if any), the Von Braun releases 3 probes to scout its surface and take pictures of things. They are Leo, named after Leonardo da Vinci, Ike, named for Isaac Newton, and Balboa, named for the spanish explorer. The probes are blue, yellow, and red respectively. Ike and Leo manage to land safely on the surface, but Balboa has some kind of malfunction and crashes. The remaining two probes still have a job to do. They begin floating over the planet's surface and come across strange animals that are unlike anything found back on earth, such as huge "sea striders" that are hundreds of feet tall and walk across Darwin IV's purple oceans with wide steps, the arrowtongue, a fearsome bipedal predator about as big as a t-rex, and the skewer, large flying animals that hunt in packs and use an enormous sharp tusk to impale other animals they swoop down on. Later in the program, the Von Braun notices that Leo has mysteriously gone offline and is presumed destroyed, and Ike eventually comes upon his last known location. He then encounters Darwin IV's most intelligent lifeform, the Eosapien. Eosapiens are huge, floating alien creatures that maintain levitation abilities via an air sac on their head. They are socially the most advanced animals on Darwin IV and have intellect roughly comparable to that of early humans. Ike tries to communicate with one, but inadvertently startles it and the probe is destroyed by the Eosapien tribe. With this, humanity's expedition of this strange world come to an end. Overall, alien planet is fiction, but it's an interesting look at what aliens might look like. They even interview people like renowned scientist Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking, and George Lucas. After watching, the viewer must wonder that somewhere, there must be another advanced civilization trying to reach us.