Alien Worlds

The show itself is very interesting to me. Unfortunately, it spends a lot of time talking about life on earth when the title is clearly supposed to be about other planets.

For a documentary in theory set on alien planet it focus half of time on vanity shots of Earth people, instead of filling that time explaining how would be posible the life shown. In that way, the 2005 show from National Geographic, although not so visually stunning, was a much better documentary.

The theme of the documentary is perfect with great opportunity for creativity and many potential alien worlds to portray. Each episode revolves around a potential alien world and its animals living there, which have characteristics similar to the animals on earth. The show goes back and forth between the earth animals and its alien world equivalent. The artist impression of the worlds shown and the animals living on it is well executed. Unfortunately most of the 42-minute span of each episode is spend on the earth animals and we only get to see 8-10 minutes each episode which covers the alien world, in which the same images are used several times. This is a significant limitation and probably due to budget constraints and is a major downside to the show. Other than that the concept is great and so is the storyline for each episode. 7/10

75% of each episode goes on what's happening in earth. And they show one cgi scene for 4-5 times. If wanna hear about earth and species here would have just watch NatGeo. Disappointing. So much for something called AliEn WoRlDs

6/10. Some neat visuals and interesting ideas sandwiched between padding that is borderline off-topic.

It's incredible just how far this documentary seems to miss the mark. Yes, there are about 2 - 3 minutes worth of fabulous effects shots and maybe 5 minutes worth of talk about how alien life might actually develop on alien worlds, but each episode is about 40 - 45 minutes long. What is this padded with?

How to film rhinocerous beetles having sex. Uh-huh. Interesting. Not why I'm here though.

Watch me go paragliding! Okay, really not why I'm here.

5 minutes talking in very general terms about how we discover exoplanets. Okay, at least related to alien planets.

4 minutes of a falconer training a falcon. What the... ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO MAKE A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT SCIENTIFIC THEORY ON THE TYPES OF LIFE THAT MIGHT DEVELOP ON ALIEN WORLDS!!?? I mean, I like falcons and all, but again... and I cannot stress this enough... that's not why I'm here.

There's some neat stuff in here, so it's not a total wash, but the padding, oh my the padding. I mean, some of the padding is interesting, but it's so off premise, I have to wonder why they just didn't make a series of 4 - 10 minute mini documentaries called "Neat Things on Earth."