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All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 From Pole to Pole

    • March 5, 2006
    • BBC One

    The ultimate portrait of our planet looks at the key factors that shape our natural history. The lives of animals and plants are dominated by the sun and fresh water which trigger seasonal journeys. The latest technology and aerial photography enable the Planet Earth team to track some of the greatest mass migrations. In the Arctic spring, a mother polar bear and cubs emerge from their winter den. They have just two weeks to cross the frozen sea before it melts and they become stranded. Share the most intimate and complete picture of polar bear life ever filmed. Further south, time-lapse cameras capture the annual transformation created by the Okavango floods.

  • SPECIAL 0x1 Diaries: Eye in the Sky

    • March 5, 2006
    • BBC One

    Using the unique overhead heli-gimble camera the crew set out to film a pack of African wild dogs hunting in the Okavango Delta. It came down to the final hour of the final day of filming before they got the shot they wanted.

  • S01E02 Mountains

    • March 12, 2006
    • BBC One

    Tour the mightiest mountain ranges, starting with the birth of a mountain at one of the lowest places on Earth and ending at the summit of Everest. One of Earth's rarest phenomena is a lava lake that has been erupting for over 100 years. The same forces built the Simian Mountains where troops of gelada baboons live, nearly a thousand strong. In the Rockies, grizzlies build winter dens inside avalanche-prone slopes. The programme also brings us astounding images of a snow leopard hunting on the Pakistan peaks, a world first.

  • SPECIAL 0x2 Diaries: Snow Leopard Quest

    • March 12, 2006
    • BBC One

    Over the course of three years the Planet Earth team tried to film the elusive Snow Leopard deep in the mountains of Pakistan. Their patience was eventually rewarded with the world's first footage of a Snow Leopard hunting.

  • S01E03 Fresh Water

    • March 19, 2006
    • BBC One

    Fresh water is our most precious resource and it defines the distribution of life on land. Follow the descent of rivers from their mountain sources to the sea. Watch spectacular waterfalls, fly inside the Grand Canyon and explore the wildlife below the ice in the world's deepest lake. Witness unique and dramatic moments of animal behavior: a showdown between smooth-coated otters and mugger crocodiles; deep-diving long tailed macaques; massive flocks of snow geese on the wing and a piranha frenzy in the perilous waters of the world's largest wetland.

  • SPECIAL 0x3 Diaries: Diving with Piranhas

    • March 19, 2006
    • BBC One

    Over the course of three years the Planet Earth team tried to film the elusive Snow Leopard deep in the mountains of Pakistan. Their patience was eventually rewarded with the world's first footage of a Snow Leopard hunting.

  • S01E04 Caves

    • March 26, 2006
    • BBC One

    The Cave of Swallows in Mexico is a 400m vertical shaft, deep enough to engulf the Empire State Building. The Lechuguilla cave system in the USA is 193km long and 500m deep with astonishing crystal formations hanging from its chambers. Although often overlooked, caves are remarkable habitats with equally bizarre wildlife. Cave angel fish cling to the walls behind cave waterfalls with microscopic hooks on their flattened fins. Cave swiftlets navigate by echo-location and build nests out of saliva. The Texas cave salamander has neither eyes nor pigment. Unique access to a hidden world of stalactites, stalagmites, snotites and troglodytes brings a wealth of surprises.

  • SPECIAL 0x4 Diaries: Into the Abyss

    • March 26, 2006
    • BBC One

    The team spend a month amongst an enormous mound of bat guano in Gomantong Cave as they film the hundreds of thousands of cockroaches and other inhabitants that live there. The amazing Lechuguilla Cave of New Mexico provides a whole other set of challenges.

  • S01E05 Deserts

    • April 2, 2006
    • BBC One

    Around 30% of the land's surface is desert, the most varied of our ecosystems despite the lack of rain. Unravel the secrets of desert survival and experience the ephemeral nature of this dynamic environment. Watch Saharan sandstorms nearly a mile high and desert rivers that run for a single day.In the Gobi Desert, rare Bactrian camels get moisture from the snow. In the Atacama, guanacos survive by licking dew off cactus spines. In the USA, the brief blooming of Death Valley triggers a plague of locusts 65km wide and 160km long. A unique aerial voyage over the Namibian desert reveals elephants on a long trek for food and desert lions searching for wandering oryx.

  • SPECIAL 0x5 Diaries: Wild Camel Chase

    • April 2, 2006
    • BBC One

    The Gobi desert is home to the last truly wild Bactrian camels and their fear of humans makes them extremely difficult to capture on film. After weeks of trying the crew were becoming frustrated, but their expert local tracker wouldn't let them down.

  • S01E06 Ice Worlds

    • November 5, 2006
    • BBC One

    The Arctic and Antarctic experience the most extreme seasons on Earth. Time-lapse cameras watch a colony of emperor penguins, transforming them into a single organism. The film reveals new science about the dynamics of emperor penguin behaviour. In the north, unique aerial images show a polar bear swimming more than 100km. Diving for up to two minutes at a time. The exhausted polar bear later attacks a herd of walrus in a true clash of the Titans.

  • SPECIAL 0x6 Diaries: Alive in the Freezer

    • November 5, 2006
    • BBC One

    Cameraman Wade Fairley braved temperatures of minus 50C and near hurricane force winds as he filmed a breeding colony of 20,000 emperor penguins in the Antarctic. At the other end of the Earth on a Norwegian island, cameraman Doug Allan and assistant Jason Roberts get a bit closer to a polar bear than they bargained for.

  • S01E07 Great Plains

    • November 12, 2006
    • BBC One

    After filming for three years, Planet Earth finally captures the shy Mongolian gazelle. Only a handful of people have witnessed its annual migration. Don't miss the bizarre-looking Tibetan fox, captured on film for the first time. Over six weeks the team follow a pride of 30 lions as they attempt to hunt elephants. Using the latest night vision equipment, the crew film the chaotic battles that ensue at close quarters.

  • SPECIAL 0x7 Diaries: Shot in the Dark

    • November 12, 2006
    • BBC One

    Lions hunting elephants has only ever been seen by a handful of people, so the crew were up against it when trying to film this rare behaviour. Using infrared technology they were able to track a pride of lions through the African night, but when they finally got the shots they wanted it was a saddening experience for all.

  • S01E08 Jungles

    • November 19, 2006
    • BBC One

    Jungles cover roughly three per cent of our planet yet contain 50 per cent of the world's species. High-definition cameras enable unprecedented views of animals living on the dark jungle floor. In the Ngogo forest the largest chimpanzee group in the world defends its territory from neighbouring groups. Other jungle specialists include parasitic fungi which infiltrate an insect host, feed on it, and then burst out of its body.

  • SPECIAL 0x8 Diaries: Trouble in Paradise

    • November 19, 2006
    • BBC One

    It took the Planet Earth team over eight weeks in the field to film less than 15 minutes of footage of the beautiful but seldom seen Birds of Paradise in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Behind the scenes cameraman Paul Stewart endured hundreds of hours alone cramped inside a small filming hide, going stir crazy when old songs come back to haunt him.

  • S01E09 Shallow Seas

    • November 26, 2006
    • BBC One

    A humpback whale mother and calf embark on an epic journey from tropical coral paradises to storm ravaged polar seas. Newly discovered coral reefs in Indonesia reveal head-butting pygmy seahorses, flashing 'electric' clams and bands of sea kraits, 30-strong, which hunt in packs. Elsewhere plagues of sea urchins fell forests of giant kelp. Huge bull fur seals attack king penguins, who despite their weight disadvantage, put up a spirited defence.

  • SPECIAL 0x9 Diaries: Shark Quest

    • November 26, 2006
    • BBC One

    Great white sharks capture their slippery seal prey by rocketing out of the depths and delivering a massive hit at the surface. To record a breach like this in ultra slow motion, which in real-time lasts just a second, was a supreme challenge for cameraman Simon King.

  • S01E10 Seasonal Forests

    • December 3, 2006
    • BBC One

    The Taiga forest, on the edge of the Arctic, is a silent world of stunted conifers. The trees may be small but filming from the air reveals its true scale. A third of all trees on Earth grow here and during the short summer they produce enough oxygen to change the atmosphere. In California General Sherman, a giant sequoia, is the largest living thing on the planet, ten times the size of a blue whale. The oldest organisms alive are bristlecone pines. At more than 4,000 years old they pre-date the pyramids. But the baobab forests of Madagascar are perhaps the strangest of all.

  • SPECIAL 0x10 Diaries: Forest Fliers

    • December 3, 2006
    • BBC One

    The Planet Earth crew attempted to film the extraordinary baobab trees in Madagascar by attaching a camera - and cameraman - to a hot air balloon. With normal ballooning the idea is to go high, well above obstacles. When filming trees, however, it's better to get really close to your subject for the most dramatic shot possible. Not too close though.

  • S01E11 Ocean Deep

    • December 10, 2006
    • BBC One

    Life goes to extraordinary lengths to survive this immense realm. A 30 tonne whale shark gorges on a school of fish and the unique overhead heli-gimbal camera reveals common dolphins rocketing at more than 30km an hour. Descending into the abyss, deep sea octopus fly with wings and vampire squid use bioluminescence to create an extraordinary colour display. The first ever time-lapse footage taken from 2,000m down captures eels, crabs and giant isopods eating a carcass, completely consuming it within three hours.

  • SPECIAL 0x11 Diaries: Ocean Wanderers

    • December 10, 2006

    The camera team of Doug Anderson and Rick Rosenthal were determined to film oceanic whitetip sharks without a cage, relying only on observation, nerves and experience to dictate how long they stayed underwater in their company. The powerful sharks were initially shy of the dive team but, as more sharks arrived, they became bolder - their behaviour changing to that of the hunter.

  • SPECIAL 0x19 Elephant Nomads of the Namib Desert

    Extra from the special edition bluray

  • SPECIAL 0x20 Secrets of the Mayan Underworld

  • SPECIAL 0x21 Great Planet Earth Moments

    The Planet Earth team reveal their most memorable moments from the making of the series. We'll discover their high points, and their not so high points. And they'll tell us which sequences they consider to be their great Planet Earth moments.

Additional Specials

  • SPECIAL 0x12 The Future: Saving Species

    • November 26, 2006
    • BBC One

    Many of the animals featured in the Planet Earth series are endangered so do we face an extinction crisis? Saving Species asks the experts if there really is a problem, looks at the reasons behind the declining numbers of particular animals and questions how we choose which species we want to conserve.

  • SPECIAL 0x13 The Future: Into the Wilderness

    • December 3, 2006
    • BBC One

    Pollution, climate change and a growing human population are all putting pressure on Earth's wildernesses including the Bialowieza forest, the Gobi Desert and the Arctic tundra. So how much of the planet is still wilderness? And why should we care? Into the Wilderness explores why these uninhabited expanses are important for our survival as well as that of all creatures on the planet.

  • SPECIAL 0x14 The Future: Living Together

    • December 10, 2006
    • BBC One

    This history of conservation throws up some interesting ideas as we look to the future of an ever more populated planet. How can conservation fit into this new world driven by economics and development? Living Together looks at the challenges facing conservation in the 21st century and looks at the role of religion in piloting a moral and ethical approach to the world we live in.

  • SPECIAL 0x15 The Making of Planet Earth

    • October 11, 2006
    • BBC One

    The making of the sprawling, ambitious series is documented.

  • SPECIAL 0x16 Interview with Alastair Fothergill

    • BBC One

  • SPECIAL 0x17 Desert Lions

    • February 4, 2005
    • BBC One

    Many years ago lions thrived in the deserts of Namibia's Skeleton Coast, until they were exterminated by man. Six years ago maverick biologist Flip Stander discovered a tiny remnant population alive and well in nearby mountains, and started to study them. Their numbers have grown and they are now returning to the desert in increasing numbers. But if these lions are to continue roaming here, Flip will have to persuade local people that these lions are worth more alive than dead.

  • SPECIAL 0x18 Snow Leopard: Beyond the Myth

    • January 4, 2008
    • BBC One

    In 2004, a team from the Planet Earth series captured the first ever film of a wild snow leopard in the mountains of Pakistan. For Nisar Malik, who led the expedition, these images sparked a passion that compelled him to return. With cameraman Mark Smith, he spent two years documenting the snow leopard's daily life, finally lifting the veil on the most elusive of all cats.