That was an excellent one.

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I felt like a kid again watching this flight of fancy. I liked the interspersed animations and real world interviews of some top scientists, making it feel real though of course (and alas) it is pure invention.How could someone watch this and not be enthralled, not wish for us to support pure science and space exploration? It makes me want to run right out and do something to further the possibility that such a mission might one day be undertaken.I don't care if the biology is imperfect; I do care that it's a dozen times better than the typical Hollywood s-f flick that has all its creatures looking like they evolved on earth. Still too many pairs of eyes over mouths here, but a distinct improvement over big-eyed gray aliens.

Ordinarily, I hate documentaries. And I mean *hate*. So why is it that I love "Alien Planet"?Simple. Using cutting-edge animation technology and fascinating (not mind-bogglingly boring), jargon-filled interviews with experts in various fields, the makers of this real winner have successfully created an interesting testament to the fact that mankind is not even a drop in the bucket, cosmically speaking. This fantastically done doc almost plays out like a motion picture as it interweaves the documentary with pieces of interstellar adventure and drama. Particularly interesting is the segment featuring an alien life form called a "groveback."Take it from someone who is usually bored stiff by documentaries-- one look at this astounding, mind blowing extravaganza, and you want more. Immediately.

It seemed very interesting to me upon first glance, previous "documentaries" shown on Discovery had some scientific background...but this one seem to be mostly fictional...The whole time I was watching, I was hoping "so is there actually something factual we discovered that led them to make these surreal creatures? like they found some sort of tracks, or remains, etc(kind of like the shows they did on raptors- they had more proof... or are these just figments of imagination?" I was hoping for a better conclusion than "ooo, there's more possibilities to life in other planets than we first thought"...Watching it was interesting, but the fact that it was based on wild guesses and creations of mind without any actual findings is simply a turn off ... I believe there's extraterrestrial life too, but I didn't need to waste 2 hours to see a "documentary" to convince me, I could've just gone renting a Sci-fi movie if I wanted to be intrigued... The delivery of the story was good, the graphics were fantastic, but the realism, un-realism rather, is a major negative blow to the show...

The CG work for the show was nice, and the engineering of the mission seemed plausible.Upon arrival at Darwin IV, however, everything started to go wrong. Wayne Barlowe is a talented illustrator, but he is not a scientist. He understands joints, skin, muscle, tendons, and the other things that make up an animal, but he doesn't appear to understand how animals come to be or the limitations imposed on them.A simple example is the amoebic sea, which is composed of single-celled animals far too large for reasonable nutrition/waste transport across the boundary membrane. Another example is that one of the simplest sensory adaptations - eyes, or even eyespots - does not show up on any of the animals. There is nothing so special about the ability to sense light that it should evolve on at least 8 independent occasions on Sol III, yet not at all on Darwin IV.The requirements of food chains are also completely ignored. Big animals need to eat something, either plants or smaller animals, and the amount of vegetation in evidence would not support enough prey animals to feed the number of large predators shown.The program is a showcase for Barlowe's ideas of some "cool" aliens, rather than an example of what trained scientists might come up with when they let their imaginations loose and speculate what might be.The process followed seems to be Barlowe sitting down and drawing an interesting looking critter, then trying to rationalize its existence, rather than looking at the environment and speculating how an animal might meet the challenges posed by that environment.I was struck by the fact that all of the scientists interviewed made a point of mentioning how "unexpected" and "odd" the animals seemed. Those scientists didn't seem fascinated by the ideas, they sounded to me like they were trying to distance themselves from appearing to have had anything to do with the creature design, because it would be a professional embarrassment.A program that could have been speculative science fiction was instead science fantasy.I give the program a few points for being pretty, but none for content.