Planet Earth Extremes

[tylerrad]

"Planet Earth Extremes" is currently playing on the Discovery Channel, narrated by Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs). A Google search turned up almost nothing about this show other than the Discovery Channel listings. There doesn't seem to be an IMDB page for it. Also, during commercials, I keep seeing ads for "Planet Earth Life," a 'new' show, apparently, to be narrated by Oprah Winfrey.

Is "Planet Earth Extremes" a separate program from "Planet Earth"? I know David Attenborough narrated the British version and Sigourney Weaver narrated the US Discover Channel edition -- so the fact that Mike Rowe is narrating "Planet Earth Extremes" makes me think it's something separate. I've seen a couple episodes of "Planet Earth" and, though beautiful and reasonably interesting, I didn't really dig them: too many animals, too few interesting landscapes (just a matter of my personal taste). "Planet Earth Extremes," however, is fascinating. I came online to see if a Blu-ray release is imminent, but now I'm not sure what the hell it even is, a new, separate show, a re-edit of some "Planet Earth" episodes, or what.

Any info on this would be excellent.

[SellmeyourDVD]

Originally Posted by tylerrad

"Planet Earth Extremes" is currently playing on the Discovery Channel, narrated by Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs). A Google search turned up almost nothing about this show other than the Discovery Channel listings. There doesn't seem to be an IMDB page for it. Also, during commercials, I keep seeing ads for "Planet Earth Life," a 'new' show, apparently, to be narrated by Oprah Winfrey.

Is "Planet Earth Extremes" a separate program from "Planet Earth"? I know David Attenborough narrated the British version and Sigourney Weaver narrated the US Discover Channel edition -- so the fact that Mike Rowe is narrating "Planet Earth Extremes" makes me think it's something separate. I've seen a couple episodes of "Planet Earth" and, though beautiful and reasonably interesting, I didn't really dig them: too many animals, too few interesting landscapes (just a matter of my personal taste). "Planet Earth Extremes," however, is fascinating. I came online to see if a Blu-ray release is imminent, but now I'm not sure what the hell it even is, a new, separate show, a re-edit of some "Planet Earth" episodes, or what.

Any info on this would be excellent.

The five minutes that I saw of "Planet Earth Extremes" was the exact same footage and dialog from Planet Earth. I caught the part about the Snow Leopard, and after I realized it was the same thing, I continued to do homework and not pay attention to it.

I'm surprised you are basing your opinion on Planet Earth on only watching "a couple of episodes." Go check out the whole series! There were TONS of different landscapes. As a matter of fact, each episodes involves a different landscape!!!!

[AeroK]

It's a different cut of Planet Earth with Mike Rowe narrating from what I've watched so far. I prefer the Discovery Planet Earth over the BBC version...mainly because I like Sigourney Weaver's voice better.

[Decado]

The Snow Leopards and Amur Leopards are two of the highlights of Planet Earth, IMO. So awesome, though endangered

[kneedragger37]

I just compared a youtube video of the Panda scene from the original "Planet Earth" with the first scene of "Planet Earth Extremes" - it's exactly the same shot for shot, the only thing that's different is the dialogue is slightly re-arranged from the original, and it's Mike Rowe's voice rather than Sigourney Weaver's or Attenborough's.

I imagine Discovery wanted to create a buzz leading up to the new show, called simply "Life" and created by the BBC/Discovery collaboration that did Blue Planet and Planet Earth. I guess they either wanted to freshen it up to increase the buzz about the show, or didn't want to pay Sigourney Weaver royalties for airing the original again... probably a bit of both I imagine...

[tylerrad]

So, everything in Planet Earth Extremes is in the BBC Blu-ray set of Planet Earth, just with Attenborough narrating instead of Rowe?

[ChrisNy]

Actually am watching this now as i type, I don't remember anything about the dumbo octopus on the Planet Earth collection I have ...

[The Phantom]

Bottom line is that this is just trying to squeeze out more revenue from the same, albeit expensive to shoot, footage and rebranding each repeat as if it is a new and different series. The dumbo octopus is in the BBC version.

The BBC version runs about eight to ten minutes longer for each episode than the Discovery version so there are more scenes and sometimes longer versions of the same scene. The amount of time allotted for commercials is different between the BBC and North America. A couple of additional differences are that the BBC blu-rays are 1080p instead of 1080i for the Discovery version and the BBC versions do not have the bonus featurettes that are on the Discovery discs. I own both because I sent in my HD DVD information to Warner Bros. for the red2blu trade and when Discovery dropped out of this program, BBC filled the gap for existing orders. Planet Earth was dropped from the red2blu eligibility. I did watch some of the same scenes on both the BBC and Discovery versions and found that the image quality was, as expected, better in 1080p than 1080i.

Disney even jumped on the bandwagon with a shortened blu-ray version of Planet Earth that they tried to palm off as being their own called Earth. However, it used exactly the same same footage that had already been shown.

Discovery had also released a Nature's Most Amazing Events two-disc blu-ray set. This apparently employed unused Planet Earth footage and each two-hour disc consisted of three expanded episodes and was worth watching at least as a rental.

This also gives more opportunities for the various narrators to be associated with the Planet Earth series.