The Planets

It is impossible for any documentary to be completely up to date. Criticizing this series for not including anything discovered after '99 isn't fair. Yet, we lament that this information is missing only because this BBC production does such a GREAT job of presenting it.

I would give this series a 9 for the 3rd installment "Giants", alone. The story of the Voyager probes is simply fascinating and must rank as one of man's greatest under appreciated accomplishments.

Would it not be nice to have this series updated with new data and presented in high definition? As others have commented, the information from Cassini alone warrants a "brush up" of the series.

This BBC series released in 1999 is an excellent source of information on our solar system. We are fortunate to be living at a time when so much is being revealed about our neighboring worlds.

But as more information comes in at an ever-increasing rate, it is always a matter of a 'snapshot' of what was known at the time the series was produced. 1999 now seems like such a long time ago.

The Mars-rovers were still in the works, as was Cassini-Huygens, and thus there is no material from those missions.

And while many of the first-person interviews are interesting, I have a bit of an issue with wasting screen-time on a talking-head astronomer/planetary scientist gushing how "I was the first person to see (X or Y or Z), and that made me feel so special." I did not purchase this DVD set in order to hear someone stroke their own ego.

And why was it felt necessary to re-dub the narration from a British male to an American female (who sounds just like NBC's Anne Curry)?

I consider education to be best in a video format rather than a textual format. This series of documentaries are jewels in educating us about the solar system. I also developed a great deal of respect and admiration for the scientists who worked so hard to show us where the place of earth is in the universe.These documentaries should be definitely shown to all children in schools. This documentary really made me wonder about the place of mankind in the universe. The narration was nice. The visuals were also amazing. It also cleared many of my doubts about how the other planets in our solar system were. I hope there are more documentaries of this type in the future about the future findings.This documentary is a must see. I recommend it to all who have a passion for space exploration.

I first saw The Planets On the ABC.It ran for 8 weeks on each sunday and i watched it and watched, to cut a long story short i gratefully now own it on DVD. With 8 episodes [ 1.Different Worlds. 2.Terra Firma. 3.The Giants. 4.The Moon. 5.Star. 6.Atmosphere. 7. Life. 8.Destiny.] and footage of the scientists and engineers talking about the events they were apart of at the time,This Documentary produced by the BBC is an eye opener.

The Planets is a view of our Solar System with the knowledge from 1999. With little tuning, it would be fine basis for ever evolving documentary, which would be updated when new data arrives. It still shines in many parts, because huge part of it is history of solar system exploration. There are lots of interviews from Voyager project, Russian scientists who worked with Soviet space program, Apollo project personnel, and many many other scientists.

Dated parts concern discoveries during the last two decades: All those Mars rovers, Cassini-Huygens has arrived and is ending it's mission in few weeks (sep 2017), Voyger 1 has left the Solar System, that "future" Pluto probe (New Horizons) was launched and already few by Pluto six months ago, and, most of all, about 99,9% of exoplanets have been discovered after the show. But basically "only" two things are very much dated: Mars exploration and exoplanets.

Even with all that, huge part of it is still valid and especially those interviews are still interesting. I haven't seen any better documentary about the subject.