Außerirdische Welten

It is an undoubtedly fascinating hypothetical visualisation of what unique alien ecosystems might look like on other planets - if we apply our current understanding of the basic principles of life to otherworldly environments. That said, given the show's clear budgetary limitations (despite the impressive CGI) & the over reliance on repeated shots, they manage to competently make the best content imaginable with the limited resources they clearly have at their disposal.

That's why so much focus is shifted on to Earth, hosting interviews with experts giving expository information; the creators aren't simply justifying the theoretical realisations featured on screen but they're also clearly filling the run time - which would otherwise be vacant if the directors planned on featuring additional sequences elsewhere in these constructs.

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

4-5 mins of the CGI scenes repeated, yes literally repeated in between 10 min or so segments of various biologists speaking about life on earth. Watch melodysheep's life beyond II on YouTube for something much better than this.

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."

Love the premise of this Netflix mini-series, which is: suppose you have an exoplanet with certain features (high gravity, oxygen-rich...) and, using comparative biology and special effects, imagine what kind of lifeforms could evolve there. It's the sort of stuff a committed science fiction writer would feverishly write pages and pages about for his world-building; as an unapologetic nerd, I kind of dig that.

CGI is impressive, although at least 50% of the run-time of each episode is devoted to short documentary segments about animal life on Earth. On one hand this is perfectly undestandable for reasons of budget (I imagine CGI of this quality is insanely expensive, so you need to pad out the length) and especially to compare the imagined alien lifeforms to known ones.

On the other hand, these comparisons often feel too broad and forced, so they are sort of hit-and-miss. For example, we skip from the dangers faced by young "sky grazers" on "Atlas" (the high-gravity planet which starts the series) before they learn to fly to... baby meerkats facing scorpions? As much as I find meerkats adorable, I don't quite see the connection other than the very generic "young animals are in constant danger in the wild". Given the "sky grazers" anatomy and life cycle, the race to the ocean of baby turtles would have been a far more appropriate comparison.

Neat concept, though.

7/10