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Earth Story

1998

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 The Time Travellers Nov 01, 1998

Geologists, who study the Earth, seek to understand the processes that have shaped our planet throughout its history, creating the world we see around us. To do so, they must reconstruct the Earth's past. Yet how can we tell what happened in distant epochs when there were no witnesses to record events? Around 200 years ago scientists first began to realize that clues to the past lay all around them, in the rocks that make up the Earth's surface. as they learnt how to read these rocks, they began a journey back through time which geologists continue to this day.

EP2 The Deep Nov 08, 1998

A curious feature of our planet's surface is that it has two distinct levels: the dry land on the continents, on average a few hundred metres above sea level, and the ocean floor, making up two-thirds of the Earth's surface, several kilometres below sea level. Only in the past fifty years have scientists begun to explore in detail this vast region, revealing beneath the waves a landscape quite unlike the world we are used to. They have discovered a vast mountain range which encircles the entire globe. Here new sea floor is being continuously formed as the Earth's surface splits apart.

EP3 Ring of Fire Nov 15, 1998

The Pacific Ocean is rimmed by a chain of active volcanoes, arranged in a series of graceful arcs and extending 30,000 kilometres from New Zealand through Fiji, New Guinea, the Philippines, Japan, the Aleutian Islands, and down the west coast of the Americas to Patagonia. This necklace of volcanoes, continually rocked by earthquakes, has been christened the 'Ring of Fire'. Scientists exploring the link between the Pacific Ocean and the earthquakes and volcanoes which surround it have formulated a remarkable theory, plate tectonics, which explains not only how the outer part of the Earth works, but how the continents themselves, and the mineral wealth they contain, were first formed and continue to grow.

EP4 Journey to the Centre of the Earth Nov 22, 1998

What drives the tectonic plates as they glide over the Earth's surface? Searching for an answer, scientists have probed our planet to its core. In this realm of unimaginably high temperatures and pressures, matter takes on new forms, and solid rock can behave like a fluid. As vast masses of rock flow slowly within the Earth, so the surface moves and changes. Gigantic plumes of hot material can well up from the depths, triggering huge volcanic eruptions and causing the crust to bulge and break. The result may be the splitting of a continent and the creation of a new ocean basin.

EP5 The Roof of the World Dec 06, 1998

Most of the dry land on Earth sits no more than a few hundred metres above sea level. But in some places mountain belts rise to heights of several kilometres.These regions are often prone to devastating earth tremors. How are mountains formed and what is the connection with earthquakes? The answer may lie in the fluid-like properties of the Earth's outer layers. According to a new theory, mountains may flow up or down when continents collide. In the process they affect the circulation of the planet's atmosphere and change the climate.

EP6 The Big Freeze Dec 13, 1998

In the nineteenth century geologists discovered evidence that large parts of the northern hemisphere had once been covered by gigantic ice sheets. Scientists have now learnt that the waxing and waning of these ice sheets are just one aspect of global climatic change, and that the planet has been in the past both hotter and colder than it is today.The complex interactions between variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the movements of tectonic plates, the planet's atmosphere and ocean currents, can result in large and rapid swings in the Earth's climate

EP7 The Living Earth Dec 20, 1998

Over the past 4 billion years, life has evolved from simple single-celled organisms into the tremendous variety of plants and animals that exist today. As scientists learn more about the Earth's history, they are realizing that the forces which have shaped the planet have also had a profound effect on the course of evolution. The movement of the tectonic plates has rearranged the continents, providing ever-changing conditions for living organisms, stimulating the evolution of new life-forms. Violent volcanic eruptions, meteorite impacts and drastic climatic changes have triggered mass extinctions, causing setbacks to life on Earth. But the same events have provided new opportunities for the survivors.

EP8 A World Apart Dec 27, 1998

Is the Earth unique, and if so, why? To find an answer, scientists have had to explore the Solar System, searching for clues about our planet's birth. Uniquely amongst the terrestrial planets, the Earth has retained liquid water on its surface for over 4 billion years, despite a steady increase in the Sun's heat output.This water has had a profound influence on the planet's geological activity, as well as being a breeding ground for life. But living organisms may have played a crucial role in ensuring that liquid water exists on Earth, linking the planet's geology and biology tightly together.
8.7| 0h30m| en
Synopsis

Earth Story is a 1998 BBC documentary series on geology presented by Aubrey Manning.

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Reviews

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped
Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
Hotwok2013 Presented by zoologist Aubrey Manning "Earth Story" is a riveting documentary on the geological forces that have shaped & changed the surface of our planet over hundreds of millions of years. Scientists now realise that these changes have directly affected the evolution of all life, both plant & animal, on the earth. Nineteenth century scientists had worked out that the earth over geological time had gone in & out of ice ages but the Serbian geophysicist Milutin Milankovic was the first man to calculate that the ice ages were due to the earth's precession. The earth acts like a gyroscope in that it note only spins on its axis but that its axis moves from side to side. This movement has now been calculated to occur over approximately every 26,000 years & so that when the North Pole is furthest away from the sun you will get an ice age. The German scientist Alfred Wegener studied the surface of the earth & saw that the west coast of Africa & the east coast of South America were very similar in shape & that moving them together you would get a surprisingly good fit. He wondered if they had somehow moved apart over geological time & theorised that all the earth's land masses might be in a constant state of motion. Later scientific studies proved him correct. Down the centre of the Atlantic Ocean is a rift valley running almost its entire length spewing out volcanic lava slowly pushing the two continents ever further apart. It has now been estimated that the 7000 miles distance or so between the continents has occurred over 58 million years. The age of the dinosaurs, which went extinct some 65 million years ago, had come & gone before all of this happened. This phenomenon now called "continental drift" occurs all over the world. The 19th century scientist Alfred Russell Wallace spent time in the islands of South East Asia studying the flora & fauna of these islands. He observed the curious fact that they were very different if you drew a north to south line down them at a certain point. Not only that, he also observed that very few species of birds would fly over that hypothetical line. Two of the islands in question are only 12 miles apart. He began to wonder if the two sets of Islands had evolved separately & had moved closer together over geological time. This quite brilliant notion was, again, proved to be entirely correct once the "tectonic plate theory" had been established as true. As with the Atlantic Ocean there are rifts in all the worlds oceans pushing the land masses slowly around the globe. When an ocean is pushed into another ocean or land mass one will be driven underneath the other in a process known as "subduction". The tectonic plate containing Australia & its surrounding islands have moved ever closer to the Asian tectonic plate over millions of years. That line is now named after Mr. Wallace. As I said at the outset this is a fascinating documentary & I feel it wouldn't be a bad idea to make it compulsory viewing in all schools. Before finishing this review I would like to mention that the user review score for this fascinating BBC documentary is only 6.3 points. To my mind, this is ridiculously low & would I happily score it a maximum 10!.
blueboot A bold statement must follow about the quality of 'Earth Story' and is given at the end of this review.As the handful of other reviewers have rightly alluded this is an eight-part series dealing with the entire geological history of our planet over the 4,600,000,000 years or so of its existence, combined with how natural life processes occurring over three thousand million years of bacteria (initially they were stromatolite colonies) interacting with atmospheric and geological processes such as the formation and spreading movement of the continents (known as plate tectonics), together with how numerous meteorological, natural chemical and physical processes have come to ultimately shape the world in which we recognise and live in now. This fantastic televised feat is accomplished with great clarity and alacrity by narrator Aubrey Manning, himself a biologist, in only 8 hours! At no time is the viewer patronised. Over a decade on all the science explained in the series remains current, and is all but unanimously regarded as wholly accurate by the international scientific community.To unravel a vast web of once unconnected strands of Earth's natural processes that took humans thousands of years to piece together, and do so coherently is a true masterpiece of programme making. We join Manning's quest as he himself attempts to unravel Earth's history across the eons. It's a huge journey, across the vastness of geological time, so different from the perspective of a human lifespan, and is brought home with ease. Visual aids, such as: viewing our planet's oceanic sea-floor spreading by satellites from space orbit, or, the demonstration of the compression and (future) collapse of the Himalayas by means of a simple tilted board and a viscous sticky fluid falling upon it, reveal a tremendous imagination in conveying the scientific principles involved to the viewer.The likelihood is no other programme or series made for the small screen has ever been able to explain so much, or deal with such infinite complexity, so competently and concisely. BBC, Discovery and National Geographic take note. Earth Story sets the gold standard which has yet to be equalled by you. The best material TV can offer. Earth Story did not require overbearing unnecessary intrusive music (often no more than psychotically repeated single piano notes), nor endless micro-second gimmicky flashing images viewed from irrelevant camera angles, nor an over simplistic dialogue that leaves your viewers puzzled and frustrated. Comparatively, these are the substandard methods of docu-TV making of the early 21st century. Therefore, taking every genre of TV programmes (produced in English) since the dawn of television, whether fiction or fact, EARTH STORY emphatically stands today as the BEST television programme and series ever made.
m-solomon I originally watched Earth Story when it was shown for the first time on BBC2, and I'm currently watching it again on UKTV History ten years later.It is truly a brilliant series, explaining every facet of the Earth's many geological processes: such as plate tectonics, subduction, spreading, the carbon dioxide cycle and iron deposition as well as how those processes interact with the planet's meteorology and biology in a complex dance. It also reveals how the Earth is also reliant on and affected by the other elements of The Solar System.Personally, I don't see how you can get to the conclusion of the previous reviewer. Manning doesn't get involved in climate change, largely because the programme pre-dates the current debate and because the series sets out to be instructive about the natural life-cycle of the planet as opposed the effect of humans on that planet.Manning is more interested in a planet that's existed for several billion years and is - as far as we can tell at the moment - unique, certainly in this solar system. The fact that humans who currently infest the planet may well cause the whole thing to go pear-shaped is outside the scope of the programme which is great because it avoids turning the programme into a polemic.All in all, it's an instructive, well-told story that is - as previously mentioned - an example of how the BBC can make great programmes when it abides by the "mission to educate" that was the blueprint of Sir John Reith when the corporation was established.
johnmcc150 Earth Story is a masterpiece in the way it clearly describes our present understanding of the geological processes. If anyone had said I would sit through eight programmes about geology, watch them again and then a third time, I would not have believed them. It gives the information clearly and straight, without patronising. This is in contrast with the BBC's current hyper-active style which uses a succession of irrelevant images when dealing with scientific subjects and which has to tell everything three times. In Earth Story the camera-work illustrates the points, the people who made the discoveries explain their contributions well, and it is held together by Aubrey Manning's intelligent narrative. Would the BBC please go back to making science programmes like this? I can only suppose that the voters who gave it less than 10/10 were forced to watch it at school.