The Universe: Our Solar System Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Ten episodes of The Universe are spread over two discs, including: "Secrets of the Sun," "Mars: The Red Planet," "The End of the Earth: Deep Space Threats To Our Planet," "Jupiter: The Giant Planet," "The Moon," "Spaceship Earth," and" The Inner Planets: Mercury & Venus."
The Universe has been one of History Channel's most visually impressive and generally informative series since its debut a few years ago. While The Universe often tends to fall into the "apocalypse now" trap that so much programming on History suffers from, when the series concentrates on actual scientific fact, as opposed to doomsday hypotheses, it remains one of the more compelling science based programs around. While some of the latter seasons of the show have gotten further and further away from the "universal" themes that set the show in motion in its premiere year, this new two disc Blu-ray set gets back to basics for the most part, concentrating, despite its title, almost exclusively but not entirely on the planets of our solar system. While there is still a trip or two down the "end of the world" path, Our Solar System presents several extremely informative episodes that manage to graft a great deal of scientific fact onto a consistently engaging visual presentation. It is interesting to compare this new release with the similarly themed A Traveler's Guide to the Planets from National Geographic, a title I'll be reviewing for Blu-ray.com very soon. This two Blu-ray set features 10 episodes.
"Good Morning, Starshine."
Disc One
Secrets of the Sun. While not entirely apocalyptic, this episode does tend to focus on the death and destruction aspects of our solar system's star. That includes segments on sunbursts which emit masses the size of Mt. Everest. While those solid particle eruptions never come close to us, radiation from the Sun does travel millions of miles to reach Earthly atmospheric shores. While this episode features a wealth of interesting facts, it errs too frequently on the side of doom and gloom, and incorporates a few too many "cute" interstitials, as in a brief shot of a small town movie marquee promoting this solar system's "star" attraction (get it?), The Sun.
Mars: The Red Planet. This episode is a good deal more straitlaced than Secrets of the Sun, starting with the Roman origins of Mars' name and then moving on mankind's long fascination with the planet. As the most likely candidate for planetary habitation by Earthlings, Mars has been relatively thoroughly explored. There are some interesting archival shots of the perhaps long forgotten 1964 Mariner 4 voyage, as well as a really interesting segment on a Martian meteorite discovered on our planet in late 1984.
End of the Earth. Well, with a title like that, need I say more about this episode's apocalyptic proclivities? We get the usual hoo-hah about impending death and destruction from terror raining down from above in the form of killer asteroids and meteorites, interspersed with shots of clueless Earthlings frolicking in an amusement park. Evidently they should all be home watching their impending demise on The Universe. Most people have heard of the Big Bang which started the universe's balls rolling eons ago, but this episode does convey some interesting information about the Big Rip, an event a lot of scientists are positing will mean our eventual termination.
Jupiter The Giant Planet. This is one of the better episodes included on this set, focusing on Jupiter as a mini-solar system in and of itself. With a staggering 60 moons in orbit around its giant mass, Jupiter is the most "weatherized" planet in the solar system, with gigantic weather events, the most famous of which is the great red spot which is actually a more or less stationary, colossal hurricane. This episode also spends some time on Jupiter's moon Europa, which may be able to support life. One fascinating segment shows actual sounds which the planet emits, a collection of roars, moans and whistles which are fascinating phenomena.
The Moon. There are actually around 150 moons in our solar system, but of course our nearest neighborly satellite has been the icon of poets and mystics for untold millennia. A lot of this episode concentrates on various theories through the centuries which attempted to account for the moon's genesis. These included George Darwin's (Charles' son) theory of fission, whereby the moon supposedly split off from the Earth. This was proven impossible when it was revealed that the Moon contains next to no iron, a fundamental mineral in the Earth's makeup. Several other theories, including capture theory, the accretion process, and others, came into favor, albeit briefly in some instances, before in 1974 the currently accepted theory, called Giant Impact, became the hypothesis du jour.
Disc Two
Spaceship Earth. With a nod to Buckminster Fuller, this episode looks at the inconceivably long 4.5 million year history of our planet, and imagines what extraterrestrials might think should they show up to pay us a visit. From the origins of the planet itself to relatively more recent phenomena like the incredible varieties of life which have sprung up on our blue expanse, Spaceship Earth is an enjoyable, albeit very generalized, overview of the natural history of our planet. Note: This episode was plagued by some troubling audio distortion.
Mercury and Venus: The Inner Planets.. This episode contrasts two planets which are often lumped together, but which present very different planetary stories. Mercury, a pock marked wreck of an orb, is virtually dead, while Venus is a gleaming glob of gasses, the most reflective surface in our solar system, and one which is easily visible next to the Sun.
Saturn: Lord of the Rings. Despite its cutesy title, this is a very informative and enjoyable episode, focusing on what one scientist calls "the showstopper of our solar system." This massive, frigid ball of gas is surrounded by rings of particulate matter which travel at a staggering 40,000 miles per hour. The origin of those rings is explored in some detail, though the ultimate answers still elude scientists. One of the more fascinating segments features the strange hexagonal storm system located on the planet's North Pole.
Alien Galaxies. This penultimate episode, along with this set's final outing, Life and Death of a Star, stretch this set's supposed focus to the breaking point. This is by far one of the most far-reaching episodes (no pun intended), giving a very general overview of the universe's billions of stars and galaxies which may approach the trillion mark. There are some nice archival shots from the Hubble Telescope included in this outing, and an interesting segment on how Andromeda and The Milky Way are slowly (very slowly) getting closer and closer together.
Life and Death of a Star. With over 400 billion stars in just our galaxy alone, scientists have a wealth of data to sort through as they attempt to understand the life cycle of the many suns our universe holds. While this is yet another overly generalized episode, it does have some cogent facts to impart, including that all life contains literal stardust, remnants of the long ago Big Bang. There's also an informative segment on the largest stellar explosion ever witnessed my Man (albeit from far, far away), an event that took place in 2006.
The Universe: Our Solar System's AVC encoded 1080p image (in 1.78:1) is a mixed bag. When the show sticks to its generally quite excellent CGI, the results are astounding. Gorgeous halos surround planets with impressive arcs of green, blue and red. Explosions ripple out of the screen with an amazing array of different colors and sometimes spectacular detail. Even the talking head segments generally look good, with accurate fleshtones and agreeable enough detail. Where the series gets a bit spotty is in its archival source footage, which is often pretty ragged looking, especially when it's bracketed by the pristine computer generated imagery. Also presented some problems are source stills from lithographs and historic texts which tend to dissolve into moire patterns and aliasing.
The Universe: Our Solar System is given a decent, if largely unspectacular, lossless LPCM 2.0 mix. While narration is fine (with the exception of the one episode mentioned above, which suffers from some peculiar distortion), the best elements of these soundtracks are the whiz-bang sound effects, which offer some nicely robust LFE and a variety of splashes, splotches, zings and whizzing noises that help to alleviate the sonic tedium. There's next to no real separation to speak of here, this is a resolutely front and center mix, but it sports excellent fidelity and some at times really astounding dynamic range. It's fine for this genre of programming, to be sure, but something as "universal" as this subject matter really could have gone for the gold with a truly immersive surround mix.
The Universe: Our Solar System is a good generalist overview of our solar "neighborhood," with a couple of side trips to further expanses thrown in. Though I'm personally really tired with the apocalyptic elements that History Channel loves to throw into virtually all of it series, otherwise these ten episodes are informative and engaging, with some beautiful CGI. Recommended.
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