Planet Earth, Episode 11

Ocean Deep:
The episode opens on some sociopathic dolphins herding fish into little balls so they can devour them. We see whale sharks hunting bait fish. Curiously, the bait-fish try to use the shark's bulk against it and hide in its shadow and behind its back. Pretty sneaky, sis! Then night falls and we are treated to some ghostly giant mantas soaring and cartwheeling through the water. They looks very strange. This provides a natural segue to the deeper ocean, land of strange, alien creatures. We see an unearthly sea-spider (which is actually a type of mantis and is pretty cool) and a vampire squid (which, Attenborough informs us, is "from hell!" The writing on this show, man.) which glows when threatened. We see spidery crabs and arthropods consume an entire shark carcase, down to the bones. The show whisks us away to rock chimneys formed on the cracks of earth's crust, venting the sulfurs from below. Tube worms do their elegant thing and we see a nautilus hunt. Nautiluses (nautili?) are gross and strange-looking creatures. We then rise back to the surface, following up low-lying coral beds of soft-coral (check out whip coral. That shit is cray.) We see bright butterfly fish grooming the tiny parasitic worms off of a giant fish from the depths (I wonder if they'll include a scene of something like this in the next Nemo movie. Probably.) The show plays out the rest of its time on sea tortoises and whales. It warns us of the extinction of whales and makes one last plea for environmental consciousness. Then we are back where we started, with sailfish this time, herding schools of little idiot-fish. Episode animal mascots: Whales, evil dolphins, and itty-bitty baby turtles.

Not a bad series, in all. It's plot is lacking and its characters are, well, no-dimentional. It functions best as a kind of moving wallpaper. It's a lot of beautiful stuff and is well-suited for classrooms of all pre-college grades. I'm kind of glad it's over because writing reviews required that I take notes on what happened, but I'll miss the comfy edutaining atmosphere. Ah well. On to the next thing!