"Planet Earth" - BBC documentary

If I plow slowly and not very enthusiastically trough May Sinclair's book, there is something else that I really enjoy - BBC's TV documentary "Planet Earth" that was literally the only thing I wanted to watch in the late evenings after my work shifts would finish. I had hardly watched anything from my huge movie collection ever since I arrived on this current ship three months ago, because I simply was not in the mood + books were my main pleasure. It could have been said that I almost rediscovered pleasure of reading recently, since every night I would set comfortably to read some more and I was doing pretty good so far. My colleagues usually spend their time off in a crew bar, but this has ceased to sound inviting for me already years ago, I have my own solitary hobbies.

"Planet Earth" starts with a bang - beautifully filmed on various locations around the world, completely lacking any footage of people (so far) it has been solely focused on wildlife and isolated corners of the Earth, where only rare creatures live. Polar bears, penguins and such - I giggled with pleasure watching them taking care of their babies and sadly understand feeding chain that demands occasionally someone has to be killed and eaten to continue life. Every group or family occasionally loses someone sooner or later, because other group or family needs to feed as well. There are quite a few brutal scenes of animals hunting, catching and eating their victims, but what disturbed and saddened me the most are scenes where animals accept their fate - as polar bear who simply lies down to die, too exhausted, hungry and wounded to continue with his solitary life. Poor bear. Or little penguins left orphaned and than crushed to death amongst childless penguin ladies who try to get him (in almost rugby huddle, they all jump on top of baby and kill him accidentally). These are unfortunately some of the scenes that I simply have to accept, other scenes are breath-taking, as footage has been filmed above some rare and exceptional landscapes in the wilderness (waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains and caves out of this world). I remember watching this kind of TV documentaries as a child and cruelty in wildlife bothered me deeply, it bothers me still and I wish cameramen did something to help, but apparently they are here just to film the situation from a distance. Perhaps this is how Martians see us, just observing from the distance.