Frozen Planet
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- Episode
- Episode One - To The Ends Of The Earth
- Broadcast Info
- 2011 (58 mins)
- Description
- David Attenborough travels to the ends of the earth, taking viewers on an extraordinary journey across the polar regions of our planet, North and South. The Arctic and Antarctic are the greatest and least known wildernesses of all - magical ice worlds inhabited by the most bizarra and hardy creatures on earth. Our journey begins with David at the North Pole, as the sun returns after 6 months of darkness. We follow a pair of courting polar bears, which reveal a surprisingly tender side. Next stop is the giant Greenland ice cap where waterfalls plunge into the heart of the ice, and a colossal iceberg calves into the sea. Humpback whales join the largest gathering of seabirds on earth to feast in rich Alaskan waters. Further south, the tree-line marks the start of the Taiga forest, containing one third of all trees on earth. Here 25 of the world’s largest wolves take on formidable bison prey. At the other end of our planet, the Antarctic begins in the Southern Ocean where surfing penguins struggle to escape a hungry sea-lion, and teams of orcas create giant waves to wash seals from ice floes -a filming first. Diving below the ice, we discover prehistoric giants - terrifying sea spiders and woodlice the size of dinner plates. Above ground, crystal caverns ring the summit of Erebus, the most southerly volcano on earth. From here we retrace the routes of early explorers across the formidable Antarctic ice-cap - the largest expanse of ice on our planet. Finally, we rejoin David at the South Pole, exactly one hundred years after Amundsen then Scott were the first humans to stand there.
- Genre
- Research; Natural History; Climate
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Frozen Planet". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/82158 (Accessed 02 Dec 2025)