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Show:		6.0
Picture:		8.0
Sound:		7.0
Extras:		1.0
Score:		7.0

Director(s):	Peter Chinn
Writer(s):	Peter Chinn
Starring:	N/A
Genre:	Documentary • Television
Release Date:	August 25, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $34.99
Amazon:

An absolute must for any geology buff, and certainly worth a look for anyone with a passing interest in physical science, How The Earth Was Made offers a sprawling, detailed survey of our planet’s most enigmatic features in an attempt to understand their part in Earth’s natural evolution and speculate upon the role they might play in our ultimate fate.

Natural history in every sense of the term, the series each week focuses on a unique geological phenomenon and dissects its origins, formation, evolution, and tracks its cycles in an attempt to determine what it will do next. From asteroids arriving from space to the deepest part of our planet’s oceans, no stone is left unturned, so-to-speak, as skilled experts and simple graphics are employed to explain and to illustrate the almost incalculable energy that is built up, transferred, and exchanged every second beneath the Earth’s crust.

Much of the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history (sorry creationists, their figures, not ours) we’re told is shaped by the shifting of tectonic plates which governs everything from the size and location of landmass to the magnitude of earthquakes and the triggering of disasters such as a tsunami. Each episode begins with a lengthy history lesson on the recorded data and research of the chosen phenomenon, from crude methods of maritime sailors to cutting edge sonar technology (which changed everything), laying out exactly what we know, and how we came to know it.

What we come to know, as the episodes mount up, is that there is no such thing as an isolated feature in the field of geology. Where as much of the natural world on the surface is divided into largely separate, self-contained ecosystems, the world below the crust is one gigantic, interlinked energy exchange. The Pacific Plate for example, acts as a conveyor belt, created thousands of miles to the West by molten hot magma busting through the surface forming the Pacific Ridge's underwater mountains, and being forced back beneath the Earth by its neighbor at the site of the seven-mile-deep Mariana Trench near Japan. The rate of erosion exceeds the rate of creation by several inches per year, so in approximately 2.6 billion years time Australia will crash into the California coastline forming an entirely new continental landmass.

But it’s highly unlikely that we’ll get that far as it seems there are an innumerable numbers of ways humanity could be wiped out at any given moment. Perhaps the giant fault line running through the tiny Canary Island of Las Palmas could be ruptured by its active volcano, causing several billion tons of rock to crash into the oceans, triggering a tsunami that would wipe out the Eastern Seaboard and the Northeast corner of South America. Or perhaps an asteroid will impact the Earth with a magnitude of several thousand times that of Hiroshima (though this is less likely as we have Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to save us).

While each episode is both fascinating and alarming, the one criticism that could be leveled at each of these thirteen episodes is that they are dreadfully elongated. Doling out information in crumbs and then squeezing them together into something substantial, information is repeated over and over, with the same graphic utilized maybe a dozen times as each point is restated and expanded upon slightly. What should be twenty-five minutes runs to almost twice that, and while it is of great aide to the laymen, anyone who is struggling to follow things to that extent, probably isn’t watching anyway.

DVD Bonus Features

None.