The PBS documentary The Shape of Life: The Complete Journey sets off on an ambitious task: to trace back the origins of animals to the very beginnings of life on earth, and to follow the earliest animals step by step as they evolve into new and different forms and, ultimately, into the incredible diversity of organisms present on the earth today. Each of the eight episodes of the documentary focuses on both a theme (such as "The First Hunter") and an animal group that represents that theme (such as flatworms).

Most of the episodes are centered around aquatic organisms, which is not surprising given that the origins of life were in Earth's primordial seas, and that the advance out onto land was a later development. The first episode, "Origins," looks at sponges, creatures that were once thought to be plants rather than animals. "Life on the Move" focuses on the cnidarians: creatures such as anemones which are able to detach themselves from the sea floor. "The First Hunter" introduces us to the flatworm, a very successful predator both in the sea and on land. "Explosion of Life" centers on the annelids (worms), while "The Conquerors" focuses on arthropods (crabs and insects) and their successful transition to dry land. "Survival Game" places molluscs in the context of the struggle to eat and avoid being eaten. "The Ultimate Animal" introduces us to echinoderms, with the spiny starfish taking center stage. The final episode is "Bones, Brawn, and Brains," which brings chordates into the picture (animals with spinal cords) with a focus on mammals and specifically humans.

It's a great idea in theory... how does The Shape of Life turn out in practice? Not as well as I'd have liked. The makers of The Shape of Life seem to believe that if a viewer receives more than one piece of new information per ten-minute segment of documentary, his or her brain will overload and short out. At least, that's my theory to explain why each episode in The Shape of Life tantalizingly dangles the prospect of interesting content, while giving hardly any payout. Some documentaries are light on content, making me want to know more about the interesting topics they touch on, as in the Underwaterworld Trilogy. The Shape of Life, however, goes a full stride beyond and actually drove me up the wall as I was watching it. The style goes as follows: a fact is presented. And then elaborated on, without actually adding more information. And then repeated. And summarized. And dramatized in CGI representations. And summarized again. Did I mention there's a lot of repetition going on here?

The narration also makes extensive, lavish use of powerful, evocative, intense language, otherwise known as lots of adjectives. In most cases it's simply overdone, and the images would speak for themselves more clearly with a less theatrical description. The content is interesting enough on its own merits that it doesn't require "jazzing up"; or at least it wouldn't if there were more content and less repetitive description.

As a scientifically-literate person, I also found it very grating how the narration makes "evolution" seem like an animate process. Animals don't "innovate" through evolution, and they don't somehow invent changes to meet their needs. The environment exerts a selective pressure on all living creatures. Those organisms who are well-adapted to their environment live and reproduce; those who are less well-adapted die or don't reproduce. As random genetic mutations occur, some organisms will have adaptations that give them an advantage over others in that particular environment, and these organisms will be more successful in passing their genes on to the next generation; or the environment will change, killing off those organisms that were well-adapted to the original environment and favoring others. Thus a species evolves; but The Shape of Life does a rather poor job of presenting the process accurately, with the potential to leave viewers with a misleading impression of how evolution works.

The scientific vagueness of the narration is another stumbling block. The Shape of Life is a beautiful case in support of why I prefer to have a genuine scientist writing and narrating a science documentary (as in Cosmos): no self-respecting scientist would (I hope) have let the script slide by with the imprecision that's characteristic of The Shape of Life. For instance, the very first episode purports to discover the "first animal." Would you believe that "animal" is never actually defined? Yes, we go through fifty minutes about sponges without ever pinning down what the documentary means by "animal." Do they mean a multi-celled organism as opposed to a single-celled creature like a bacteria? Or simply a living organism that doesn't photosynthesize? If the documentary were focusing on more complex animals like birds or mammals, we wouldn't really need to have a specific definition, but when the very topic itself of the episode is examining what the very first animals were, then yes, we need to understand the terms that are being tossed around.

The Shape of Life also makes a serious blunder in failing to clarify the nature of the evolutionary relationships it discusses. Organisms like sponges or flatworms are referred to as being our ancestors, but that's not precisely true: both sponges and humans evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. It so happens that modern sponges have probably changed very little since the time that their evolutionary branch split off from the branch that would over time lead to the hominids, but a modern sponge is more like humanity's fourth cousin a million times removed than humanity's ancient ancestor.

Are these minor quibbles? Some may think so, especially given that The Shape of Life paints an overall picture of the evolution of life on earth that's pretty accurate. But I would like to see science documentaries held to a standard high enough that the program content is completely accurate, not just more or less accurate. Popularization of a topic doesn't mean it has to be dumbed-down or misrepresented; the makers of The Shape of Life would do well to sit down and watch Cosmos a few times to get that message.

Don't get me wrong: I wanted to like The Shape of Life, and in fact it's not terrible. The premise is good, and the photography is generally interesting. It's just that the information-to-filler ratio is maddeningly low, and the style of repeatedly reiterating material that was presented in the previous episode or the previous portion of the current episode gets old very quickly.

The DVD

Video

The Shape of Life is presented in anamorphic widescreen... almost. That is, all eight episodes are presented in a 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, and six out of the eight are anamorphically enhanced. The first disc is anamorphic, but unaccountably, both episodes on the second disc are widescreen but not anamorphic. Fortunately, all the episodes on discs three and four are anamorphic. I'm not sure what the issue was, other than the obvious one of quality control.

Overall, The Shape of Life has an attractive transfer. The image quality is slightly inconsistent, undoubtedly due to the fact that the nature footage is drawn from a variety of sources, some of which are cleaner than others. The footage shot specifically for The Shape of Life, however, is always very clean and good-looking. The print is generally free of noise and flaws, and colors are vibrant and attractive.

The Shape of Life is an official Region 0 DVD, so it is playable on any NTSC DVD player anywhere in the world.

Sound

The Shape of Life has a nice Dolby 5.1 soundtrack (even on the two episodes that are non-anamorphic, in case anyone is wondering). The voiceover narration is supplied by Peter Coyote, who does an adequate if not inspiring job. His voice is always clear and in good balance to the other elements of the soundtrack, including both musical themes and environmental effects. The surround capabilities of the 5.1 track are put to quite good use in this documentary, with a nice sense of the environment wrapping around the viewer and use of directional effects as appropriate.

Extras

The Shape of Life's eight fifty-minute episodes are packaged two episodes per disc, with the four DVDs in keepcases inside a rather flimsy-feeling paper slipcase. There are no special features, but the menus are easy to navigate, with chapter stops within the episodes.

Final thoughts

The Shape of Life is a gigantic missed opportunity: it has a great outline and an ambitious plan, but it falls well short of the mark by its utterly lightweight content. It does offer some interesting material, so it might make adequate rainy-day viewing for a family, but in general I'd say that the only reason to buy this set would be if you already saw it on television and thought it was great. Even then, I'd strongly suggest you buy Blue Planet instead for a much better handling of similar material. If you did enjoy it on PBS and want to own it, the DVD edition is quite good, with an anamorphic widescreen transfer (despite the glitch of two of the episodes being non-anamorphic) and a nice Dolby 5.1 surround soundtrack.