Review of Galapagos

Introduction

Right then. Galapagos. What do you know about these remarkable islands, centred around the equator in the Pacific Ocean? Tortoises and Darwin? Anything else? Probably not. Galapagos means tortoise, and it`s here that Darwin was inspired to write Origin of Species, after studying the wildlife of the island, whilst sailing around with the boys from the Beagle.

But as well as tortoises, there are other creatures here like marine iguanas, sea lions, finches, frigate birds, boobies (not those types of boobies), storm petrels and a cormorant that can`t fly. And there is the odd volcano, as this is one of the most active regions on the planet, and the plate that the islands are sitting on is moving along at a few inches a year.

This then is the BBC DVD of the recent 4 part series about the islands, narrated by Tilda Swinton.

Video

An exemplary 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, as first broadcast. Nothing wrong from a technical point of view. Interesting that the series was only 4 episodes and these have been split across 2 discs. Perhaps this was a technical decision in order to max our the bitrate...

Audio

A DD2.0 stereo soundtrack, again as first broadcast, and again perfectly fine technically. Tilda Swinton does an excellent job of the narration.

Features

Sadly none.

Conclusion

A fascinating series that`s well worth watching. We missed the recent BBC broadcast of this, so it was good to catch up with the programme. It`s a great insight into these weird and wonderful islands, and it really makes you want to go there. But then hearing about what a mess that tourism and the general population have made of these special islands also makes you not want to go there.

The human race have been wrecking them since the 1600s when man (mostly English pirates according to some sources) started landing on the islands to pick up some tasty take-away tortoise. After that, around 100 years of whaling didn`t help matters, but now around 98% of the total land area of the archipelago is part of the Galapagos National Park.

Anyway, enough Galapagos facts. If you missed the series on the BBC and are interested in anything to do with the natural world then this is a very interesting programme that`s sure to interest you. Given that you can pick it up for around 12 quid, you might just be thinking about buying it. A shame that there weren`t any extras, as we`ve come to expect them of nature programmes nowadays, but what you do get is all technically fine.