A polar journey built around scientific fieldwork
Ages of Ice is a three-part natural-history series narrated by David Tennant. Made by Northern Pictures for PBS, ABC and ITV Studios, it follows researchers from Antarctica to the Arctic as they investigate the changes taking place in glaciers, polar seas and the living systems around them. Each of the three programmes is an hour-long instalment.
The journeys are linked by a practical question: what can scientists learn by working directly in places that are difficult to reach? Glacier movement, rising oceans and the comparison between earlier climate patterns and present changes provide the through-line. The researchers’ expeditions give the series its human story, while the discoveries connect the frozen regions with the wider planet.
From ice sheets to oceans and communities
The polar-seas material gives that broad connection several specific forms. NASA researchers investigate the relationship between Arctic sea ice and clouds. Farther south, scientists aboard the RRS David Attenborough study the Southern Ocean and the krill on which much Antarctic wildlife depends. These are different scientific projects, joined by the series’ interest in how polar environments function and change.
Other projects bring human activity into the same picture. WWF scientists monitor the underwater soundscape in the High Arctic as shipping increases, while innovators work with Inuit communities in Nunavut to test ways of restoring sea ice. Together, these projects document polar change and test possible responses.
The work behind the images
A PBS making-of account describes a three-year filming journey led by director Karina Holden. The crew followed scientists across ice sheets and into remote polar environments, including places where reaching assistance could take days. That production setting helps explain why the researchers and the filmmakers are such an important part of the programme’s subject.
The crew crossed crevasse fields and endured temperatures below minus 40 degrees. Collecting observations and recording the expeditions both depended on what the terrain, weather and isolation allowed.
How the three episodes widen the subject
The Frozen Heart begins with ice and the study of climate. Polar Seas moves into the surrounding marine systems and the investigations taking place there. The Incubator of Life extends the inquiry to organisms living in frozen environments and the questions that research raises about life beyond Earth.
The three chapters connect polar exploration, climate research and the conditions in which living things survive, with scientific fieldwork providing the human story across these environments.
