4/5 spectacular awesome documental film
  by Flavio Christian Florio (florida)
well we got used to this movies, planet earth, bugs, baraca, corral reef, and now with the tech blu ray , oustanding quality.

3/5 Could be good with a lot of editing
  by Brad Vanek (Rainier, OR United States)
Had to put this as my own review (other than comment) because it doesn't deserve to be at a 4.5 average rating...it simply does not measure up...I'm usually not that critical on nature/scenic documentaries because I enjoy them a lot. This series, however, was disappointing because it could have been so much better.
I was contemplating buying the Blue-ray version, but after seeing the episodes on the Discovery Channel(American narration), I have decided against it.....The storyline ruin's all the good things about this program...(very good photographic scenes and some interesting stories) but the vast Pacific has so much more to offer than short snapshots of people and animals....(way too much of people here, IMO)....dedicate to nature and wildlife and you have a better chance of captivating an audience....it seemed like, just as a segment was getting interesting, it jumped to something that quickly lost my interest ( most of this was people stuff)....This show, "island hopped" on a fast jet and would not be saved even by good narration.....I'm sure they had lots of good footage, but whoever did the editing on this program needs a lot more experience on whats the good stuff and what ain't so good......The producers of this should go back, possibly get some new footage, and spend about 6 months on the editing and put out a decent documentary on the Pacific....perhaps in a series that could cover several chapters.....The islands of the south Pacific ......Northern Pacific Ocean....the wildlife of the Pacific ocean, etc. (if you get my drift)......
Put the people footage in it's own documentary and an "awareness" of man's destruction can be shown simply by providing footage of the natural world and the animals and plants that are part of it's beauty and diversity. The people watching these shows are interested in preserving our natural world and do not need to be convinced and repeatedly shown what man is doing to it.....Not enough of the people, that are the most responsible for it, watch nature documentaries.....( if you are making money from it, you don't give a damn about what you are doing to it)

5/5 Absolutely breathtaking photography!
  by Robert Warren (Ridley Park, Pennsylvania)
Beautifully filmed in high definition. Outstanding documentary. If you enjoyed Planet Earth then you most definately would like this series. View the beautiful scenery in exquisite detail and feel as though you are there.

5/5 Awesome.
  by Swarnalata M. Patil
This dvd provides an indepth view about the pacific ocean and the marine life. Additional footage on how the dvd is made is as exciting as the dvd itself. Overall, hours of great informative viewing. A great documentary by BBC.

4/5 Beautiful photography but has some problems
  by buru buru piggu (New York, NY USA)
For the hi-def nature lover, this is another gem from the BBC, but not an unblemished gem. It has its fair share of problems both structurally and technically. Here you'll get 6 episodes divided onto two 50 GB discs, with a total runtime of 353 minutes. That's nearly 6 hours of footage, so you'll definitely get your fill of naturey goodness. It's 1080i here, not 1080p. From 6 feet away, it's not a problem, but randomly sampling a scene from 3 feet away, I did notice noise in darker areas and judder in fast-moving scenes like pans of palm leaves and waves.

To sum up the series, it shows some of the very amazing and unusual birds, insects, fish, and mammals of some of the 20,000 islands dotting the Pacific. But it also shows a heck of a lot of people. Despite the title being "Wild Pacific", humans are in every episode. I found out when I popped in the disc that the original (and more accurate) UK title is "South Pacific", and I was definitely misled by the name change for the US market. With every episode, the story keeps going back to one of the traditional societies of the islands, lost colonists/sailors, or modern people.

There's still a lot of informative and entertaining footage, including rare glimpses of animals, impossibly close shots, and more of that signature stunning photography that we've come to expect from the BBC. I particularly liked the cloud fly-throughs and beautiful aerial shots of atolls, pristine aquamarine lagoons, and islands that are scattered throughout the segments (on "Ocean of Volcanoes"). There's also some lush underwater photography (corals, lava, and fish). These I enjoyed the most. But it's not all animal eye candy and idyllic seas, tranquil islands, and forests. A strong, somber, and perhaps heavy-handed theme of seriousness runs through half of the episodes. "Strange Islands", "Fragile Paradise" for example (both on Disc 2), deal with the effects of humans on the seas and land, including environmental destruction, wild-life decimation by human-introduced species like goats and cats, extinction, shark-finning, and over-fishing.

What I found to be most problematic however, is the narrative flow of the individual episodes. It jumps around all over the place, from land to sea to bug to bird to fish to another island to people, sometimes even within the space of 10 minutes. This kind of editing is disorienting, aimless, and meandering, like a ship adrift at sea, an image that the series keeps returning to. Instead of one full episode on focused on say, "Birds", one on "Fish", one on "Lizards and Insects", and one on "People", its divided into a confusing set of titles and aimless segments called simply "Oceans of Islands", "Castaways", and "Endless Blue" (Disc 1) and the episodes listed above. "Wild Pacific" sacrifice quality and depth for quantity. It doesn't stay focused on many of the more exotic animals for very long and some of the shots are only cursory and superficial, lasting a mere second or two. For example, I wanted to know more about the caterpillar with the scorpion tail, the smiley face spider, or the bizarre translucent creatures of the deep ocean (entire segment is only 1.5 minutes). The animals that you've seen plenty of times in other nature shows, you'll see them a lot here too (albatrosses, sharks, dolphins, whales, sea turtles). Meanwhile, the yellow sea slug and pygmy seahorse aren't even named as the shots cut away.

Another complaint is the narration itself. Being used to hearing Sir David Attenborough's warm and affable voice on so many BBC documentaries (like the superb Planet Earth Series [Blu-ray], The BBC Natural History Collection featuring Planet Earth (Planet Earth/ The Blue Planet: Seas of Life Special Edition/ Life of Mammals/ Life of Birds), and Nature's Most Amazing Events, I found Benedict Cumberbatch dry, disengaging, and mostly monotonous. He has a baritone timbre similar to George Page of Nature fame but none of the charm as a storyteller. Whereas you can hear the genuine love, liveliness, and enthusiasm in Attenborough's voice, Cumberbatch sounds like he is reading directly from the script. His cadence and pitch rarely changes.

Lastly is the BAD menu design. The white text turns to yellow when selected, making it very hard to see. None of the chapters are labeled with any description. The only subtitle is English, and finally, the six 10-minute making-of segments sandwiched between the episodes are only mildly interesting. I recognized one segment taken in whole from Galapagos [Blu-ray], only with new narration added.

I give this a reluctant 4 for its problems. Still worth watching and owning if you like documentaries, but be aware of the issues I've outline.