Later that night, the twins find the wreckage of Balboa and are ordered to split up, Ike studying the unique plant life and Leo going after big game.

Ike's voyage takes him to one of Darwin IV's pocket forests, where he encounters a flock of Trunk Suckers and their predator, the Daggerwrist.

Afterward, Leo finds a pair of Bladderhorns engaging in combat, and tries to present the holographic message to one, but a sonic ping interrupts the conversation and scares off the animal before the probe is suddenly knocked out.

Ike presents the holographic message to the Eosapien tribe and discovers they are truly intelligent, at a level estimated to be comparable to early humans.

Commentary from notable people discussing the details behind the fictional world of Darwin IV and the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, in general, is interspersed throughout the special.

Alien Planet is based on Expedition (1990) by the American artist and writer Wayne Barlowe, a heavily illustrated book which aimed to explore and describe a fictional extraterrestrial ecosystem as if it was as real as that of Earth.

Some of the people featured include physicists Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking, paleontologist Jack Horner, NASA chief scientist James B. Garvin and director, screenwriter and producer George Lucas.

[1] Though the documentary gives the appearance of the featured scientists having designed Darwin IV and its animals,[2] most of what is shown of the actual planet and its life follows what is described in Expedition.

Day gave the special a positive review and concluded that "the writers and producers of Alien Planet have managed to successfully transcend current definitions of biology and yet still remained within the realm of the possible".

Day stated that "the animals are bizarre and frequently border on the implausible" and that "they do not appear to have been developed with a single biological theory in mind".