The series explores the Earth's origins, history, and structure; the forces that operate continually to alter its surface; its oceans; its climate; its natural resources; its biosphere and the effects of life on the physical world; its relationship to the Sun and other bodies in the Solar System; and its possible future in the face of pressures the growing human population places on the natural world.

Produced by WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in association with the National Academy of Sciences as the centerpiece for a college-credit telecourse,[1] Planet Earth was filmed over a period of four years on all seven continents and from the ocean bottom to earth orbit.

[2] It enjoyed success in its original run, airing weekly on Thursday evenings on PBS from January 22 to March 5, 1986.

In January 1986, Los Angeles Times critic Lee Margulies praised Planet Earth as "serious, but not dry" and credited it for its vivid filming of natural scenery, use of computer graphics, and achievement of depicting ongoing scientific research of the early and mid-1980s as "challenging, interesting, and worthwhile.

"[1] Planet Earth was the co-winner of the 1985-1986 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series or Special, sharing it with Laurence Olivier - A Life, a multi-part biography of Laurence Olivier that aired on the PBS series Great Performances that season.