STAR TREK the enemy of LOST IN SPACE?

It's quite simple. Doctor Smith designed it. Doctor.......Smith.

 

But he's Zachary, not John.

 

He likes to mix it up sometimes. It keep us humans on our toes.

 

Did you also notice that the Brady and Bunker house interiors couldn't fit within the exteriors shown?

 

During The Brady Bunch season 2 it is stated that the attic was a crawl space height and then in season 4 the attic was now a full sized room that became Greg's bedroom.

 

Nope. But to be honest, houses never interested me at that age. Spaceships did.

I did notice that there was no way to fit the sets of Jack Lemmon's townhouse from How to Murder Your Wife, didn't fit the exterior. No matter how you arranged the rooms.

 

But Jim Rockford's trailer interior did match the exterior proportions. That's actually unusual enough in TV to be worthy of note.

I read once that the Night Court sets were an extremely accurate recreation of the actual New York City courthouse interiors.

 

I could accept the JJ Trek production design issues if the plot coincidences, bad "movie physics", and character behaviors didn't continually strike me as wrong, often as insults to our intelligence. And with all that, I still watch the new films for what they do offer. I need my Star Trek fix.

 

This may shock you or lessen your estimates of my intelligence but I never noticed the interior of the Jupiter 2 was smaller than the outside. Didn't know and didn't care where the chariot was stored. Or the POD.

I did wonder about the Enterprise though. LOL.

 

And you can find all those problems in the first ten Trek movies too. And in countless other action movies, because of the nature of the movie business and the low priority ascribed to writing in feature films. The Abrams films have their flaws, but so do the other Trek movies. Movie physics doesn't get much stupider than the Genesis device or a 20-minute jaunt to the center of the galaxy or the Nexus or the thalaron weapon. And there are plenty of plot holes and questionable bits of characterization in the first ten movies too. But we've had time to get accustomed to the flaws of earlier movies, to forgive them or rationalize them. So fandom is always harder on whatever's most recent.

Heck, that's just a function of the way the human brain works, a recognized cognitive fallacy. Negative emotion impedes long-term recall, and we also tend to dwell more on the better memories of the past while avoiding the worse ones, so over time our memory of bad stuff from the past fades, and that creates the nostalgia illusion, the false perception that the past was better than the present. We habitually apply this to every aspect of life, so it's no surprise that we apply it to our fandoms as well and feel that whatever's newest is intrinsically worse than what came before it. But if you really look back at the older stuff critically, you see it had plenty of comparable flaws of its own.

 

^Speak for yourself. For me, the Abrams films handled the characters and emotions extremely well and thus earned my willingness to forgive the plot and logic holes -- which is more than I can say for TWOK, a film whose popularity baffles me to this day. There are no absolute truths in matters of individual taste. And for all that some people loathe the Abrams films, the fact is they're among the biggest box-office successes in Trek history (the top three worldwide are STID, TMP, and ST '09, corrected for inflation). That doesn't make them objectively better, of course, but it does show that the movies were able to win over a fair number of filmgoers. Different people like different things, and that's okay.

And I'm really sorry I brought it up, because I do not want to see yet another thread dragged off-topic by people who can't stop complaining about Abrams. Okay, you didn't like the movies, we get it, but this thread isn't about that. So let's get back to Trek vs. Lost in Space, please.

 

Production issues arise in any feature film or television series. It only really matters if it's so blatantly obvious or if you're finding fault in other areas. If you generally enjoy something then you can be quite forgiving, but if you're not engaged and are generally disappointed then every thing you see wrong will lopm large.

I can watch TOS and see things that could have been done better or differently, but (as was mentioned upthread) so much else is done right that I can gloss over the missteps. The early LIS episodes are somewhat the same way---I can gloss over the missteps because the rest of it is decent.

Still, it's obvious from the beginning that each production was going for a different target audience. LIS started out respectably enough (just) but then wholly embraced the B and C sci-fi flick sensibility. It's not an invalid approach, but it illiminated any credibility as a serious representation of science fiction on television. It wasn't as silly as Gilligan's Island, but became somehwat like Leave It To Beaver in space. It still worked because for audiences of the day (and that can still be true now) if it's weird shit and amusing then that's good enough to be entertaining. And for a lot of that audience they might well see little difference between LIS and Star Trek. And I think that's still true today.

Star Trek from the get-go was going for a difference audience. Yes, they were going for a general viewer, but the approach was completely different. Their thinking was sci-fi needn't be treated much differently than more familiar drama. Star Trek was a concept that could appeal to a more casual sci-fi fan because of the cool hardware, weird aliens and adventure, but the subject matter was treated seriously and where humour was contextual that could appeal to those who appreciate more thought behind the story.

I wouldn't say LIS was TOS' enemy even though there would be inevitable comparisons among fans. The two shows weren't going for the same audience. I'd say the same can be said of the comparisons between Star Trek and Star Wars. The distinctions matter only to the fans, but to the entertainment industry and general audiences there is little distinction between the two.

 

Really?? TWOK has the return of Khan, who comes across more dangerous and threatening than ever. It's got some of the most artful and intelligent dialogue of any Trek film. It's got compelling themes of old age and friendship, and the thrill of watching Kirk prove he still has what it takes to be Captain. And it's a tense and exciting submarine movie in space, featuring a battle between two Federation starships.

Even if the movie does nothing for you, it should be obvious why the rest of us love the heck out of it.

 

I, too, can have issues with TWOK, but I understand why it works because there are positive elements to the film. TMP and TWOK are the only two Trek films I own. But whatever issues I have with TWOK or TUC or any of the TOS based films they're rocket science compared to JJtrek of which I can find zero redeemable qualities whatsoever.

 

Zero redeeming qualities whatsoever? I can understand not liking the movies, but that seems a trifle harsh. If you want to see a few movies with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, I'm sure I could direct you to a few fine examples on Netflix that might make you re-evaluate that statement.

(Gods, sometimes their sci-fi section on their streaming service is terrible).

 

Whereas I find him far less dangerous and threatening, because he's gone from a cunning, devious mastermind with plans of galactic conquest to a scenery-chewing madman whose goals have shrunk to vengeance against one man, and whose obsession blinds him and leads him into bad decisions so that he practically defeats himself. I feel TWOK squandered the potential of the character. STID's interpretation of Khan was, to me, a far better realization of the potential of the character created in "Space Seed" -- at least prior to the climactic action, which didn't really work well for me overall.

And also some of the cheesiest melodrama, like Scotty bringing Peter Preston's bloodsoaked body to the bridge, and the "KHAAAAAAAN!!!!!" moment, which I find completely embarrassing to this say (and yes, I found it even worse when they copied it in STID -- that film is certainly not flawless).

And it's TSFS whose dialogue I enjoy the most. There are a lot of lines there that are downright poetic -- Harve Bennett crafted a really nice script for that one. I don't remember the dialogue in TWOK standing out as much.

Whereas I find the action scenes to be ponderous and tediously paced -- and I'm saying that as someone who likes ST:TMP. There are a couple of moments where both Kirk and Khan are alerted to something the enemy is doing but then just stand there staring off into space for ten seconds before reacting -- what the hell? And the exteriors are just ships lumbering around slowly like hippos in the mud. What you find tense and exciting, I find sluggish and dull.

What should be obvious, what's been known for so many centuries that there's a saying about it in Latin, is that de gustibus non est disputandem -- there is no arguing over taste. Different people like different things, and it's generally useless trying to convince other people to like the things you like or to hate the things you hate. There is no objective right or wrong here.

To get back on topic here, we've seen that there are one or two people in this thread who like the Lost in Space movie, even though most of us found it a failure and critics and mass audiences tended to agree. There are surely people who like seasons 2-3 of LiS too -- heck, there must've been, or the show wouldn't have maintained good enough ratings in season 2 to rate a third year.

But those people weren't the target audience for Star Trek, and that's the real point. For a long time, most SFTV had been aimed at the audience that LiS was going for, but there had been nothing for more adult or more sophisticated audiences except the occasional anthology, mostly The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. So if ST was trying to compete with LiS, it was only in the sense of offering an alternative approach to SFTV, appealing to the viewers that LiS wasn't made for, as opposed to competing for the same audience.

Maybe we need to understand that about Abrams Trek too. It's made for a new audience -- not trying to compete with or replace the original in its fans' hearts so much as to provide an alternative and broaden the appeal of the overall franchise. I'm flexible enough to enjoy both versions of Trek, but then, I'm flexible enough to enjoy both ST and LiS (at least the first season), or to enjoy both the Nolan Batman and the '60s sitcom Batman. Other people prefer just one over the other, but that's okay. No franchise succeeds by appealing to only one fan, or one category of fan. The wider you can cast your net, the better it is for the success of the franchise as a whole. So maybe instead of arguing over which version of a franchise is better, we should be glad that there are so many options available. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations and so forth.

 

People are funny. Once they decide they dislike something many cannot find a thing good about it and will make ridiculous statements to support it. I just watched STID last night and while there are definitely missteps and bad decisions, there are really good aspects to it, one simple example being the aftermath of the jump ship attack which is played with no sound save music and faintly heard breathing and where the actor's performance communicates the emotion without dialog.

 

Frightening. That's like sticking the cast of Gilligan's Island in TOS.

...yes, Bob Denver & Alan Hale would be Spock and Kirk...

 

No, I stand by the statement. I recall watching ST09 twice. The first time out of curiosity and the second time some time later to re-evaluate my intial opinion. No, I could find nothing whatsoever to like in that film.

Well...I will allow the shade of red used for the engineering uniform was pleasant. But story, characterizations, concepts and all the important things I look to a film to engage and entertain me were just thoroughly lacking.

The only difference I could see between Battlefied Earth (another pile of smelly stuff) and JJtrek was that BE just left me dumbfounded that something could be so bad. Some films are so bad at least they make you laugh, but BE couldn't even manage that. JJtrek actually offends me because it purports to serve up something extremely disappointing in name of something I actually like very much.