Did 'Lost In Space' Contribute To Star Trek's Cancellation

I know we're comparing personal taste of "crap vs crap" but Voyage never plumbed the depths of pure idiocy LIS did. Okay, maybe the Leprechaun episode, but LiS wallowed in children's theater for the majority of the second season and a lot of the third. I think the fact they essentially made that series a comedy made it more palatable. But for the most part. Voyage took their stupidity seriously. I'd take the Abominable Snowman over pink dragons with hair ribbons any day of the week and twice on Sunday. And I say this as a fan of Irwin Allen's work.

 

Circa 1988, the Sci-Fi Channel was showing LIS every morning, and I "had" to watch it after my night job for the music and the hardware porn. Also I like the regulars. But the second season in particular gets to be exhausting. I remember almost wishing they'd stop showing it so I'd get a break.

 

The pilot order for Lost in Space was announced in the December 9, 1964 issue of Variety.

The pilot was still in development (though at CBS by that point) at the time the November 30, 1964 issue of Broadcasting went to press.

I would have to visit the archive, I think, to figure out when CBS committed to developing Lost in Space (NBC committed to developing Star Trek in July, per the July 8, 1964 issue of Variety). Some quick searching via Pro Quest hasn't turned up a date.

 

Since the Sci-Fi channel didn't exist until 1992, I'm sure you meant "Circa 1998". Unless they showed it on the sister station USA in 1988. Personally, I didn't discover Lost in Space until the Sci-Fi channel started showing it in 1993. Now I have the DVDs, and still enjoy it.

 

Yep. Until ST:TNG came along, it was almost unheard of for an SF/fantasy show in the US to run more than 5 seasons. The only pre-TNG examples I can think of are Captain Video and His Video Rangers (6 seasons), Adventures of Superman (6 seasons), Bewitched (8 seasons), and Fantasy Island (7 seasons), though that show only gradually developed supernatural elements.

 

Heck, the original Twilight Zone only ran five seasons.

We got spoiled a little in the 90s, when shows like TNG or Buffy or Xena or X-Files might run seven or more seasons, but, really, four or five seasons is a decent run and pretty much par for the course for most genre shows prior to 1987 or so.

(With the notable exceptions of Doctor Who and Dark Shadows, neither of which were prime-time American shows.)

 

I suppose one could make a case for Mission: Impossible as a borderline science fiction show, since it often featured technology that was beyond the state of the art for its time, like advanced computers or holograms. And that ran seven seasons in its original run (and two in revival in '88-'90).

But there weren't many pre-TNG genre shows that ran even five seasons. There was The Twilight Zone, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, and not much else I can think of. Four years was an impressive run for a pre-1987 genre show, three years was a respectable run, two wasn't bad, and one or less was typical.

 

Even after TNG, there aren't many examples on the Big Three networks. The only ones I can think of are Lost, Medium, and Touched by an Angel [1]. If we include Fox, there's The X-Files, but beyond that all the examples that come to mind were either syndicated, on cable, or on The WB/UPN/CW. Getting an SF series to last on the major networks is still an amazing feat, especially one that's actually marketed as a genre series as opposed to a sitcom like Bewitched, or a crime drama like Medium.

[1] Sabrina the Teenage Witch would count, except that ABC canceled it after four seasons and it finished up on the WB.

 

Fox also gave us five seasons of Sliders (1995-2000).

 

No, FOX gave us three increasingly bad seasons of Sliders, and then The Sci-Fi Channel saved it from cancellation and gave us two more, decent-to-middling seasons.

But yeah, it is rare to find a big-network genre show running more than five years. Both Alias and Fringe, for example, ran that long. (Alias was nominally a spy show, but it had a pervasive fantasy thread involving the prophecies and anachronistic inventions of Milo Rambaldi, and also employed sci-fi technology like a genetic treatment that transformed people into exact doubles of other people.)

 

Why is why I often roll my eyes when folks complain that Syfy "always" cancels its shows too soon--usually after four or five seasons.

Damn you, Syfy! Every genre show is supposed to run seven years at least!

 

As it happens, while Sci-Fi/Syfy has often run shows for up to five seasons, they have never run a show for more than five production seasons -- although Eureka had a couple of its production seasons spread out over two years each and thus it effectively had seven broadcast seasons. (Its last season premiered early, though, and thus the series' entire run fell just two days short of six years.) Stargate SG-1 had ten seasons in all, of course, but that was five on Showtime and five on Syfy.

 

I blame Bonnie Hunter, who is acknowledged as no fan of science fiction or fantasy. Last I heard she may not be around at SyFy for much longer. There is even a rumor that once she's gone (if in fact she goes) they're going to change the name back to Sci-Fi.

 

You know, I want to write a story about an alternate universe where Irwin was the one hailed as a genius, instead of Roddenberry, and where we get things like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Next Generation and Return to Lost in Space.

I'm not sure how many people remember, but even as far back as the mid-to-late nineties there was a sizable LiS fandom that was highly visible in the media.

 

I think you mean Bonnie Hammer. And yeah, she's the worst.

EDIT: From what I've heard, she's a great human being, but she's the worst person for Sci Fi.

 

I thought Hammer had already left. As for the channel name, I suspect "SyFy" is here to stay. I can understand the decision from brand recognition and trademarking. I think the reason the more more fans objected was that they associated with the "redirection" Hammer introduced. Had the programming and scheduling not been altered so much, I don't think there would have been as much of an uproar, some, but not as much.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

Yeah, the name thing never bothered me. They wanted a name they could trademark. Makes sense to me.

It was a perfectly practical business decision.