I don't think John Carradine ever said no to anyone. 
Netflix developing 'Lost in Space' remake!
- Thread starter Karzak
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Martha Plimpton is his granddaughter? Wow. Talented family.
Oh god, Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds!
Oh god, Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds!
Here he is:
Oh, man. It looks like he just got done mere seconds after a porno involving multiple men, if you know what I mean. That's terrible looking.
If we can ban the the penisrock for our implied interpretation of what it looks like, then surely we can ban this...
I wouldn't be surprised these days.
Deleted.
No one said LiS had to be grim, but the series often took long strolls through the kiddie park. It is no wonder Guy Williams grew tired of playing second fiddle to the idiocy of Smith, the Robot and the silver face paint and/or explosion of the week.
I do not find it at all surprising that of all of Allen's series, LiS has not aged as well. The others were by no means perfect (seasons 3 & 4 of Voyage), but the very thing most TV historians always note about LiS is exactly the reason why it was already aging badly as it was syndicated in the decade to follow.
"The Keeper" nailed the themes of family connection / possible loss theme better than any other LiS episode, with a cold threat that was not compromised by a guy acting like he walked off the set of Have Gun, Will Travel.
No, it was a clownish distraction. Anachronistic imagery or characters such as World War I pilots or jungle boys in a contemporary setting might work on Gilligan's Island, but it stood out like dropping the Power Rangers into the Dragnet world.
Then, in the bigger picture, there was...
Here he is:
Cue the Lurch groan.
In its totality, I find it superior to LOTG, which IMO was a piece of drek and really just a pallid imitation of LIS, both essentially in the plot structure and the makeup of the characters. How baldly obvious did Allen have to be to include that dynamic duo of Fitzhugh and Barry? No worries there in creating a skewed show dynamic that would overly focus on the two of them, that's for sure. I also appreciated Debbie, as obvious a conceit as she was, to good old Chipper. The women were generally useless but we did get an extra alpha male than LIS, which actually was about the only interesting thing going for the cast, with the conflicts of opinion and direction that it brought into play.
I'll say that there was an element of mystery about the planet itself, its connection and knowledge of Earth, that there had been Earthlings there before, and the sense that there were differences of opinion regarding the treatment and consideration of our stalwarts among some of the native population, aside from dissension towards the authoritarian state.
But I don't think I saw a linear concept of what the audience was supposed to envision as a developing theme. They weren't going to get back home and just unraveling the backstory of the planet, however diverting, just wasn't going to cut it. That the audience expressed their opinion with their feet was hardly surprising. I've looked a bit for ratings information without success, but I'm fairly certain it never approached LIS' highest level (30s). It probably didn't help that it was on ABC, though of course Allen had a hit there earlier in the decade with Voyage. I wonder if it might have drawn better numbers on either of the other two networks.
Finally, I find it depressing to think that the pre-production work on this may have possibly been the reason that LIS didn't get its 4th season, as was pretty much universally expected. I don't know that I've seen such an opinion offered amongst those varying ones speculating on what actually happened in April 1968 that spelled the end of LIS. I just don't find it inconceivable that Allen thought LOTG was a more viable vehicle going forward and decided to focus his efforts here and as a consequence accepted that LIS should end, despite the fact that there were apparently advanced plans already being readied for that 4th season. Even though it sounds as if the thinking was to go back to a more consistent fantasy construction, the promise of seeing Angela Cartwright another year older nearly supersedes any other rationale for having to been able to get that extra year.
I liked Land of the Giants, more or less. None of the Irwin Allen shows were great TV or particularly original, but the conceit of LOTG made for some fun visual gags and effects sequences. And I liked the cast. It did a better job maintaining the balance of the cast than LIS did, and it was progressive in including Don Marshall as an equal lead. And Deanna Lund was gorgeous.
Series didn't have developing arcs back then. They would establish a status quo that would sustain an ongoing series of individual episodes without fundamentally changing. Any larger mission or goal was an open-ended motivation for the characters and would never achieve more than the illusion of progress toward resolution. This show was no different in that respect from any other show of its era. So the audience wouldn't have been looking for a "developing theme." They would've just been tuning in week by week to see what the adventure would be this time.
Granted, though, the mythology of the series did seem to be made up as it went along. For part of the series, the giants' world was portrayed as more alien, with exotic names and its own culture, but for the other part, the giants and their culture seemed to be just familiar American stuff at 12 times the size. Sometimes I even wondered whether the conceit had changed so that the crew were simply miniaturized people on a normal-sized parallel Earth or something.
In the first few episodes of LOTG the giants didn't even talk. They moved like they were in slow motion and made a sound that sounded like talking slowed way down.
I would agree that over the course of its run, there was better distribution of story lines or at least air time given to more of the cast than was the case after the 1st season of LIS. Allen certainly also made a good decision in deciding on Marshall, who had an impressive resume even during the short period between his appearance on TOS and when pre-production started for LOTG. I speculated just the other day on another thread, that perhaps Allen had seen him on Trek and filed that away as an indication that he would be well suited for another genre production that Allen might develop. Regardless, Marshall was an important part of what, not to inject a tiring argument going on elsewhere, I think was clearly an ensemble construct.
But again, on the whole, the women weren't appreciably more active or engaged in making things happen then were those on LIS. I spoke about the slightly noticeable copying of the Will/Smith character pairing and thinking about it now, I think that it's plausible to see a like recreation of the Judy/Penny dynamic in Valerie and Betty. I'll minimize the issue of differing views of the various actresses' attractiveness, which while I don't dispute Lund being a beautiful woman (and seemingly a really nice person from what I gather), I believe that Cartwright, even at her tender age, put the rest of them in the shade.
You mention the effectiveness of the effects processing and amusing visuals. I don't doubt that you're aware of the record setting cost per episode of this epic. Would you really maintain that the virtues you've alluded to anywhere near warranted the quarter million dollar cost? Especially given that he still managed to liberally reuse set elements and quite a few of those effects, at times from productions three times removed. As i said, there are a few elements that are interesting to ponder, more about the Giants and their planet's backstory than the cast IMO, but I think overall whatever was compelling in the show was far too slight.
I think I didn't choose my words that wisely here, although I didn't actually specifically mention an arc. What I meant was that, while we learned more about the Giants as time went on, albeit perhaps not in the most coherent manner possible, as I think there was some element of episodes being shown out of production order, there really seemed to be no possibility that the structure of what the Spindrifters were doing, where it was going to happen, and each episode's disposition (customarily their escaping the weekly villain's, Kobick or whoever, clutches by the skin of their teeth) was really going to ever vary. LIS at least, had the distinct advantage of the possibility of being mobile, which I grant was not used in a consistent manner until the last season. However, even planet bound, they weren't restricted to essentially facing the same antagonists, with the same malign agenda, week after week. Not that the Robinsons encountered many visitors that were concerned about their welfare, even with some notable exceptions during the first season, but personally, I experienced a much greater engagement in their adventures, even after the touted triumvirate of characters became supreme, and perhaps, embarrassingly, even during the garish puerility that basically defined the second season. I just find that in its entertainment value, LIS was clearly superior and as regards the two series relative datedness, I don't find an appreciable difference other than according LOTG some points in prominently featuring a governmental and societal model that could, to some degree, be saliently compared to an analogue in the contemporaneous US. Otherwise, I'm not really sure what other points can be claimed in its being any more relevant to today's sensibilities, Marshall's inclusion aside, than its predecessor was. After all, they were both Allen productions and I don't think one can realistically claim much of a change in his modus operandi and conception of how an entertaining concept should be rendered, from the beginning of his fertile period, until its conclusion.
I will add one other grace note that benefits, if not burnishes the relevance of LIS versus its successor. I have read many, many comments over the years from viewers that were in the LIS camp rather than Trek, that cited its influence on them to pursue scientific careers, typically in the aerospace industry, apparently because, however implausible it might seem from the show's predominant orientation, it still presented a vision, one that was definitive in when it was supposed to take place, that inspired its young viewers in particular, to think that perhaps they could play a role in the adventure of man's exploration of space. This was of course a reality that was also vividly and frequently being presented to them at the exact same time on television, and perhaps for a young imagination, suggested a future in which great developments could occur during their lifetimes, not restricted just in the race to the moon, as opposed to the much more distant perspective of Star Trek.
Indeed not. It was a good bet in pretty much all of Allen's works, that in some way, large or small, but usually pretty substantive, that some groaningly obvious contradiction of scientific reality would be front and center at some point.
I think you need to watch the series again. Allen tried to mirror the Smith/Will relationship with Fitzhugh/Barry, but the chemistry was not there (let's just say Stephan Arngrim was no Billy Mumy), and the serious tone of the show did not allow as much room for the self-defeating kiddie crap from LiS. LOTG was Allen's most mature series to a considerable degree.
The LiS chimp with oversized "alien" ears attached was one of the many, embarrassing reasons LiS has not aged well at all.
In the pilot ("The Crash"), and the 2nd episode produced, "The Weird World" (aired out of production order), the giants were somewhat silent--certainly not as talkative as they would be by the mid point of season one. In the unaired pilot screened for ABC, they were presented as an alien culture, which some evidence lasting into later episodes with an alien font on some items. That too, would change as the need to have more engagement with the giants demanded the spoken dialogue, etc.
The totalitarian angle--with the C.I.D. agency, giants admitting they lived in a culture of fear / reporting out of fear of punishment, etc., was the series arc. Recurring character Inspector Kobick, and others not only referred to past encounters with so-called "the little people," but even learned the names of the earthlings, to the point where it made the conflict personal. This was unique to Irwin Allen series--others, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had a villain return for a sequel episode, but that was not a story arc.
Ratings: according to the LOTG book, The Giants Are Coming, LOTG launched with the highest rated premiere up to that time (September, 1968), but concluded:
That is not the first time I've readthe FX-heavy budget (with a standing cast of seven actors) was a problem for ABC (which co-produced LOTG with Allen's Kent Productions).
Lost in Space ended for several reasons--none having anything to do with Land of the Giants: one, although there were plans for a 4th LiS season, in a 1987 interview from Starlog magazine with Guy Williams, the following was revealed:
Another account claims June Lockhart and LiS director Don Richardson were no longer interested in continuing with the series, though she has also said she would have returned for a fourth season. Whatever the case, as LiS ended its run in the Spring of 1968, she would quickly sign to join the cast of the popular Paul Henning country sitcom, Petticoat Junction, in the fall of the same year, filling the void left by star Bea Benaderet, who had recently lost her fight with cancer.
LiS' budget has also been cited, but whatever the contributing factors, again, LOTG was not one of them.
Indeed, Marshall was a progressive choice, and not the largely silent, underdeveloped token as we would see with the Travis Mayweather from Star Trek: Enterprise--a series airing in the allegedly "really progressive" 21st century. Go figure.
Interesting. I thought Heather Young was the more attractive of the two stars.
As noted earlier, the totalitarian government / S.I.D. was the series arc, which influenced episodes where the S.I.D. and its paranoid, opportunistic pursuit of the earthlings were not specifically mentioned.
Of course, The Fugitive's arc was stated from the start: Richard Kimble's search for Fred Johnson, the "one armed man" who murdered Helen Kimble. That, and the evolving obsession of Lt. Gerard and his hunt for Kimble played significant parts of episodes throughout its run. As Kimble's tracking would run hot or cold, threads of Johnson's background were also added to episodes, eventually linking him to Kimble's family and friends.
As noted earlier (and according to actor Stephan Arngrim), the giants were originally intended to either speak in an alien language, or in the whispered fashion seen in the unaired pilot, but again, in order to have more interaction with the earthlings, they were allowed to speak regular english.
I didn't say they were. I just said Deanna Lund was really hot. As for Cartwright, she grew into quite a beauty later on, but I find it inappropriate to discuss her in those terms during her LiS years.
Does it ever? Since when has the expense of special-effects films been a moral issue? If it is, then George Lucas and Peter Jackson surely deserve far more condemnation than Irwin Allen. I'm not making an ethical judgment, I'm just saying I found the giant props and the physical gags of negotiating an oversized world to be entertaining. That's just something I've always found to be fun.
I am not remotely interested in the mindset that different works of entertainment need to be pitted against each other in a bout to the death or something. I think that's a petty and pointlessly negative way of approaching entertainment. You don't have to tear one thing down in order to build another thing up. And you only deprive yourself of satisfaction by refusing to allow yourself to enjoy more than one thing in a given niche.
Besides, everyone knows that Star Trek is better than all the other stuff.
Then perhaps the other world really wasn't a planet of giants, but rather the Spindrift and its crew were miniaturized when they went through whatever space-warp they went through?
Most of Lost in Space was as pointless and caught in a quickly worn loop as Gilligan's Island. The lone difference being Smith's devious, self-serving nature ruined as many rescue attempts (or in LiS' case, a return to mission) as Gilligan's idiocy. Predictable rinse and repeat series structure loses its appeal in the blink of an eye, and like Gilligan, some audiences have long wondered why Smith was not punished or abandoned, since he routinely placed the lives of the Robinson party in danger.
That was the dominant series structure of LiS. Entertaining--it was not.
LOTG was popular not just on a sci-fi adventure level, but the very point you cite--the actions of the giants' government. That resonated with late 1960s audiences because a careful understanding of the period revealed a serious mistrust of U.S. government by many in American society. It was increasingly common to see the police, F.B.I. and other agencies as waging a war of violence, disruption and fear-mongering against the people--particularly those seen as powerless. This was no after-the-fact analysis made decades later, but the conditions of the period.
Though LOTG was science fiction, the parallels were not hard to miss, and found appeal with many.
Moreover, series star Gary Conway noted how popular the series was in countries run by oppressive governments, as they too could relate with the struggles of the "little people" against a totalitarian government.
That alone earned LOTG a status of cultural/political relevance not to be found in a series where its most known legacy is a vain, cowardly man screaming at the top of his lungs, while insulting an automaton, and manipulating a child.
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I don't think John Carradine ever said no to anyone.
Yeah, I don't think so.
Neither did I claim that you did, so I don't know why you bothered making that statement. I merely reiterated what I had said earlier. You said nothing on that count.
I don't know if your thought about stating an opinion of the natural beauty of someone that hasn't reached the age of majority amounts to pedophilia per your sensibilities, but given that my observation was neither lewd nor exploitative, I don't see anything wrong with it.
Does it ever? Since when has the expense of special-effects films been a moral issue? If it is, then George Lucas and Peter Jackson surely deserve far more condemnation than Irwin Allen. I'm not making an ethical judgment, I'm just saying I found the giant props and the physical gags of negotiating an oversized world to be entertaining. That's just something I've always found to be fun.Moral? Ethical? I'm not sure I've heard those descriptors applied much to an Irwin Allen production. I don't know what kind of interpretation you're applying to what I actually said, but it wasn't reflected in my intent or words. What I think should be fairly clear in my reference, was that in a strictly financial sense, the production didn't produce nearly enough bang for the considerable bucks. I don't think it was particularly inventive, especially if someone considers the show as Allen's crowning television achievement (I'm not implying that's your opinion as I don't know that).
Trek_God_1 has emphasized that the aliens and their governmental and societal model were the arc of the program, especially in a period where mistrust of US institutions and practices had progressed beyond its tentative forays early in the decade, and no doubt became hardened by the series of assassinations and draconian law enforcement procedures adopted to deal with societal discontent. But however interesting these threads may have been (and I would like to find the actual Nielsens for the show's run), I seriously doubt that Allen's intention was to create a program where the villains are the main attraction and our stand-ins are simply pawns for the former to play with. Given his ethos of presenting spectacle, unconcerned, in the main, with reason or serious societal themes, both before and after LOTG, I find it hard to believe that he did anything here that he considered against the grain, or certainly that he thought a darker, more substantive approach would be a winning formula. If there is documentation or even anecdotal asides that supports such a contention, I certainly would very much like to see it.
I am not remotely interested in the mindset that different works of entertainment need to be pitted against each other in a bout to the death or something. I think that's a petty and pointlessly negative way of approaching entertainment. You don't have to tear one thing down in order to build another thing up. And you only deprive yourself of satisfaction by refusing to allow yourself to enjoy more than one thing in a given niche.
Besides, everyone knows that Star Trek is better than all the other stuff.
As I've said, I respect your creative output and the obvious knowledge in a number of realms that informs it. For some reason, throughout this response, you seem to feel compelled to lay the hyperbole on pretty thickly and simply are wildly misrepresenting what I've said. I feel I have to claim that comparing the merits of different programs, even if not in a strictly point by point manner, doesn't equate to a baneful "mindset" or any other such palaver, rather than simply trying to render a critical opinion of the various factors that make up both of them and giving an opinion of how one thinks they respectively work. As far as I'm aware, that happens all the time here. Do you consistently suggest some perjorative or malign intent when you encounter all such examples that you come across? I don't think so lest you wouldn't find much time to posit your own views. By saying that I don't find a lot redeeming in looking at one show through the prism of another, especially when the same creative personality was responsible for both, hardly seems to be the application of some zero-sum paradigm or "death match" mentality. Your conclusion that I'm unable to enjoy anything else of this niche is something you have no way of stating with any foundation, other perhaps some intuition you might claim. I also think your characterization that I somehow built up LIS is also suspect, as I did describe its second season as puerile and, in fact, agreed that the cast of LOTG was more evenly and broadly utilized.
Perhaps, as an artist, you find it appropriate to maintain an egalitarian attitude towards all creative efforts, as even those that are less effective in some or many aspects can offer you food for thought in your work. I do not feel constrained to soft pedal deficiencies of a production if I feel that my statements are being objective and not expressed with a needless or vulgar vituperativeness, which is how I believe I expressed myself in this instance.
You might find that conclusion to be an undeniable statement of fact, I guess, based on your brief description above of its faults, but despite your apparent confidence in saying so, it remains solely your opinion, both better and less comprehensively stated than many others.
As above, I don't deny that this aspect of the show was the more engaging, substantive, and, as you say, relevant element that did distinguish it, in its appearance, from Allen's other ventures. You claim that it deservedly earned a cachet among those that watched it because it had that cultural resonance reflective of the times. Well, to feel as comfortable making that assertion as you do, I think it's reasonable to be assured of a few points. I don't think that Allen spent the money he did to intentionally make any kind of political statement about the current zeitgeist. Just as with the comment above about your opinion of LIS's entertainment quotient, my contention is also an opinion, but one that I think is substantiated by the track record of what he produced, put credence in, and emphasized as how he believed successful entertainment was constituted. This view is not just based on judging his other projects, film and TV, but by comments made by people that worked closely for him for many years and pretty well knew what made him tick. Also, I find it incongruous that he would purposefully make a show in which the villains were far the more interesting and salient characters and the disposition of the nominal good guys turns out to be so inconsequential. I noticed that you really make no comment in support of the show, I think other than Don Marshall's presence and the lamentable ripoff of the Smith/Will dynamic, as to the strength of of the Spindrift's compliment's performance, how well they meshed as an ensemble, and the actual relevance of their attempts to make anything different in their ultimate fate. Sure, they stumbled into scenarios where the Giants' superior technology could have conceivably helped them, but were they shown as forceful actors in determining what was going to happen to them?
Basically, what I'm saying is that it's quite a stretch to think that either Allen or the network was going to knowingly spend that kind of money on a project that was so at variance with the producer's history or, I would think the network's interest. Now, you can say that intentionality may have been essentially irrelevant if the story that, as it was ultimately focused, addressed a much more serious and meaningful set of ideas than may have been originally conceived. Well, that also is at odds with the tightfisted control that Allen exerted over his productions. Was he just oblivious to what the show was, in essence, communicating? You mentioned The Giants Are Coming as a source book. I would be very interested in what it has to say, knowing it's not a show bible, about the genesis of the program and how Allen exerted his say during its brief run. Another point worth finding out more about is the show's ratings. Your citation from the book about the premiere episode isn't very specific. Was it the highest rated debut of all time, for that time slot on that network, for an Irwin Allen program, or is it another index that's being alluded to? Going forward, how did it actually fare in the Nielsens? Not as well as LIS in any of its seasons, from the admittedly incomplete evidence that I've seen. Conway's comment about its popularity abroad in countries with oppressive regimes is diverting, if accurate. But it doesn't speak to its actual appeal here.
Now, even that issue can be very reasonably marginalized. Obviously, one needs to go no further than the program that draws just about everyone here, to see an example of a popularly rejected production, that was not only seen as a crucially important vision of an intriguing future for mankind, at least by its admittedly small target audience cohort, but amazingly had the legs to be revived and grow into an entertainment behemoth. But to classify LOTG as a mature program, even for Allen's standards, is also mitigated by the way that it was always marketed and further, its placement.
It was always labelled as family entertainment, just as LIS was initially, and perhaps even after getting through that interesting patch known as Season 2. To reinforce this contention, when was LOTG aired throughout its run? Sundays at 7 PM. Alright, network executives have made their share of miscalculations with program scheduling since forever. But I simply find it hard to seriously believe that a show that was widely perceived to be a trenchant political commentary, by its already small audience, would be staged to its best advantage by running against Lassie, The Wild Kingdom, Gentle Ben, to say nothing of Disney. Bold counter programming strategy? Well you can believe that if you like.
The bottom line, is that while it had perceptive things to say about the contemporary political climate for those thoughtful enough to be looking for them, the seriousness of that commentary was significantly vitiated by Allen's tradmark version of SF. I would question, for instance, that the worldview presented in LOTG was even as substantive as what one saw about 5 years later in The Stranger, a pilot that never even made it on the air. There are no doubt a number of aficionados of the show that watch and venerate it today, but first, I don't think it comes close to the following that LIS still retains and secondly, I haven't seen an overflowing of critical analysis or simple fan references that suggests that the more sober sense that you have of it has any widespread currency. I think there are simply too many historical, personality, and financial realities that contradict that vision of the show construct in lieu of the family hour programming that I believe was the extent of its popular regard. That's not to say that those that feel it was misunderstood or that it was a diamond in the rough are wrong, just that I as far as I'm aware, there are precious few of them. As the saying goes, for that to ever have been popularly apprehended, is just a bridge too far.
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Why not? There are plenty of works of fiction where the colorful villains are more interesting than the strait-laced heroes. For instance, Star Wars fans on the whole seem to be more interested in Darth Vader than Luke Skywalker. And while Batman and Robin in the '66 sitcom were fun to watch, the flamboyant celebrity villains were the main draw of the series.
Indeed, even in Allen's own body of work, the villain (or at least anti-villain) of Lost in Space, Dr. Smith, became more prominent than the heroes, and Allen clearly tried to replicate that with Alexander Fitzhugh on LOTG. So he clearly didn't have a problem in principle with making the villains the main attraction. Although I don't think the villainy in LOTG was quite in that vein, since Fitzhugh didn't really emerge as a breakout star and the giant antagonists were mostly not all that colorful.
No, as a fan, I've just never had a problem enjoying multiple different things, and the constant "X vs. Y" arguments in fandom are tiresome and pointless to me. Maybe that's not what you intended, and if so, I apologize for taking my distaste out on you. Still, I have no interest in engaging the question as you've asked it.
Christopher, thank you for the measured tone that you chose to respond to my last. I think it's an error to answer someone in a state of pique, it can block the ability to clearly reason through what has drawn your attention to your interlocutor and how you choose to coherently and cogently respond. It can certainly reinforce a feeling of righteous indignation to let fly without that reflection happening first and that might feel good, but more often than not it will tend to lead one down the road of saying things that aren't really believed or intended and escalate a thoughtful conversation into little more than a mud slinging contest.
I apologize if your perception was that the latter inclination informed my comments to you. It was late, I was tired and in addressing both you and Trek_God_1, I may have been better advised to putting off the effort for a day or two. You are an esteemed contributor to these proceedings and we're all fortunate that you enjoy the participation.
As to the last statement, obviously, it was purely speculative on my part but seemed a plausible guess on how, in a systematic way, you might find worth in digesting efforts, however they may be predominantly critically judged, as I imagined perspectives from many angles could be helpful in the creative process. Not being such a person in any sense, feel free to chalk it up as a shot in the dark that made more of something than was warranted.
Just a quick rejoinder on the provenance of the growth of importance in Smith's role,moving quickly to one of primacy in the direction of the show. He rapidly migrated from the archetype of pure villain, if for no other reason than what Jonathan Harris has said, that plainly from his perspective, Smith's life expectancy would have been brief otherwise. From what I understand, it seems that Allen chose to strongly push Harris's divergence because while it maintained a nominal threat that the Robinsons always had to me mindful of, it was more significant as a viewer draw due to the strictly comedic quality and element of buffoonery that the characterization engendered.
Of course, many of his stratagems were ones that would callously put the Robinson's in danger, perhaps even existentially so. But I think that the play that Harris and Allen put on the dynamic pretty early on, was that however heedless or carelessly malign his plans appeared, there would never be any real chance of their coming to fruition, due to Smith's negligence, incompetence, or overestimation of his abilities. So aside, from the role of comedic foil to the Robot, personally I would tend not to characterize him even as an anti-villain, despite the omnipresence of all those designs. I would describe him more as coming to be seen as the black sheep or dubiously motivated uncle of the family. Ultimately I find it hard to think of him as not having become considered part of the family, despite the multitudinous nature of his faults and that whatever he did, he would always be accepted back. The inclination of the Robinsons to make him pay for his original perfidy, of which I'm not sure it's clear how strongly they ever suspected, or of all the subsequent shenanigans, was pretty much proscribed by a comment that Maureen once made at a moment when such an action could've been taken. She simply said, "Because he's human" and that was the end of it.
So, perhaps not so briefly stated, I think one can thoughtfully draw a distinction between Smith's standing and those of the Spindrift's antagonists who were unremittedly malign in their intentions to the crew, with no mitigating circumstances or ambiguity that subverted or made light of their precise motivations.
I apologize if your perception was that the latter inclination informed my comments to you. It was late, I was tired and in addressing both you and Trek_God_1, I may have been better advised to putting off the effort for a day or two. You are an esteemed contributor to these proceedings and we're all fortunate that you enjoy the participation.
As to the last statement, obviously, it was purely speculative on my part but seemed a plausible guess on how, in a systematic way, you might find worth in digesting efforts, however they may be predominantly critically judged, as I imagined perspectives from many angles could be helpful in the creative process. Not being such a person in any sense, feel free to chalk it up as a shot in the dark that made more of something than was warranted.
Just a quick rejoinder on the provenance of the growth of importance in Smith's role,moving quickly to one of primacy in the direction of the show. He rapidly migrated from the archetype of pure villain, if for no other reason than what Jonathan Harris has said, that plainly from his perspective, Smith's life expectancy would have been brief otherwise. From what I understand, it seems that Allen chose to strongly push Harris's divergence because while it maintained a nominal threat that the Robinsons always had to me mindful of, it was more significant as a viewer draw due to the strictly comedic quality and element of buffoonery that the characterization engendered.
Of course, many of his stratagems were ones that would callously put the Robinson's in danger, perhaps even existentially so. But I think that the play that Harris and Allen put on the dynamic pretty early on, was that however heedless or carelessly malign his plans appeared, there would never be any real chance of their coming to fruition, due to Smith's negligence, incompetence, or overestimation of his abilities. So aside, from the role of comedic foil to the Robot, personally I would tend not to characterize him even as an anti-villain, despite the omnipresence of all those designs. I would describe him more as coming to be seen as the black sheep or dubiously motivated uncle of the family. Ultimately I find it hard to think of him as not having become considered part of the family, despite the multitudinous nature of his faults and that whatever he did, he would always be accepted back. The inclination of the Robinsons to make him pay for his original perfidy, of which I'm not sure it's clear how strongly they ever suspected, or of all the subsequent shenanigans, was pretty much proscribed by a comment that Maureen once made at a moment when such an action could've been taken. She simply said, "Because he's human" and that was the end of it.
So, perhaps not so briefly stated, I think one can thoughtfully draw a distinction between Smith's standing and those of the Spindrift's antagonists who were unremittedly malign in their intentions to the crew, with no mitigating circumstances or ambiguity that subverted or made light of their precise motivations.
