That's because most of the audience today prefer huge spectacle over something that could be explained and mind you I like a good spectacle sometimes too. But not all the time.
Netflix greenlights new "Lost in Space"
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That's because most of the audience today prefer huge spectacle over something that could be explained and mind you I like a good spectacle sometimes too. But not all the time.
You're getting it backward. Bad science in SFTV/film is not a recent trend; on the contrary, it's always been bad. That's my whole point -- Lost in Space was not the exception, it was the norm. Very few SF films and shows over the decades have ever made even the slightest effort to get the science right. I've been an SF fan for 45 years, and for most of that time I've been lamenting the scarcity of anything resembling competent science in SF film and TV.
It's actually getting better in recent years, because audiences are getting more savvy, and because scientists have organized and formed a group that provides scientific advice to movie and TV productions. We've had a lot of movies in recent years with mostly solid science -- Gravity, Interstellar, Europa Report, The Martian, Ex Machina, Primer, Arrival up to a point (though it ultimately centered on an idea I found quite absurd). The Expanse is just about the hardest hard-SF show we've ever had on TV, though Altered Carbon is competitive. Person of Interest was a solid near-future hard-SF show about the surveillance state and artificial intelligence, so credible that its predictions often came true while it was still on the air. And the show we're talking about here, the Netflix Lost in Space, also has pretty good science by TV standards, certainly far better than the original. Even Agents of SHIELD manages to ground its Marvel-Universe fantasy in some pretty well-researched science-speak.
For me, as a lifelong hard-SF fan, this is a far better time for smart, plausible SF in film and TV than ever before. There's still an abundance of the usual fantasy and shoddy science that's always been there, but there's a lot more of the good stuff, the smart and plausible stuff, than there has been for most of my life.
Thank yo for your reply. I noted some of your examples and they are things I really like.
I loved The Expanse and the fact that they got spaceships right, and just basing off what I saw in the show that's how I think real spaceships would be, long structures with vertical interiors and not massive sprawling decks like most other TV scifi. It's the movement forward of the ship that gives it gravity and when they stop moving everything floats. That's how I picture real ships behaving.
I do wonder though if at some future point in the series they will invent something and we end up with some traditional scifi ship that isn't vertical.
Centrifuges. Those have been used by a lot of sci-fi ships already -- 2001, 2010, Babylon 5, Defying Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, etc.
NuLIS suffers from what I call "Space:1999 effect". The sets and the FX are so believable and seem so well thought out that when it starts acting like ordinary TV sci-fi it's jarring.
It's kind of like at the end of the sprawling "We're serious and thoughtful SF like 2001" Star Trek: The Motion Picture where we find out that a hyper-advanced planet of machines misnamed a space probe because it could not read Roman letters behind space smudge. Annnnnd we're back to 1966 television!
It's kind of like at the end of the sprawling "We're serious and thoughtful SF like 2001" Star Trek: The Motion Picture where we find out that a hyper-advanced planet of machines misnamed a space probe because it could not read Roman letters behind space smudge. Annnnnd we're back to 1966 television!
The bigger problem is how they could even have known what sounds the symbols "V GER" would represent in English. I don't think the information on the Voyager Interstellar Record was that detailed.
(Which reminds me of a glaring logic hole in the first Tarzan novel. The young Tarzan learns to read from his late parents' books, but doesn't know what sounds the symbols represent because he's never heard human speech. Yet somehow he's able to put up a written sign on his treehouse door saying the house is the property of Tarzan. How does he know how to spell his name if he doesn't know what sounds the letters represent? That always drove me crazy.)
The original Lost In Space (1965-1968):
I tell new viewers to only watch seasons one and three before they venture into season two.
- [black&white] season one was great especially the early episodes
- [color] season two is only for the diehard fans with "camp" undermining the series
- [color] season three has "camp", but manages to have episodes like season one when the "camp" is limited. I like the season three episode "Space Creature" because it is the only time we get a grand tour of all three decks of the Jupiter 2 [upper deck with SpacePod bay, Lower deck and Power Core] which, like the TARDIS, is bigger on the inside than the full-scale exterior Jupiter 2 prop used in season three episode "Visit To A Hostile Planet". I think the 47 feet in diameter full-scale Jupiter 2 prop would have to be at least 100 feet in diameter to fit it all inside.
I tell new viewers to only watch seasons one and three before they venture into season two.
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People blame the failing of LiS's later seasons on their camp, but I think there's a distinction between camp that works (e.g. Batman '66) and camp that doesn't work. I'm going to quote myself from early last year in this same thread:
Fair enough. But it still gets its word from the physically printed word on the outside of the craft.
The sociological/geopolitical situation on Earth in nuLiS is dystopian. And the family starts out broken/dysfunctional in the extreme. I also didn't like the fact they inserted some swear words in the early episodes that simply didn't need to be there. It could have been G-rated otherwise but they had to "edge" it up similar to what Discovery did with Tilly. I know they wanted it to be more family-friendly than your usual R-rated streaming show but they split the difference a bit too much.
The situation on Earth in the original wasn't great either. The opening narration in the first episode referred to "our desperately overcrowded planet" as the reason space colonization was so essential. Not only that, but "Other nations, in even more desperate need for breathing room on our critically crowded planet are racing the United States in this project -- countries that would go to any lengths of sabotage." That sounds pretty dystopian to me.
Starts out, but doesn't end up. I wasn't crazy about the dysfunctional family angle -- too much like the movie. But it ended up working, because it was the setup for a heartwarming story of the family finding its way back together.
There might have been a dystopian back drop but I didn't feel it watching the series. In that sense it was refreshing compared to other sci fi series lately.
That episode with the chariot in a tar pit was one of my favourites. John and Maureen reconnect with helium.
At least watch the first 7-8 episodes. The initial 5-episode arc is built around footage from the original pilot (expanded to add Dr. Smith and the Robot) and best represents what the show was originally conceived to be. Smith in those episodes is a devious, Iago-like manipulator and gaslighter, and the family ensemble is well-served. The next few episodes also have some solid storytelling. As a bonus, the first seven episodes are the only ones in the first season with original music (by John Williams in the odd-numbered episodes and Herman Stein, Hans Salter, et al. in the even, plus stock Bernard Herrmann music from The Day the Earth Stood Still, Beneath the Twelve-Mile Reef, and one other); the rest of the season recycled the music from those seven.
And if you like those, you might enjoy the rest of season 1. Smith does become more of a dominant and comedic figure over the course of the season, but it doesn't mutate into the campy Dr. Smith Show until season 2. And the black-and-white cinematography gives it a classier, less garish feel than the color seasons.
A little anecdote. The original series of Lost In Space has never been broadcast in Italy, so the people who know this title is usually only thanks to the 1998 film or the Netflix's remake.
Instead my first approach with it was a bit different. When the Star Trek The Motion Picture arrived in Italy in the 1980 a local comics publishing house translated the comic book adaptation.
This is the original (technically it was Marvel Comics Super Special #15):
And this is the translated edition:
At the time I was eleven and I was already a Star Trek fan. But we hadn't Fan clubs, magazines or fanzines or internet or whatever so I was desperately hungry for any scrap of information about my beloved show. Fortunately, in the original comic book and in its translation there was an article about the Star Trek phenomenon by Tom Rogers
It was everything I had wished for. I don't know how many times I read and read it again. I probably would have been able to mention paragraphs by heart. But there was a bit that leaved a certain impression on me:
Star Trek was by no means common TV junk! There was hope for this generation of viewers; the days of Lost In Space and its ilk were, hopefully, finally over.
Obviously I had never seen this series and it was the first time I heard of it. But from that moment, I knew from the bottom of my eleven years old heart that it was bad, it was trash, and fortunately Star Trek saved us from the "its ilk". And obviously the 1998 film didn't help me to change my mind...
And while I enjoyed the Netflix remake, I'm always a bit uncomfortable about the original series...
Instead my first approach with it was a bit different. When the Star Trek The Motion Picture arrived in Italy in the 1980 a local comics publishing house translated the comic book adaptation.
This is the original (technically it was Marvel Comics Super Special #15):
And this is the translated edition:
At the time I was eleven and I was already a Star Trek fan. But we hadn't Fan clubs, magazines or fanzines or internet or whatever so I was desperately hungry for any scrap of information about my beloved show. Fortunately, in the original comic book and in its translation there was an article about the Star Trek phenomenon by Tom Rogers
It was everything I had wished for. I don't know how many times I read and read it again. I probably would have been able to mention paragraphs by heart. But there was a bit that leaved a certain impression on me:
Star Trek was by no means common TV junk! There was hope for this generation of viewers; the days of Lost In Space and its ilk were, hopefully, finally over.
Obviously I had never seen this series and it was the first time I heard of it. But from that moment, I knew from the bottom of my eleven years old heart that it was bad, it was trash, and fortunately Star Trek saved us from the "its ilk". And obviously the 1998 film didn't help me to change my mind...
And while I enjoyed the Netflix remake, I'm always a bit uncomfortable about the original series...
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It's true, on the whole, that Lost in Space and the other Irwin Allen shows were not sophisticated TV. They were made for kids, they were generally rushed and with a limited budget, and they were more about adventure and spectacle than any deep ideas. But they generally weren't unwatchable, at least to start with. Allen tended to put a lot of care into the beginning of a series, set it up with good production values and promising stories, but then lose interest and be slapdash about the rest, with the stories getting dumber and more gimmicky. So they're usually better in the early stages than they become later on. LiS is probably the most extreme example, with the first season being virtually a whole different show than the latter two. As we've said, some of us enjoy the first season but find the second unwatchable.
What I like about the Netflix series is that it captures the flavor of those first 5 or so episodes, the show LiS was meant to be before Dr. Smith's antics ran away with it. So if you like the new series, you might like at least the opening 5-part serial of the original show.
What I like about the Netflix series is that it captures the flavor of those first 5 or so episodes, the show LiS was meant to be before Dr. Smith's antics ran away with it. So if you like the new series, you might like at least the opening 5-part serial of the original show.
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