"Lost in Space" - any love for this old show?

They've zoomed in like that on the early episodes of The Simpson that they show on FXX and it is annoying. I can still watch them, but it does bug me, there are times where it just throws the whole visual element off because of the way zooming in changes things.

 

So Lost in Space gets the same home video treatment that Kung Fu was already subjected to years ago. Oh well.

Kor

 

An idiotic choice on the part of the company releasing this version.

 

I agree that releasing a widescreen version is dumb but they seem to think it will sell. I have also read somewhere that when Netflix releases season one on Blurry that as a bonus it will have the colorized version of No Place To Hide. I had no Idea that any of Lost In Space was ever colorized.

 

LiS looks better in black and white.

 

There is a definitive release of LIS on Bluray, and that is absolutely the thing to buy if you want the show on optical disc. The 35 mm negatives were scanned in 1080p HD for this set, the aspect ratio is right, and the list of extra features is amazing. Over eight hours of extras. They even threw in the 1973 cartoon (only one episode was made). You want the box called Lost in Space: The Complete Adventures.

The original DVD run from years ago had a very low-quality picture even for DVD, and apparently was made from the same SD master that was used for VHS tape releases. Avoid this old edition. This new widescreen DVD run might be mastered from the newer, HQ source material created for the Blu-ray, but even so it won't be as good as the Bluray set, which is without question the best release LIS will ever get.

 

Yeah, and that's no accident. Gene Polito's black and white cinematography was cinema-quality and often gorgeous. The lighting was artistic, getting stark and dramatic when called for, and sometimes with angles you'd appreciate in a Hitchcock movie. The first season was photographed by a master.

 

This one? (Can I link Amazon pages?!?)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Space-Complete-Adventures-Region/dp/B011QLB4B0

 

Yes, that's the best LIS set.

 

Is this the show that had the War with the Carrots and Celery?

 

https://lostinspace.fandom.com/wiki/The_Great_Vegetable_Rebellion

 

I watched the first few episodes and while I loved Dr. Smith and the rest of the cast was kind of OK it just wasn't involving, not enough to continue, it felt a little too cheap-goofy and that feels worse when people say the first few episodes were the ones that were kind of/trying to be serious.

 

Well, not serious in the modern "dark violent gritty drama" sense, just in the sense of a straightforward, entertaining action-adventure show for family audiences, rather than the outrageous camp it became in season 2. It was serious in the sense that it wasn't intentionally making a mockery of itself.

 

“Star Trek writer David Gerrold, in his book "The Trouble With Tribbles," scolded Lost in Space as being, "A thoroughly offensive show. It has probably done more to damage the advance of science fiction as a serious literary movement than all of the big bug movies ever made." Gerrold's comments echoed the party line of many readers who took their science fiction seriously.”

https://lostinspace.fandom.com/wiki/The_History_of_Lost_In_Space

 

Gerrold was always angry. At everything. All the time. It almost became funny as the decades wore on.

 

Oh, I agree. Even now, he is still bitter about so many, many things.

 

Weird, especially after the blu-ray release, which had the only picture quality worthy of HD (even 4k streaming still looks worse compared to blu-ray, due to bandwidth limitations and excess video compression and other tricks).

Hehe! I have a fondness for it, but it's not an all-time great. Good premise but varied and too-simple execution.

No arguments there!

Excellent summary! Especially season 2, I'm a big fan but not an extreme fan as apart from a couple Robot-themed episodes, none were watchable. The B&W helped sell the feel for season one, too. It's too dated now for the kids (1997) so that Netflix remake, which I've yet to see, would hopefully play with the calendar a bit.

"Space Creature" was one of the better episodes,and any where Smith was doing "evil acting" instead of "Maxwell Smart acting" , though his over the top performance was never unwatchable. He's great as both, but I still remember this look of him from one season 3 episode as he's hunting down to kill Will (possessed) and opens up his bedroom door with this look on his face that takes "menacing threat" to a scary new level. Great stuff.

ROTFL! Yes, that's the one with 'The Great Vegetable Rebellion'.

The show hasn't always dated well, but for what it is - and cast chemistry - it's rarely unwatchable, and most of the worst stuff is in season 2. It's not the greatest show made, but for an extreme example, few will put "My Mother The Car" above it in terms of being entertaining sci-fi.

I can't blame him, in that belief. But the show existed back when many other shows existed, some of which were more mature ("Star Trek"). Though he also wrote the Tribble episode, a throwback to comedy relief or doing homage to Batman's camp, which was all the rage at the time and is seen in many "best of" lists. Makes me wonder if he wrote it out of spite. The same Tribble episode featured Stanley Adams, who would not only go on to play the Carrot in the infamous Vegetable episode, but he also wrote season 3's "The Mark of Gideon" - an episode that's ultimately oversimplified and underwhelming, but uses overpopulation as a plot point.

 

Actually, at the time, Lost in Space was the norm for science fiction TV. The only SF shows in the US that hadn't been for kids were The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, both anthologies. There had never been an adult-oriented science fiction drama with continuing characters before Star Trek. The whole reason Roddenberry created ST was to correct that omission, to demonstrate that SF could be done at the same level of maturity as any other genre of TV drama and didn't have to be stuck in the kids'-show ghetto forever.

No -- there is a big difference between comedy and camp. You can tell a humorous story in a setting that plays its characters and universe straight; after all, there is humor in real life. The best dramas always have a liberal dose of humor, just as the best comedies often feature genuine drama. But camp is a more extreme, absurd and exaggerated form of humor that undermines and mocks its own reality and encourages the viewer to find it ridiculous, especially the parts that are supposedly serious. This is the difference between the comedy of Lost in Space's later season 1 and the camp of season 2.

 

One weird flaw in the early episodes I thought was pretty noticeable was Dr. Smith would try to demand and pressure the others to return to Earth but the premise was the characters didn't even know where they were and thus how to return to Earth, they couldn't if they wanted to, I guess Smith was just being irrational but it felt more like inconsistency.

 

I think it came up more in cases where they had an opportunity to obtain navigational information (like in "The Derelict," IIRC) or some alternative means of travel, and the debate was whether to complete the original mission of colonizing Alpha Centauri or just to go back home to Earth.