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

[Jackson_Roykirk]

[rant]
WHY COULDN'T PROFESSOR ROBINSON FIND A ROPE THAT WOULDN'T BREAK IN THE MIDDLE OF A SPACEWALK!
[/rant]

sorry for yelling.

 

[Gary7]

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.

There were so many inconsistencies, it wasn't funny. The show was apparently targeted to the child and young adult, especially into the 2nd season where it got so frigging campy.

This show did not age well. I watched a handful of old episodes that were my favorites as a kid... and there was so much that was cringe worthy. I did enjoy the nostalgia though. There was definitely some creativity by the writers, but oh so many stupid shortcuts. I'm glad I didn't make the mistake of buying the disc media for this.

 

[Dukhat]

I know I'm bumping an old thread, but I think the discussion is worth it to continue.

Anyway, I've been binge-watching the original show on Hulu, because I never actually saw it before because I always assumed it was just campy crap from the get-go. But after watching the discarded first pilot (which didn't include Smith or the Robot), I was amazed to see just how good the actual production was. Even with the 2nd pilot, the show had a quite serious tone and was actually enjoyable to watch. It also surprised me just how devious Smith originally was, and that he was actively trying to get the Robinsons killed (while they remained completely oblivious to this.) Of course there is a LOT of suspension of disbelief needed to appreciate this show, but this was forgiven because the first season was mostly well done, and Bill Mumy & Jonathan Harris were definitely top-notch in their performances. And the ensemble cast were good too. And there was LOTS of stock footage reuse, to the point of ridiculousness (i.e. a spaceship set on the ground would look nothing like the footage of a completely different ship taking off, etc.)

However, even with suspension of disbelief, there was one inherent problem (or at least, one logically inherent problem in an inherently illogical show): The Robinsons seemed far, far too forgiving of Smith's antics which invariably cause the family harm. It is inconceivable why the Robinsons don't simply kill him, or at the least strand him somewhere (harsh, I know, but hey, I'm a realist.) Smith is completely useless, a drain on their resources, can't be trusted, consistently disobeys orders, is a complete narcissist, is obsessed with accumulation of wealth for some reason, and endangers the family's lives on a regular basis, and yet he is never punished or held accountable for his actions. The family always seems to sway back and forth between caring for him and being irritated by him, except for Don who hates his guts and would have been happy to throw him out of an airlock. I get that this was part of the format of the show, but as it got increasingly campier, the suspension of disbelief just starts to erode away. And imagine if the Robinsons had ever found out just how Smith was trying to get them all killed at first!

I'm currently starting season two, and am already noticing the format change into Batman-influenced camp, and the focus switching from the family to just Will, Smith and the Robot. And the switch to color actually makes the show look worse. I'm guessing it's going to be a struggle to get through, unlike the first season. But we'll see how long I can last

 

[Mr. Adventure]

You think suspension of disbelief is hard try having my father who would always tell me
- the Six Million Dollar Man's legs would go through his torso when he lands and that the truck would tear the arm off his body
- the car always gets wrecked in real life when The Dukes made a jump in the General Lee
and that
- the Robinsons would've spaced that worthless POS years ago

 

[Christopher]

It is inconceivable why the Robinsons don't simply kill him

Because that would make them worse than Smith. Smith wasn't a killer, not really. Yes, he was greedy enough to accept a bribe to sabotage the ship and let the Robinsons get killed light years away, out of sight and out of mind, but when he was face to face with them, once he got to know them, he couldn't bring himself to harm them anymore. That was largely cowardice, but he did become genuinely fond of Will and Penny and didn't want to see them harmed, even if he lacked the courage to save them from danger himself. And toward the end of the opening 5-parter, Smith actually tried to save their lives by warning them about the planet's rapid warming. Granted, he did it because he didn't want to be stuck with only the Robot for company, but it showed he wasn't completely irredeemable.

And the Robinsons are good, noble people. They aren't military, trained to be coldly pragmatic. They're scientists and explorers, and they value life. They volunteered to put themselves in harm's way and undertake a dangerous mission that might get them all killed, because they believed it would help the rest of humanity to thrive. So it isn't remotely inconceivable why they'd take on a risk to themselves in order to preserve someone else's life. That's the whole point of them being out there in the first place.

- the car always gets wrecked in real life when The Dukes made a jump in the General Lee

I read once that they typically totaled two General Lee stunt cars per episode. I wondered how they managed to get hold of that many 1969 Dodge Chargers.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I read once that they typically totaled two General Lee stunt cars per episode. I wondered how they managed to get hold of that many 1969 Dodge Chargers.

They were only 10-15 years old at that point. My current car is at the 15 year point (not that I don't need a new ride...).

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Smith wasn't a killer, not really.

The Smith from the TV series probably wasn't, i'll grant that.

The Gary Oldman version, OTOH...

 

[Skipper]

The Smith from the TV series probably wasn't, i'll grant that.

The Gary Oldman version, OTOH...

Well both the movie and the new show tried to resolve the Smith conundrum. I don't know about the early 2000's remake. Anyone saw it?

 

[Galileo7]

I love the season three John Williams score.

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[Asbo Zaprudder]

Sometimes nostalgia about a dimly remembered show from one's childhood is much better than the intense disappointment felt on actually watching it again several decades later.

 

[Skipper]

Sometimes nostalgia about a dimly remembered show from one's childhood is much better than the intense disappointment felt on actually watching it again several decades later.

I recently watched a few episodes of Knight Rider and felt deeply ashamed of myself because I was once a huge fan of it.

Great stunts anyway!

 

[Christopher]

Well both the movie and the new show tried to resolve the Smith conundrum.

I think the movie made Smith worse rather than "solving" him. They took away what little nuance the original character had, making him such a cartoony, one-dimensional villain that he literally called himself evil, breaking one of the most basic rules of writing interesting villains (that they don't see themselves as villains or their actions as unjustified).

The Netflix series handled Smith excellently, but then, it was an excellent show overall.

I don't know about the early 2000's remake. Anyone saw it?

If you mean the rejected John Woo-directed pilot The Robinsons: Lost in Space, it omitted the Smith character altogether.

I recently watched a few episodes of Knight Rider and felt deeply ashamed of myself because I was once a huge fan of it.

Great stunts anyway!

I was lukewarm about it even when I watched it in first run in my teens. Mainly I liked KITT, both the supercar and the A.I.'s personality. But I recognized how cheesy the writing was.

 

[Christopher]

The pilot episode is the first of two Smith-kills.

That's an assumption, not a fact. All we saw is that he karate-chopped a guard and dumped him down a garbage chute. This was a kids' show, after all -- they weren't going to show a blatant onscreen murder.

Besides, lots of series have early-installment weirdness, and it makes little sense to judge a character only by their pilot behavior rather than how they were developed as the series matured. You might as well say that Spock was a guy who shouted all the time. Yes, Smith was initially written as a menacing, Iago-like figure, but his personality was quickly altered and softened into more of a comic nuisance defined by greed, cowardice, and compulsive lying rather than genuine villainy. And then it was taken even further in later seasons and he became a complete buffoon.

Lest we forget, Smith temporarily killed Penny in ALL THAT GLITTERS before she got better. Smith knows this but nobody else ever found out. (The killing is mentioned in the CineMorgue film Wiki.

Oh, that is absolute bullshit. He was wearing a magic ring that gave him the power to turn anything he touched into platinum, as a riff on the myth of King Midas. He accidentally, unthinkingly touched Penny and turned her to platinum, and he was devastated about it. He actually gave up all his wealth, renounced his power, in order to bring her back to life. It is absurd to misrepresent that as proof that he was some kind of cold-blooded murderer. It shows the exact opposite, that he was willing to sacrifice his own self-interest to save Penny's life. https://lostinspace.fandom.com/wiki/All_That_Glitters

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

However, even with suspension of disbelief, there was one inherent problem (or at least, one logically inherent problem in an inherently illogical show): The Robinsons seemed far, far too forgiving of Smith's antics which invariably cause the family harm. It is inconceivable why the Robinsons don't simply kill him, or at the least strand him somewhere (harsh, I know, but hey, I'm a realist.)

The Robinsons tolerating Smith stems from a long-worn trope of the weekly TV irritant / agent of chaos gimmick, meaning the source of the main cast's weekly troubles would be abandoned, ignored, divorced, etc., in any real world circumstance similar to that experienced by TV characters. But TV feeding off of the irritant gimmick screwing up or setting self-interested plots in motion every week is how repetitiou$ TV work$, particularly in its early decades, as seen in with I Love Lucy's Lucy Ricardo, Gilligan's Island's Gilligan, Get Smart's Maxwell Smart, Sanford and Son's Fred Sanford and The Honeymooners' Ed Norton (Ralph Kramden could be as scheming and/or stupid as his friend).

This also extends to the "nosy neighbor" trope (e.g., Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched), yet for all of the headaches the irritant caused, the rest of the characters just put up with it (translation: they would do the same thing as long as it pulled in audiences).

And imagine if the Robinsons had ever found out just how Smith was trying to get them all killed at first!

Well, Irwin Allen was never going to explore such a plot, since he was the one who encouraged Jonathan Harris to "Do more"--meaning go in the direction of the conniving, greedy screamer, and the writers were instructed to push that for the majority of Lost in Space's three seasons, much to the annoyance of Guy Williams, among others.

And the switch to color actually makes the show look worse.

Agreed--especially in the second season, where the stars' costume designs were awful, and the visual sins of many of the props, surplus consoles, etc., were not forgiven with the switch to color. The one big improvement for season three were the costumes, which leaned toward a more uniform look for the entire cast, while their hairstyles moved toward a more "modern" look for the time (despite the fact LIS was set some 33 years in the then-future).

I'm guessing it's going to be a struggle to get through, unlike the first season. But we'll see how long I can last

You are quite brave.

 

[Noname Given]

I would say Dr. Smith started out as a true calculating killer in the first 4 episodes of the series; but Harris liked the gig, so he campaigned and started to soften/change that aspect of the character PDQ.

 

[Christopher]

I would say Dr. Smith started out as a true calculating killer in the first 4 episodes of the series; but Harris liked the gig, so he campaigned and started to soften/change that aspect of the character PDQ.

I still say it's ambiguous whether he was a killer. I mean, he aspired to be, but as I said, it was something he planned to do remotely, when they were light years away and he didn't have to face the consequences. As we saw as early as the cliffhanger of episode 3-4, once he'd gotten to know Will, he couldn't bring himself to let the Robot kill him. And then he tried to save the Robinsons in episode 5. He was willing to kill in theory, in the abstract, if it made him richer, but in practice, he couldn't go through with killing someone he'd gotten to know.

And that's why I choose to embrace the ambiguity of the bit with the guard and assume he just knocked the guy out. I mean, not that LiS was known for realism, but what are the odds that a single chop to the back of the neck delivered by a 50-year-old man would be fatal? Especially given how Smith was later retconned as a lazy, effete hedonist rather than a combat-trained secret agent. (Yes, the fall down the disposal chute could well have been fatal, especially given how high up the ship was on its gantry, but I'm embracing the ambiguity, goldarn it.)

 

[Noname Given]

I still say it's ambiguous whether he was a killer. I mean, he aspired to be, but as I said, it was something he planned to do remotely, when they were light years away and he didn't have to face the consequences. As we saw as early as the cliffhanger of episode 3-4, once he'd gotten to know Will, he couldn't bring himself to let the Robot kill him. And then he tried to save the Robinsons in episode 5. He was willing to kill in theory, in the abstract, if it made him richer, but in practice, he couldn't go through with killing someone he'd gotten to know.

And that's why I choose to embrace the ambiguity of the bit with the guard and assume he just knocked the guy out. I mean, not that LiS was known for realism, but what are the odds that a single chop to the back of the neck delivered by a 50-year-old man would be fatal? Especially given how Smith was later retconned as a lazy, effete hedonist rather than a combat-trained secret agent. (Yes, the fall down the disposal chute could well have been fatal, especially given how high up the ship was on its gantry, but I'm embracing the ambiguity, goldarn it.)

He sent the Robot out to kill young Will Robison via electrocution with no hesitation. <--- Pretty clear what Smith's intent was there. His character WAS very dark/evil/murderous at the start of the show (and also seemed willing to sacrifice himself for his objective - which itself was VERY different/opposite to where he and the writers ultimately took the character.)

 

[Mr. Adventure]

He's not a killer, he's just an attempted murderer lol.

 

[Christopher]

He sent the Robot out to kill young Will Robison via electrocution with no hesitation.

And then had qualms about it afterward, which is the point. He intended to kill, was willing to in the abstract, but found he couldn't actually go through with it. He'd come to care about Will in spite of his intentions, and that was the beginning of his (partial) redemption arc.

His character WAS very dark/evil/murderous at the start of the show

Yes, for one or two episodes. You're overemphasizing how long they stuck with it. It was changed before the opening 5-part arc even ended, as I've repeatedly stated. I'm talking about Smith's overall characterization throughout season 1. It makes no sense to obsess on the first rough-draft idea for a character and ignore how the character matured over time.

(and also seemed willing to sacrifice himself for his objective

How so? He was, as the premiere title put it, "The Reluctant Stowaway." He didn't intend to be trapped aboard the ship. That's the whole reason he programmed the Robot to go on a time-delayed rampage. He intended to get off, go back to work, and then hear about the ship's mysterious, tragic disappearance hours later. But he got stuck aboard by accident.

 

[Noname Given]

Yes, for one or two episodes. You're overemphasizing how long they stuck with it...

As I said (which I guess you didn't bother to read):

I would say Dr. Smith started out as a true calculating killer in the first 4 episodes of the series...

It was more than two episodes, but no, not many...which I said above.