Dr. Smith, Will, and Robot.
I've seen part of this on YouTube. Why was this a thing?
Animation studios found it quite profitable to adapt live action properties (usually cancelled) which were attractive to young viewers as much as the adult audience. Filmation was one of the first with 1968/69's
Fantastic Voyage (inspired by the 1966 20th Century Fox movie). While TOS was still first run, Filmation's Lou Scheimer approached Roddenberry about adapting
Star Trek as an animated series. Of course, that would not happen until 1973, but the interest in live-action adaptations was growing.
By the early 70s, certain 60s and 70s TV series--especially sitcoms (e.g.,
My Favorite Martian,
Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, Bewitched, The Addams Family, Nanny and the Professor, Gidget, Emergency!, et al.) were so successful in syndication (with a sizable child audience) that it was just good business to try to bring that kind of property to Saturday mornings.
Where
Lost in Space was concerned, Fox--more than Irwin Allen--promoted the idea of a
Lost in Space cartoon (by 1973, LiS had earned Fox a pretty penny in syndication), but the approach was doomed from the start, by replacing all original characters except Smith (voiced by Johnathan Harris), dumped the
Jupiter II in favor of one of Hanna-Barbera's endlessly recycled rockets, and attempted to play up the Smith character, but the screenwriters were just plain inferior--even compared to many of the sub-par writers who cranked out scripts for the original series.
As part of
The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie,
Lost in Space was one of many pilots, but it--similar to the majority of specials--failed to be picked up, the exceptions being
The Brady Kids &
Lassie's Rescue Rangers. Hanna-Barbera's
Lost in Space pilot was awful, and its no surprise that it failed to sell, with such terrible animation, nonsensical plot and sharing not a thing which made the original series popular (IOW, more than Dr, Smith and the Robot).
Its purely a train-wreck watch.
