Thank you. 
Revisiting Lost In Space...
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
It's fine if Smith is a genuinely flawed character, but to portray him as so flawed that he's a obvious dangerous fool undermines all the other characters who repeatedly trust him to do anything. It makes everyone out to be an idiot.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't want a "badass" Smith, I just want a remotely believable cast of characters.
^^^The show at various times used a carousel and an old-fashioned cage elevator as prop "spaceships" or "time machines." Believability was a ship that saild from Lost in Space somewhere in the first or second episode. If you didn't find the Smith/Will/Robot trio charming in some way, the show had zero to offer.
Believability is irrelevant to Lost In Space. Looking for realistic science or characterization in LIS is like expecting to see The Three Stooges go to the ER after clobbering each other with frying pans; if that's what you want, you're in the wrong place.
Well, Irwin Allen did like orange.
The writing may have been poor, but Lost in Space decisively outperformed Star Trek in the ratings department. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Space#Ratings_and_popularity:
The Smith/Will/Robot relationship was not poor writing. It wasn't realistic or plausible and it was repetitive (Smith's schemes get Will and/or the Robot in trouble, then he comes through in some fashion to help because deep down he has a genuine affection for them, mostly.) But it was charming, for those people who have an interest in characters and can suspend disbelief for the inane hijinks in the background. But the relationship itself was strongly written, even if its not to your taste, and these people had a genuine identify.
Contrast that to supposed examples of good writing. Gaius Baltar on the new BattleStar Galactica was a direct development of Dr. Smith (consciously or not is irrelevant.) You do not have the least idea who Gaius Baltar is or what he wants. Yet he is the very opposite of a plausible, realistic character! That truly is poor writing.
You can have a few well written characters and poor writing all around them. The overall scriptwriting is bad, despite it's occasional well-handled aspects. There are episodes where they do it more or less right (The Anti-Matter Man, for instance), which throws the other flaws into sharp relief because you see that the show actually could be better than it typically was.
Again, the bad writing, unintentional or otherwise, was integral to the identity and the appeal of the show. That's not being dismissive. Whether or not a particular person likes it is up to them, but it doesn't make any sense to judge it by the standards of something it's not. It's one thing to dislike The Three Stooges because you don't like slapstick, but it's silly to criticize it for not presenting an in-depth cultural study of Depression-era America.
I don't think it should have been more like Star Trek, but I do think it could have been a lot better.
Lost in Space's refusal to take the science of the setting seriously was a choice, as was making the series a juvenile oriented family series (which is to say, refusing to allow destructive internal conflict.) Rejecting the series because you disagree with that choice is one thing. But deciding writing that didn't aim at what you wanted is just poor writing is something else entirely. The conventional wisdom is that SF is just fantasy. Ergo, Lost in Space's terminal goofiness is not a problem.
But, even if you don't agree that it is a good idea to write nonsense, esthetically speaking the light-hearted tone of the series is compatible with the Irwin Allen production values. In its own terms, the writing on Lost in Space was good: It created good characters. It successfuly met its aim. Land of the Giants didn't, it's writing was bad. Good criticism starts by trying to see what the work in question was trying to do.
You're ignoring the fact that I've mentioned episodes of Lost In Space where the writing is better, and the episodes are better. The writing on the show was variable, and much of it was as bad as Land of the Giants. What saves Lost In Space is a few of the actors could make more out of the lousy scripts than the cast of Giants did.
The rest of your argument is ridiculous. It's saying that you cannot level a critique at something if it succeeds in being what its creators wanted, which leaves virtually no room for critique at all. That's utter nonsense.
The rest of your argument is ridiculous. It's saying that you cannot level a critique at something if it succeeds in being what its creators wanted, which leaves virtually no room for critique at all. That's utter nonsense.
No, there are still a great many grounds for critique even in the narrowly accepted meaning of the term. After all, the intention is not to be found in the PR or even in producers' interviews and podcasts. It is to be found in what's on screen. There is such a thing as dramatic irony but it is astonishing how often shows and movies end up saying something that the makers didn't intend.
Do horror movie writers really intend to say that virgins are the ones who deserve to live, and that one special virgin has the power to defeat evil? Television series in particular, in these days of serialization, are prone to bait and switch tactics as to thematic goal or plot resolution of the series. Failing to deliver on original intentions is always a mark of bad writing, in any accepted meaning of the term. There are shows that manifestly aspire to be relevant but fail because they triumphantly spout a cliche. Or worse, blatantly falsify reality. There is a great deal to criticize by the intentional standard, if only time wasted. Serials television in particular is open to many criticisms on the intentionality standard.
In the case of Lost in Space, the blatant foolishness of the settings and the fundamental absurdity of people actually tolerating a Dr. Smith and the repetition of the Smith/Will/Robot story are not contradicted by a solemnity in the rest of the series. The equally fundamental absurdity of people tolerating the latterday Dr. Smith, namely, Dr. Baltar, by contrast does contradict the rather grim intentions of the new BattleStar Galactica. The intentionality standard in fact gives us a general rule, which is that the more "seriously" a SF television show or movie takes itself, the more likely it is that nonsense in the execution will ruin it. It is precisely the intention to be serious that makes stupidity in the writing an objective criticism.
Then there are the wider critiques that do not address the more objective aspect of writing, but assesses the value of the intention. For SF, since the networks and studios and their acolytes arbitrarily decree that SF is a subgenre of fantasy SF therefore does not have to make any sense. Of course, it is reasonable to object that a "fantasy" that pretends to not be magic but somehow natural is so intrinsically peculiar that this insistence is absurd. Nonetheless this nonsense is shamelessly upheld.
Thus, you must be aware that objections based on notions about what SF writing should do are rarely deemed criticism of the writing. It is instead dismissed as an arrogant insistence on what you personally want in what is merely a matter of taste. The unspoken subtext is always that your taste is deficient.
It's sort of the opposite of criticizing porn. Criticizing the execution ("writing") really misses the point. Except that it's generally acceptable to dis porn on other, supposedly nonliterary grounds. (And, no, there is no difference between porn and "erotica" except the pretensions of the viewer.) Yet it is generally acceptable to tolerate "bad" writing in SF because it's all stupid, and anybody watching it is slumming, except for the ones who take it seriously. They're just fanboys who've concocted weird schemas and checklists about what's "good" and "bad" writing that don't really have anything to do with the writing.
The only generally accepted standard of critique in writing is in terms of intention. Criticizing the value of the intentions, especially in terms of relevance to the real world, is not a widely acceptable argument. It is true that the narrow interpretation of criticism where critical judgment must be made in light of intentionality can be abused, to decree that entertainment is the universal intention, and therefore success is objectively measurable by popularity, even identical with it. So? Nothing is so fool proof that a fool can't screw it up. Especially a self serving one.
I don't think any episodes of Lost in Space were particularly better than the others, so I wasn't ignoring your point. I just thought it was wrong.
Do horror movie writers really intend to say that virgins are the ones who deserve to live, and that one special virgin has the power to defeat evil? Television series in particular, in these days of serialization, are prone to bait and switch tactics as to thematic goal or plot resolution of the series. Failing to deliver on original intentions is always a mark of bad writing, in any accepted meaning of the term. There are shows that manifestly aspire to be relevant but fail because they triumphantly spout a cliche. Or worse, blatantly falsify reality. There is a great deal to criticize by the intentional standard, if only time wasted. Serials television in particular is open to many criticisms on the intentionality standard.
In the case of Lost in Space, the blatant foolishness of the settings and the fundamental absurdity of people actually tolerating a Dr. Smith and the repetition of the Smith/Will/Robot story are not contradicted by a solemnity in the rest of the series. The equally fundamental absurdity of people tolerating the latterday Dr. Smith, namely, Dr. Baltar, by contrast does contradict the rather grim intentions of the new BattleStar Galactica. The intentionality standard in fact gives us a general rule, which is that the more "seriously" a SF television show or movie takes itself, the more likely it is that nonsense in the execution will ruin it. It is precisely the intention to be serious that makes stupidity in the writing an objective criticism.
Then there are the wider critiques that do not address the more objective aspect of writing, but assesses the value of the intention. For SF, since the networks and studios and their acolytes arbitrarily decree that SF is a subgenre of fantasy SF therefore does not have to make any sense. Of course, it is reasonable to object that a "fantasy" that pretends to not be magic but somehow natural is so intrinsically peculiar that this insistence is absurd. Nonetheless this nonsense is shamelessly upheld.
Thus, you must be aware that objections based on notions about what SF writing should do are rarely deemed criticism of the writing. It is instead dismissed as an arrogant insistence on what you personally want in what is merely a matter of taste. The unspoken subtext is always that your taste is deficient.
It's sort of the opposite of criticizing porn. Criticizing the execution ("writing") really misses the point. Except that it's generally acceptable to dis porn on other, supposedly nonliterary grounds. (And, no, there is no difference between porn and "erotica" except the pretensions of the viewer.) Yet it is generally acceptable to tolerate "bad" writing in SF because it's all stupid, and anybody watching it is slumming, except for the ones who take it seriously. They're just fanboys who've concocted weird schemas and checklists about what's "good" and "bad" writing that don't really have anything to do with the writing.
The only generally accepted standard of critique in writing is in terms of intention. Criticizing the value of the intentions, especially in terms of relevance to the real world, is not a widely acceptable argument. It is true that the narrow interpretation of criticism where critical judgment must be made in light of intentionality can be abused, to decree that entertainment is the universal intention, and therefore success is objectively measurable by popularity, even identical with it. So? Nothing is so fool proof that a fool can't screw it up. Especially a self serving one.
I don't think any episodes of Lost in Space were particularly better than the others, so I wasn't ignoring your point. I just thought it was wrong.
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^^ Nice. 
And therein lies the main point of disagreement. If you don't see a difference in terms of quality between "The Keeper" or "Return to Earth" and things like "The Space Croppers" or "Space Circus", then we don't have a common frame of reference.
I think there are episodes where the show and characters work better, even within the show's frequently absurd premise.
Interestingly, several sources I've read indicate that Lost In Space's decent showing in the ratings didn't please CBS as much as it might seem, because they found the audience skewed very young, and the show didn't appeal to the people who made purchasing decisions. This may very well have been a factor in the show's cancellation, although there are many stories and rumors swirling about as to why it was canned.
The very young, why did no one tell CBS about toy sales. The show had enough gadgetry. I'd have loved a Jupiter 2, or chariot as a kid.
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