STAR TREK the enemy of LOST IN SPACE?

[Push The Button]

If someone were to try rebooting LIS and better explore its potential and get back to the early sensibility then I think it would work best as a miniseries. That way you could plot out exactly what you wanted to do and not get bogged down in trying to pull something out of your ass just to have something to broadcast.

How about a dark, gritty version, something like the BSG reboot?
Then you could have someone finally give Smith his due and flush him out of an airlock.

I watched the movie remake 15 years ago, but I can only remember Heather Graham, the rest of it was too dreadful and my brain must have deleted it.

 

[Melakon]

So you are saying that without the Dr Smith/Will dynamic it would have failed earlier?

that's sad.

Irwin Allen tried to repeat the Dr. Smith/Will Robinson dynamic in Land of the Giants with Mr. Fitzhugh and whatever that kid's name was.

the rest of it was too dreadful and my brain must have deleted it.

Two words: Gary Oldman.

 

[davejames]

I would have been fine with the light and silly tone of LIS if the writing had actually been somewhat witty and clever (along the lines of the 60s Batman, or hell even The Addams Family). But other than the occasional witty remark from the Robot, most of the writing on the show was just abysmal.

Even for a kid's show, you'd think they could have put a bit more effort into it than they did.

 

[Warped9]

How about a dark, gritty version, something like the BSG reboot? Then you could have someone finally give Smith his due and flush him out of an airlock.

I don't think it has to be that dark and edgy to work. Smith could just as easily try to sabotage things (the launch) out of misguided beliefs or even just out of coercion.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

And he could be trapped aboard because his "employers" are trying to get rid of the evidence.

Which actually might be the first step in his redemption, once he realized what actually happened.

Just throwing out a possibility.

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if--as they must have thought--Dr Smith was actually helping the show?

He certainly was. His antics were very popular. After all, it was a show whose audience was largely children.

What if he had been gotten rid of---could the level of seriousness been brought to a level between the mostly serious of TOS and the 'completely ridiculous' that it devolved into?

Well, first off, I'm not sure TOS is the right comparison, since the shows weren't trying to reach the same demographic. One was a family show, the other an adult drama.

Second, I think most of the first season did achieve what you're talking about. Remember, the descent into sheer camp wasn't just about Dr. Smith, since it didn't happen until the second season. It was about competing with Batman. People forget what a massive, industry-shaking hit and cultural phenomenon Batman was in its first season. And there's always a drive in TV and movies to imitate big hits. Not only Lost in Space but The Man from U.N.C.L.E. got more campy in response to it and in an attempt to compete wtih it.

So without Dr. Smith, if the show had been popular enough to get a second season, it would probably still have been camped up to compete with Batman. But conversely, if Batman hadn't existed, then LiS with Dr. Smith would've remained, if not serious, at least nowhere near as campy and intentionally ludicrous as it became.

Part of LIS' problem is they wrote themselves into a box. By stranding the ship planet bound everything had to come to them. In a way it was a sci-fi version of Gilligan's Island.

But it also saved them the expense of rebuilding the planet soundstage every week or showing takeoff/landing sequences regularly. Irwin Allen was famously cheap.

 

[Warped9]

And he could be trapped aboard because his "employers" are trying to get rid of the evidence.

Which actually might be the first step in his redemption, once he realized what actually happened.

Just throwing out a possibility.

I think this could work. There's a tendency today to make most everything go "dark and edgy" because it's currently trendy, but it doesn't always have to be that way. By redeeming Smith and keeping it somewhat more mainstream then you don't risk automatically alienating a lot of fans of the original series.

 

[Christopher]

I submit that we've already had a rebooted, redeemable Dr. Smith in a dark and edgy series. It's just that he was called Gaius Baltar instead.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

Wouldn't know. Never watched the remake. I know that it exists, that some characters had gender changes, practically all of them had personality changes, but that's about it.

I suggested it simply because it seemed logical.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Actually, it took off in the second season premiere, stayed up for a few episodes before crashing down on a planet and meeting Wally Cox and his Chicken Monster.

Listen, that episode served up some bold social commentary on large birds and the danger of drinking high-explosive beverages. Things no other show was willing to talk about.

LIS might have been better off sticking to more realistic overall scenarios and leaving the comedy to Jonathan Harris. Dr. Smith's scene-stealing presence was like lightening in a bottle compared to the more workaday roles of John, Don, and Maureen.

Harris was the biggest thing LIS had that the other Irwin Allen shows did not. He literally stole (and I think saved) the show.

And this had an effect on Star Trek, because after Guy Williams famously became a supporting character in "his own" show, agents of leading men began demanding contract clauses that kept any character from having more lines than the official star. Thus William Shatner found himself having to count lines to ensure Nimoy wasn't getting more than him. It's not that Shatner was petty-- he was just trying to avoid the professional catastrophe that had befallen Guy Williams.

 

[Warped9]

^^ That is a seriously WTF! Image.

 

[Maurice]

I've never heard of such a contract clause. Care to share a source?

 

[Commishsleer]

[

Harris was the biggest thing LIS had that the other Irwin Allen shows did not. He literally stole (and I think saved) the show.

Didn't he also steal the show as Lucifer in Original BSG. OK perhaps not steal the show but I still remember him.

I thought Dr Smith much less redeemable than Gaius Baltar in nuBSG but perhaps he is a modern equivalent.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I've never heard of such a contract clause. Care to share a source?

Fan knowledge of this general topic probably began with a review of ST:TMP by Harlan Ellison in Starlog magazine (April 1980), in which he excoriated Shatner for counting lines in the "City" script. Ellison might also talk about it in a youtube video somewhere; I can't recall for sure. But he obviously didn't understand the legitimate problem faced by TV's lead actors in the 1960s, and didn't bother to find out.

I think I read "official" confirmation that Shatner had one of these role-protecting contract clauses in Inside Star Trek, of which I read a borrowed copy so I can't find the reference. But it's a pretty well-known thing now.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Here's a little insight on Guy Williams' professional disaster at the hands of Jonathan Harris, which Shatner did not want to risk experiencing with Leonard Nimoy:

As I've said, I think Harris actually saved Lost in Space, but Guy didn't have to like it.

 

[Warped9]

I remember a couple of years back imaging classic TREK given the profane, no-good-behavior-rewarded treatment you tend to see on THE SOPRANOS, OZ and GAME OF THRONES. Now that HBO is doing first-class fantasy now, how do you think they would reimagine LOST IN SPACE?

Considering the source material, the silliness potential's still great, but don't forget how serious the show originally was.

Yeah, but you don't have to go all dirty on it. Sure there is swearing in real life but often not as over-the-top as it's done on TV.

What was that western themed series some years back that had "fuck" like every third or fourth word? I got bored real fast.

 

[Maurice]

I've never heard of such a contract clause. Care to share a source?

Fan knowledge of this general topic probably began with a review of ST:TMP by Harlan Ellison in Starlog magazine (April 1980), in which he excoriated Shatner for counting lines in the "City" script. Ellison might also talk about it in a youtube video somewhere; I can't recall for sure. But he obviously didn't understand the legitimate problem faced by TV's lead actors in the 1960s, and didn't bother to find out.

I think I read "official" confirmation that Shatner had one of these role-protecting contract clauses in Inside Star Trek, of which I read a borrowed copy so I can't find the reference. But it's a pretty well-known thing now.

That hardly sounds like it's "common" though. That's just a Star Trek specific example. I don't recall reading any such thing in Inside Star Trek, but my copy is out on loan so I can't check right now.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Harris was the biggest thing LIS had that the other Irwin Allen shows did not. He literally stole (and I think saved) the show.

Didn't he also steal the show as Lucifer in Original BSG. OK perhaps not steal the show but I still remember him.

He was great in BSG! Definitely stole all the scenes with Baltar, subtly getting his goat. I always thought Lucifer would be fun to hang out with.

Love the ad!!

 

[Redfern]

Sure there is swearing in real life but often not as over-the-top as it's done on TV.

What was that western themed series some years back that had "f*ck" like every third or fourth word? I got bored real fast.

You have obviously never met a co-worker of mine named Rob. This disturbed fellow feels compelled to drop an "F bomb" at least every other sentence. It would be one thing if I worked on a shipyard loading dock for some other equivalent "blue collar" job. But we are both system engineers in a 7 story tall office building with a dress code mandating button down shirts and ties.

One time I got so frustrated with him that I asked, "So, how's your Tourette syndrome today?"

An exceptionally vile individual.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Warped9]

Well, I did know a fellow from Columbia who covered his lapses in English vocabulary with an *F* about every sentence. He was actually a pretty funny guy, but it could get old.