Netflix greenlights new "Lost in Space"

At least they aren't making the mistake of trying to cram it into the continuity of the original show.

 

Ron Moore's BSG didn't constitute any kind of overcorrection. It was perfect the way it was.

 

Good to see that Vasquez Peaks exists on yet another planet...

 

Toby Stephens generally doesn't commit to nonsense. Molly Parker is a good performer. Dr. Smith is played by Parker Posey.

It might not be bad. It might not be bad.

 

Yep.

 

A good remake should take the same concept and just run in a different direction. It would be interesting to see the idea of a family lost in deep space as part of a colonization attempt is interesting. We got campy gold, but it could be done in a series way focusing on them attempting to live on an alien planet and dealing with being disconnected from the rest of humanity. With a robot, we probably won't be seeing the space monkey.

Maybe as a joke, but it won't be hanging around getting into hijinks.

 

No space monkey? Sign of the time...

 

The thing to remember, though, is that LiS was originally a show about a family struggling to survive in deep space, but then it got moved in a different direction when Jonathan Harris' comedy antics increasingly took over the show, and then in season 2 when they revamped it to full-on camp to try to compete with Batman. So the problem with talking about going in "a different direction" from the original show is that the original show changed its own direction two or three times, most drastically between seasons 1 & 2.

Many LiS fans feel that the early first season is the way the show should've been, and that it lost its way after that. So many fans feel that the ideal revival would be one that recaptured that early feel and maintained it, made the show that we wish we'd gotten all along. That's what was done in the '90s Innovation Comics revival largely written by Bill Mumy. It was presented as a sequel set several years later, in continuity, but more consistent with the characterizations and tone of the early episodes. It posited that Dr. Smith's buffoonery was a conscious act of protective camouflage by a Smith who was still the dangerous manipulator of the early episodes, and that the later, campier seasons were actually how Penny had interpreted and embellished the family's adventures in her diary. Although it still retained a lot of the warmth and humor of the first season as well. (Along with some more '90s-comics attributes like increased violence and gratuitous partial nudity, though at least it tried to objectify the male characters nearly as much as the female ones.)

 

I only just now opened this, and they have a full top pic of the Jupiter 2 in there! Interesting take on it, but I kinda like it, better than the movie or the 2004 pilot version.

There's also a larger ship, the Resolute, which looks to be a carrier ship for nearly 100 of these Jupiter 2 type ships.

 

I think the Robinsons pilot did the same thing, making the J2 a landing craft from a larger starship. That actually makes a lot of sense, so I'm not surprised they both did it.

 

Really like the new Jupiter 2, they did a good job of updating the old fashioned saucer of the original series.

 

Executive Producer Kevin Burns said that the 10 episodes are proudced as a 10 hour movie with a continuous storyline.

 

It looks like there won't be any glass stasis tubes? If not, that's disappointing.

 

Not surprising, that's how the majority of Netflix's series are produced.

 

I rewatched the 1998 LIS movie this evening. It's pretty good in many respects
...a sad thing that another two decades of space movies have not been consistently memorable or innovative enough to diminish it much by comparison.

 

Really? I found it instantly forgettable.

 

I found it downright offensive!
Although, I think they played Dr. Smith right - actually evil.

 

That post was more of a commentary on recent space movies than on the LIS movie.

"And...the monkey flips the switch" is a more useful quotation to me IRL than probably anything in the Star Wars films.

 

Also, I should probably qualify my remarks by mentioning that, unlike many of my age cohort, I thought the original LIS, along with almost all of Irwin Allen's other career emissions was just downright dreadful from start to finish.

I will grant that the most star-struck I've ever been was spending a couple of hours with Jonathan Harris back around...1992?

 

It’s interesting that the failed remake TV pilot "The Robinsons: Lost in Space" (2004) starred Jayne Brook (Discovery’s Adm. Katrina Cornwell) as Maureen Robinson and Adrianne Palicki (Orville’s Cmdr. Kelly Grayson) as Judy Robinson.