It was a tv-movie, probably a pilot. I've only seen it once, when it aired, but publicity shots have been showing up ever since.
Did Star Trek's high quality help Lost in Space?
- Thread starter Talos IV
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That entry is a mess, so a few years back to I revised it to try to indicate that these were all different explanations for the show's cancellation, but that no one of them is fact.
Land of the Giants used the LiS Space Pod in two related episodes in the second season: "A Place Called Earth" and "Home Sweet Home."
It's all subjective, but I always felt the first two seasons of Voyage were Irwin Allen's best TV work and it was overall his best series. Land of the Giants was the weakest to me[ Lost in Space started beautifully but totally fell apart by the time the second season got rolling. The Time Tunnel hit the skids before the first and only season ended. I enjoy all four of the series on different levels, but Voyage is my favorite.
Looking at it's write up on wiki and IMDB I see it came out when I lived in Japan. There is a gap in my American TV knowledge between the years 1969 and 1972. Every once in a while I run across something like CBTS that I missed out on.
I have several gaps, some involving years, where I didn't have a tv or had poor reception. I worked nights a lot for almost 10 years. Currently, I have not seen even local news since before Enterprise went off the air, and nothing at all since 2008, when everything went digital broadcast. My two tvs, one bought in 2006, are only good for watching videos now.
You are not kidding, and it is not limited to LiS. Wikipedia is an anti-fact, anti-intellectual nightmare, where personal agenda or long-held myths are often passed off as fact by any random member. It is no wonder many universities forbid the use of the site (just browse some of the edit commentary--its no better than an uncontrolled message board).
LOTG's early episodes (in production order, such as "The Crash" & "The Weird World") were pretty strong and surprisingly free of the silly hallmarks which (eventually) hurt Allen's TV series. By the time of LOTG, I believe Allen worked out the kind of dramatic hiccups that felt so forced in earlier series (barking substituted for strong performances / every other story placing the characters on the edge of absolute disaster, etc.), and even created a continuity-friendly storyline with the paranoid S.I.D. organization (think CIA meets secret police) hunting the humans.
Sadly, the early strengths gave way to some of the problems that torpedoed Allen's other series, but, if forced to rank the shows in terms of overall quality/execution, LOTG would win the top spot.
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I've never seen it but it's available on DVD now.
If you are a fan of Irwin Allen, City Beneath the Sea is worth a screening, if for no other reason than it gives you a look at the path his TV sci-fi career would have taken if CBTS was picked up as a series.
Let's just say Allen made the right decision when he returned to the big screen a year later with The Poseidon Adventure.
That bad, huh?
Any creative advancements made with early Land of the Giants was lost on the scripting of CBTS. Typical of Allen, he hired many well-known, talented actors, but they were saddled with the worst of that aforementioned "edge of absolute disaster" routine dialogue and situations, plus a strained, love-interest's-husbandwas-killed-by-the-hero plot.
Stuart Whitman, Robert Wagner and others are not at their best in this film, so if you want to see it just to know how the last of Allen's (fairly well-budgeted) far future adventure plays, then check it out.
Perhaps you can see some series potential in the plot that NBC did not.
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I'd be shocked and appalled if any university, at least those that are accredited, allow students to cite Wikipedia as a source. Hell, I'd have the same reaction if many high schools allowed students to cite Wikipedia as a source.
That said, it's not completely devoid of value -- but you have to follow the sources cited in each article, and in many cases, there either aren't or the sources are pretty terrible.
Indeed! Worth having if you're an Irwin Allen fan and a completeist but not something you'd really want in any way or form as a sci-fi fan!
JB
Well, you can say that about anything he did after Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea's second year and Lost in Space's first. And that's being generous. I can't imagine "sci-fi fans" really taking much of his content seriously. And I say this as a guy who loves his shows.
Allen's greatest achievements were non-sci-fi: The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Those are great films. I think there's still a club of TPA fans who hold mini-conventions on the Queen Mary.
The Towering Inferno is still one of my favorite films of all time. The Poseidon Adventure, not so much. The last ten minutes are, frankly hysterical, with Ernie Borgnine, then Gene Hackman and finally Red Buttons shouting inane dialog at each other. None of the characters were actually likeable. The Towering Inferno had a much better cast with characters you could get behind. That's just me, though. YMMV.
One thing that added to the greatness of these films is that Allen brought along John Williams. The Poseidon Adventure's main and end titles alone are among the best things ever (music or otherwise), and maybe that elevates the movie for me.
Definitely. I was 7 years old in 1972 when my dad took me to that movie. The music took me to another place and I remember the whole experience vividly.
IrishNero
Commodore
And how is it that Star Trek was considered high quality? It was just created for a different demographic. The acting was often mediocre and the stories sometimes tanked too. If Lost in Space benefitted, it would only be in a general sense because of space anything was en vogue for awhile.
Star Trek was an adult show that dealt with serious issues (power and its abuses, war and peace, race relations), is a credible manner. Fun with a purpose, you might say.
Lost in Space had no such aspirations: it was intended to be an action-adventure entertainment, and as such, it succeeded according to the tastes of the viewer. Where ST explored cultures (Vulcan, for example) and commented on the human condition through that lens, LiS was content to regularly use BEMs and AOTWs to advance a story and create conflict for the Space Family Robinson to resolve.
These were simply two very different concepts using science fiction as a platform with little else in common. Determinations of quality would be better made within the framework of the individual concept than by comparison to each other.
It's perhaps a bit hard to believe now, but Star Trek was twice nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series (in 1967 and 1968). Nimoy was nominated for best supporting actor three years in a row for the series. Star Trek (and its sister show, Mission: Impossible) were among the "quality TV" of their day.
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