Revisiting Lost In Space...

[Warped9]

"War Of The Robots" ***

Will Robinson finds a robot inactive and in disrepair.

I was actually tempted to rate this one a four star. This was still some ever present goofiness, but I was interested in what was going on. I liked how the Jupiter II Robot could sense the alien robot's awareness. Hell, this episode's most interesting character was the Robot. And i liked how he was at a loss to explain his own thoughts. Even Smith wasn't as usually obnoxious in this one. Another nice touch was the alien robot's master was definitely not human although he did look an awful lot like a werewolf.

It's also a nice tip-of-the-hat and a nice reuse of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. The music used when Robby was onscreen at times sounded like pieces from The Day The Earth Stood Still.

 

[Saga]

"War Of The Robots" ***

Will Robinson finds a robot inactive and in disrepair.

I was actually tempted to rate this one a four star. This was still some ever present goofiness, but I was interested in what was going on. I liked how the Jupiter II Robot could sense the alien robot's awareness. Hell, this episode's most interesting character was the Robot. And i liked how he was at a loss to explain his own thoughts. Even Smith wasn't as usually obnoxious in this one. Another nice touch was the alien robot's master was definitely not human although he did look an awful lot like a werewolf.

It's also a nice tip-of-the-hat and a nice reuse of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. The music used when Robby was onscreen at times sounded like pieces from The Day The Earth Stood Still.

glad you enjoyed this episode. it was always one of my favorites.

 

[Forbin]

And Robby and B9 are basically brothers - they were designed by the same man.

 

[Warped9]

"The Magic Mirror" *

Penny and Smith discover an unusual abandoned mirror that is more than what it seems.


*Sigh* From an entertaining episode to a confusing one.The mirror is obviously a portal of some sort to...what? Another dimension? And the boy who has no reflection, just what or who was he actually supposed to be? I really couldn't grasp what was going on here other than learning that some sort of concussive force directed at your own reflection allowed you to enter or exit the portal. None of this made any sense.

 

[Maurice]

"War Of The Robots" ***

Will Robinson finds a robot inactive and in disrepair.

I was actually tempted to rate this one a four star. This was still some ever present goofiness, but I was interested in what was going on. I liked how the Jupiter II Robot could sense the alien robot's awareness. Hell, this episode's most interesting character was the Robot. And i liked how he was at a loss to explain his own thoughts. Even Smith wasn't as usually obnoxious in this one. Another nice touch was the alien robot's master was definitely not human although he did look an awful lot like a werewolf.

It's also a nice tip-of-the-hat and a nice reuse of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. The music used when Robby was onscreen at times sounded like pieces from The Day The Earth Stood Still.

I liked the episode but it still suffers from the characters acting for the sake of the plot than logically. They find an alien machine and let Will get it working, without any thought that this thing could be a war machine or something else. Foolish in the extreme. Also, the Robinsons are awfully quick to embrace this alien device and reject their Robot.

 

[Warped9]

^^ Yep, underlining aspects that prevent me from rating it higher. I rated it a 3 because it was more entertaining than usual and the negatives didn't seem as bad as usual.


"The Challenge" **

An alien boy wants to pit himself against Will Robinson in a series of tests.

Something about this made me feel it would have been right at home as a TNG episode, although TNG might have made a better effort of it. There was yet again a genuine story to be told here, but it's weighed under by heavy handed writing. Nice to see Michael Ansara here, but honestly he's wasted in a part that doesn't measure up to his talent. In the end there's also something of a cheat as we see that Ansara doesn't address the issue of his defeat at the hand of John Robinson after he had already told his son that if he failed all witnesses would have to be eliminated.

I couldn't help but laugh when John Robinson was challenged to a fencing duel. Hell, the guy is Zorro---he can't lose!

 

[Warped9]

"The Space Trader" ***

A trader comes to the planet to do business, but with an ultimate prize in mind.

There was something likeable about this episode. Even Smith's ridiculousness didn't put too much of a damper on it. I also quite liked the nice touch of having the Trader's sign in an alien language---a very nice touch. I have to admit I wonder just who he was paying income tax to if he traded throughout the galaxy as he claimed. It's also fun the way they're beginning to give the Robot more of an independent nature and no longer subservient to Smith's control.

The Trader made me think of what Trek's Cyrano Jones or Harry Mudd could be like if a bit more sinister in nature. That said I find it odd that the Trader would consider Smith a worthwhile piece of merchandise when other members of the Jupiter II group would be more worthy.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

Everybody needs a punching bag now and again.

 

[Warped9]

"His Majesty Smith" *

Smith ingratiates himself with aliens looking for a new king.

Intended or not there is an amusing viewpoint here, that kings are pretty much useless things that are ripe to be sacrificed. And seeing the replicant Smith being so virtuous and kind was as annoying as the original selfish Smith.

It has to be said that even though LIS' production could look cheesy every so often they depict technologies that suggest something quite advanced even if they were just making it up on the fly. It's also a little weird seeing actors that would appear on Star Trek in decent dramatic roles performing less than inspired parts on LIS.

As for the story itself I just found it too silly to really interest me.The basic story idea isn't bad actually, but the generally goofy way it's done had me shaking my head.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

You'll find yourself doing that a lot.

Mind you I loved it when I was six, and still like the Jupiter II.

But I could definitely sympathize with Guy Williams frustration over the silliness of the scripts. There was one point in the 3rd season when he and June were laughing so hard at the stupid script during rehersal that Irwin Allen got mad and suspended them both for a week. It was the third time he'd gotten screwed by the Hollywood establishment and by the time it was over the man had had enough. He retired and never acted again.

 

[Warped9]

"The Space Croppers" *

A small family group lands to plant a crop of strange plants before moving on.

This was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. As cute as Sherry Jackson is (particularly if you've seen her in TOS in one of William Thiess' costumes) she's wasted here. Talk about playing to cliches. A group of space hillbillies where the daughter is a witch and the son a werewolf. And they're planting vegetation that's bred to quickly overrun a planet and devour every living thing on it. Add to that the nauseating experience of watching the buffoon Zachary Smith trying to woo the hillbilly mother just so he can hitch a ride back to Earth.

This was just horrible.



"All That Glitters" ***

A criminal on-the-run leaves a key to an incredible treasure.

Smith's sense of greed is always lurking just beneath the surface to blind any remote sense of good judgement he might have. And here it's given full reign as he gets the chance to enrich himself beyond imagination. But the treasure he finds is so alike the mythical genie in a lamp where you have to be so very careful what you ask for.

I rather like the basic story to this one and seeing Smith feeling repentant was refreshing. I found Werner Klemperer's policeman's bipedal "hounds" rather interesting in a conceptual way. I also liked that some of the other characters besides the males of the cast getting some focus. But that said there was too much silliness and not quite enough of interest going on in this episode.


"The Lost Civilization" **

Their search for fresh water leads John, Don, Will and the Robot to an underground civilization.

Continuity is obviously next to nonexistent in this show since only an episode to two ago they had managed to rig up an apparatus to replenish their water supply, yet here they are looking for another supply. I guess the previous solution didn't last or work out. After falling down a hole Will and the Robot found a sleeping young girl who Will kisses to awaken. When awake she proclaims herself a princess and proceeds to show him her world. From there we're expected to accept the idea that a buried and old civilization has been centuries building an army and planning to invade Earth only waiting for someone to awaken their princess and signal the beginning of the invading campaign.

Uh, yeah...

This episode didn't start off badly, but it soured in due course. How did this civilization come to be underground? And what motivation or objective could they possibly have for invading Earth when from so many previous references Earth is considered something of a minor backwater place?

I just couldn't get into this.

 

[drychlick]

i love this show! it not too good to try to nickpick it! it just a 1960 tv show noting more ! but fun as hack! sit back turn off the mind and enjoy it as it is enterment! my 1st women i fell in love with was Penny! she was so sweat and kind! !

 

[RJDiogenes]

I just couldn't get into this.

Considering the way the show evolved, this is only going to get worse. You might want to quit before your head explodes. The vegetable uprising alone may be enough to kill you.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I just couldn't get into this.

Considering the way the show evolved, this is only going to get worse. You might want to quit before your head explodes. The vegetable uprising alone may be enough to kill you.

Their hippie episode will give you a new appreciation for 'The Way to Eden' LiS really can only be taken for a laugh after the first couple of episodes. The show could have been a brilliant camp hit had they embraced it as a comedy. It wasn't in Irwin Allan's nature to do so, I expect.

 

[Warped9]

I just couldn't get into this.

Considering the way the show evolved, this is only going to get worse. You might want to quit before your head explodes. The vegetable uprising alone may be enough to kill you.

I don't know if I'll go beyond the first season. But I'll tell you whats maddening. In quite a few of these episodes there's a genuinely decent story at the core waiting to be told. On a few occasions they're almost there, but then they can't resist the impulse to clutter it up with over-the-top stupidity. Yeah, sure, give us some humour, but the impulse for overdone camp is so much of its time that it doesn't translate anymore. In some of the better episodes (and that is a relative term) it works better because the camp isn't so overwhelming. If they could have maintained that balance more the show would have been better for it. And it has been cited earlier that the campier they went the ratings slipped. Mind you I have to say that the establishing of the show's setting throughout the first five episodes is better than the original unaired pilot. In the pilot they too quickly get stranded and even abandon the Jupiter II which in its own way had a presence much as the Enterprise did on Star Trek.

Watching the first season from the beginning you can see that the camp was indeed there from the very beginning, but in the very beginning it was scaled back. Yet as the show progressed and Harris is given more focus and more creative input and reign the show rather quickly descends into the familiar ridiculousness. One can easily see how Guy Williams could have gotten frustrated as hell with this. They probably sold him on the idea that he was the series lead of a dramatic space adventure and before you know it he's a supporting character on a comedy fantasy. It wouldn't surprise me if much of the cast looked enviously at what was being done on Star Trek and even Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea thinking, "Why the hell can't we be doing more of that?"

The funny thing is you look at episodes like "Bread And Circuses" and "Patterns Of Force" and you've got Imperial Romans and Nazis in space(!). Really??? And yet Trek manages to pull off something that was pretty absurd on the face of it. For Trek they managed it because of its serious tone throughout the story (with the occasional light touch). But then take an episode like "A Piece Of The Action."---Capone style gangsters in space! And now it's deliberately played for laughs. And it's funnier than most of whatever LIS ever did. Of course it has to be said that Star Trek had already established its pedigree so it could afford to cut loose once in awhile.

In LIS it's simply too much of one thing. There's very little sense of wonder in LIS and yet throughout these episodes there are a lot of really interesting ideas that were just thrown in and never explored. It's frustrating.

It has to be said that part of the problem is the show's initial premise: the first family in space. The first human colonists. It doesn't really make any sense, not if you're playing it straight and dramatically, unless you find some reaching way to rationalize it. But if the show had played for humour from the get-go then the premise would work better because you're never expected to swallow it seriously.

I said it before: sometimes LIS feels like it was trying for what M*A*S*H did some years later, balancing drama and comedy. But M*A*S*H knew the formula of how to do it successfully. Indeed M*A*S*H got better at it as it progressed. I think the show got better when Potter and Winchester came onto the show. They were then at a point where any of the characters could be played seriously or comedically and successfully at both. Of course it has to said that M*A*S*H also likely had more gifted writers and actors.

Watching LIS is enlightening, though, because it's an interesting exercise in seeing what can go wrong and what can work.

 

[stj]

The stupidity of the science always causes problem in everything Irwin Allen did. People like to say they just care if everything's consistent, but that's not really true. Some premises are just too absurd to permit consistent willing suspension of disbelief.

As for being a drama, there was no way that the Robinsons could kill Smith without completely contradicting the all-american family premise. Yet there was no way the original Smith could continue. But a Smith had to stay because happy families are boring and the show wasn't going to do interesting exploration stories because it didn't know enough about science, even fictional science, to do them.

The Smith/Will/Robot relationship is the only thing well done about Lost in Space. If you dislike that, there's nothing left but idiocy, using elevators and carousels as props spaceships, silver face paint for aliens, and repeated shrieks of "Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!"

Save yourself the headache or heartache and quit.

 

[Kemaiku]

I've been looking for this image for a while, knew I had it somewhere.

It makes the Jupiter too big for most of the planetside scenes, but it's the closest to a logical layout I can find.

 

[Warped9]

I've been looking for this image for a while, knew I had it somewhere.

It makes the Jupiter too big for most of the planetside scenes, but it's the closest to a logical layout I can find.

Thats a nice image even though it's way out of scale. But it's very nice and more plausible.

 

[Kemaiku]

I think it comes to around two and a half times the size of the exertnal set for the planet scenes unfortunately.

 

[Warped9]

The Jupiter II (and the Gemini 12 before it) was a fantastic exercise in imaginative design. They took the flying saucer idea and made it into an Earth originated vehicle. It's inspired and really advanced looking in most respects. One also gets the sense the ship was designed for more than just transportation to a world where you would then have to forage and live off the land. It was designed to be a comfortable home in itself.

But it isn't really credible for long term habitation unless you can start living off the land pretty quickly. There's no evidence of a replicator type technology to replenish supplies and there'd be a limit to how much you could carry along with you. And thats also considering if the ship were about 1-1/2 times larger than it was shown to be, not even for a group of six or seven.

In terms of equipment if we allow the ship to be 1-1/2 times larger (for argument's sake) then you could have a disassembled chariot stored aboard, but you still wouldn't have room for the space pod because you'd need the rest of room for equipment, supplies and mechanicals. And for the ship's size the drive system is really compact.

The design would work better for a smaller group of people and/or as a scoutship type craft. And I admit to some frustration at seeing this beautifully designed vehicle set with a rather wacky television show. I can even envision a story premise that could work where you have a ship very much like the Jupiter II and a small group of individuals "lost in space" and you could do all kinds of stories with it. Aargh!!!