Revisiting Lost In Space...

[Kemaiku]

When I first saw the movie, I didn't know that the Jupiter I callsign was for the rocket assembly, that there was something else inside.

I actually liked the assembly as the ship, it would been about 20-30 times larger than the series version but keeping the same design, looking futuristic and maximum amount of space using a round design.

I was pretty disappointed with the ugly thing that popped out of it. Then again the entire film was a mess of one sort or another.

 

[Saga]

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.

agreed. dare i say, the first season is actually fairly serious compared to season two and especially season three.

 

[Warped9]

"Change Of Space" ***

A chance ride aboard an advanced alien spaceship accelerates young Will Robinson's intelligence and drastically ages Dr. Smith.

I liked the story in this even as I was also frustrated in parts. John Robinson can be really dense. How many aliens and advanced spacecraft have they encountered (on what is supposed to be a backwater planet and the Professor hardly if ever expresses any inkling about how they could be of any assistance to their stranded situation? Will Robinson has more brains and guts than his father. He certainly has more intellectual curiosity. I also couldn't help but laugh when the Professor exclaims exceeding light speed is impossible (in context of the the show). Excuse me, but what did they mean way back in the beginning when the Jupiter II entered a hyperdrive? How else to explain all those alien visitors dropping in on them from all over the galaxy? Without FTL the Robinsons couldn't be further out than maybe our solar system's asteroid belt. I wonder if Guy Williams ever suspected some of the dumb things the writers scripted for him.

Whatever, thats not the point of the story. At least Will and Smith didn't turn into slugs when accelerating to crazy velocities.

I also find it amusing that while a lot of the alien ships seen exhibit advanced tech I think the Jupiter II still looks more advanced.

 

[RJDiogenes]

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.

As I think I mentioned early on in the thread, LIS is really two shows: The pioneer family in space of the first five (or so) episodes and the Batman-style camp fest that it evolved into. Personally, I like both approaches, but I kind of wish they had either stuck with the original premise or actually done two different space shows.

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

That's a nice graphic, even though it's inconsistent with the show. But I'm 99% percent that they talked about assembling the chariot in the third episode. I'll have to dig out my DVDs and see if I can find it.

 

[Warped9]

"Follow The Leader" ***

An ancient alien presence begins to take over John Robinson with ultimate plans to use the Jupiter II to leave the planet.

There story tended to be more dramatic then usual, maybe even somewhat darker, but it still had that unmistakeable camp element. Guy Williams comes across as rather stiff here and not very nuanced. It wasn't bad, but it didn't knock me over either.

The colour sequence at the end was jarring. I'd gotten used to, and quite liked, the black-and-white look of the show, such that the colour footage looked garish and seemed to detract something. The bright colours tended to further undermine any lingering seriousness the show had.

Of course if I can't get used to it I can always turn down the colour saturation to zero.


That's it for Season 1. I'm going to ponder my overall impressions a bit more before posting them.

 

[Warped9]

Okay, first up are ratings. I'm using the same rating system I've used with other shows:

***** Excellent (nothing is perfect, but it's damned close and really entertains)
**** Good (mostly works with only a very few quibbles)
*** Fair (just enough good to make it watchable, but it's also stumbling)
** Poor (too many frustrations getting in the way whether it's story, ideas, execution or something else)
* Bad (it's just bad, bad, bad)

At the risk of offending someone who's a diehard fan I didn't find any excellent or even really good LIS episodes. There is just too much silliness going on in every episode. That isn't to say there weren't things I didn't like at all. There were things I liked very much, but there just wasn't enough for me to push any of the episodes into the good category let alone excellent.

*** Fair (46.6% of episodes)
“The Reluctant Stowaway”
“The Derelict”
“The Hungry Sea”
“Welcome Stranger”
“The Sky Is Falling”
“Wish Upon A Star”
“The Raft”
“The Keeper” (Part 1)
“The Keeper” (Part 2)
“War Of The Robots”
“The Space Trader”
“All That Glitters”
“Change Of Space”
“Follow The Leader”

** Poor (26.7% of episodes)
“No Place To Hide” (original unaired pilot)
“Island In The Sky”
“There Were Giants In The Earth”
“The Oasis”
“Return From Outer Space”
“Ghost In Space”
“The Challenge”
“The Lost Civilization”

* Bad (26.7% of episodes)
“My Friend Mr. Nobody”
“Invaders From The Fifth Dimension”
“One Of Our Dogs Is Missing”
“Attack Of The Monster Plants”
“The Sky Pirate”
“The Magic Mirror”
“His Majesty Smith”
“The Space Croppers”

Ratings these can be tough because sometimes I find an episode right on the line. For example "Return from Outer Space" I'm still tempted to change my rating up from a 2 to a 3. But I'm leaving it as is for now but maybe down the road I'll watch it again and reconsider.


What I liked - The production and some of the cool hardware: the Jupiter II, the Chariot, the Robot, some of the alien artifacts and alien ship designs, the stars capes and planet landscapes and other things. Some of the advanced tech depicted even if they were basically just winging it as fantasy. For me the best character was Will Robinson. He wasn't overly precocious, a little smart ass or always saving the day, but he displays the soul of a real explorer, much more so than any of the rest including his father. Some of the story ideas were good and deserved better than how they were generally handled.

What I disliked - The way over-the-top camp, Dr. Zachary Smith (morphing from a remotely interesting villain to an endlessly annoying buffoon), the excessive overuse of sci-fi cliches for the sake of expediency and cheap laughs, too much lazy and heavy-handed writing.The words "nuance" and "subtlety"are barely understood in LIS.

It's regrettable that the few things I really disliked were so overwhelming as to often overshadow or mar the things I did like.

It's interesting that really only a bit more than a quarter of the season is a write-off and another little more than a quarter is weighed down by too much smelly cheese. On the other hand nearly half of the season is watchable without much effort. This is better than I remember of the show from so long ago. My recollections were that very little of the show had any redeeming qualities, but there was more to like than I remembered. Of course this is only the first season. The rest I'm considering watching by download unless I could get the season sets really cheap.

I have to think about it.

 

[Maurice]

I recently watched a couple of other episodes, notably "The Condemned of Space", which is one of the better 3rd season efforts in some regards, but the show is weirdly lazy about telling a story that isn't about a lot of disconnected events.

"Condemned" starts off with the Jupiter 2 having to flee a planet because of an approaching comet, and then there's a whole bit of business about Smith pushing the wrong buttons and blowing the Robot out the airlock, followed by John going out EVA in an attempted rescue, but failing because there's a supernova (?!) approaching, and then the ship is saved by being drawn in my a space prison, which conveniently draws in the Robot too. So, the first third of the show is a bunch of stuff that happens just for it to happen, not to set up a problem for the characters to solve. It's like the writers just threw events together without worrying about basic storytelling.

 

[Peacemaker]

I enjoyed Gary Oldman's interpretation of Smith, mostly season 1 Smith, pre-reversion to buffoonery. Not a coward, either, but purely self centered and not inclined towards physical confrontation unless he was sure he could arrange the upper hand.

I did too, so much so that I thought at the time he would have made an excellent Master for Doctor Who if played in a similar vein with that look.

 

[Forbin]

Oldman's Smith was the only good thing about that movie! I kept thinking "THAT's the way he should always have been played!"

 

[Kemaiku]

True, he was one of the few good things about it.

 

[Warped9]

"Blast Off Into Space" **

The Jupiter II is forced to make an emergency launch when the planet's core becomes unstable.

Good thing science isn't important in this series because it's so wacked it's not funny. A single prospector is responsible for blasting that destabilizes an entire planet? Uh...yeah. :roll eyes: And then once again Zachary Smith does the stupidest thing to undermine their safety. They should have left him behind.


"Wild Adventure" **

The Jupiter II crew struggle to determine their position and get back on course.

Smith's idiocy once again jeopardizes everyone's lives as he stupidly jettisons all their reserve fuel. And even after they manage to replenish their fuel supply Smith has to be rescued from his own idiocy which nixes their chance to return to Earth. Navigational and fuel reserve references are thrown around without any meaning in this story and it begins to give me a headache. And again they should have lust let Smith float away as just punishment for all the grief he has brought them time and time again.


Seriously in both stories we have a character that should never be allowed to run loose. They should have confined him to his cabin under lock. And how anyone could even listen to a word he says is beyond me after all the times he's proven his untrustworthy nature.

I also have to say I find the colour palette in the colour episodes disappointing. And some think Star Trek was garish? It has nothing on LIS. The overuse of browns and oranges is just yuch! I much prefer the look of the black-and-white episodes. It made the show look much less like a cartoon. Some nice shots of the Jupiter II in space, though.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I miss the color palettes of the 60s. Everything now is way too bland. The occasional exception-- like Pushing Daisies is just a reminder of how boring pop culture has become.

 

[Warped9]

"The Ghost Planet" *

The Jupiter II is forced to land on a mysterious planet.

LIS has officially become the Zachary Smith show. Everyone else is a supporting character. It's all about Smith's stupidity and then everyone else having to bail him out to save themselves. This also happens to be one of the cheesiest looking episodes I've seen. This episode comes off as little more than a Saturday morning kids show. Hell, I'd rather watch a 60's era episode of Space Ghost---at least it's more straightforward and more honest.

I don't think I can stomach going on with successive episodes with the exception perhaps of specific episodes. The first one that comes to mind is Season 3's "Visit To A Hostile Planet."

Any other suggestions?

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

Save your sanity and abandon ship now.

Season two was the worst, as I recall. Season three actually had a few fun episodes, if you put your brain into sleep mode, to go along with the crapfests.

 

[Kemaiku]

The "planet exploding" trope did become overused to the point of absurdity in the show. The movie even makes fun of it with Leblanc's "You know, the planet is breaking up around us."

 

[Davros]

Lost In Space is one of those shows that is both horrible and wonderful at the same time.

 

[Warped9]

I went through the plot synopsis of the remaining episodes through Seasons 2 and 3. I can spot maybe two or three episodes I might take a peek at, including the already mentioned "Visit To A Hostile Planet."

 

[Gotham Central]

What I never understood is why they kept spending all their time on one planet. Each season the Jupiter II was shown to be perfectly capable of taking off...so why all the down time?

One thing I will say is that the Jupiter II is a damn rugged ship. It gets pummeled by meteors and then crashes on its belly TWICE without so much as a dent. There aren't even any scorch marks on the front after the slide out. The folks at Alpha Control could have taught Starfleet a thing or two about building saucers to survive crash landings. The Jupiter II's picture windows don't even crack but the Enterprise-D's transparent aluminum/Clearsteel windows shatter and the window at the the top of the bridge breaks.

 

[Warped9]

The first season gave me the impression they believed the ship to be more damaged than it was. After all the ship's lower section is buried out of sight, or at least thats what it looks like from the angle we always saw. In later seasons it makes no sense.

There is the flimsiest of continuity in the first season, but afterwards (and even before) it seems they just threw stuff in arbitrarily.

 

[Forbin]

According to a book I have, they'd originally planned to have a huge meteor hole in the back of the ship, in the full size campsite set.