STAR TREK the enemy of LOST IN SPACE?

[Christopher]

It varies depending on region, culture, and generations. My relatives rarely swear, but my author colleagues from New York use the F-word casually and routinely. And I once overheard a conversation by two younger men on a bus in which a certain four-syllable epithet was used in pretty much every sentence, essentially as a pronoun, and was so casual and stripped of meaning that it had become elided to "m'fuh" or "m'fug." And yet when one of the speakers wanted to convey genuine offense, he said, "What the hell?!"

 

[MANT!]

I was in the USAF (the most "civilized" of the services) and I remember the F-word being used several times in a sentence by just about everyone EXCEPT the officers...
It took me a while to stop using it in casual conversation..example (while on my first leave back home).."Mom! these are the best f*cking pancakes ever!"or "Thanks Mom! you did my f*cking laundry!"... I was a bad person.. Now I only use it to deliver proper emphasis in a workplace setting..

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Regarding this revelation that a duplicate Jupiter 2 cockpit set was built for special viewport situations:

http://jupiter2project.com/mcc/index.html

And of course we know that they also built a duplicate set of the J2 ship exterior exclusively for space walk scenes, rather than re-use the planet-side ship exterior set:

I find that I cannot think of a single standing set from the Enterprise that they built a duplicate of for special situations. Am I missing anything? It seems like there was only one of every set on Star Trek, and you can only do so much with the way a given set is built.

I suspect this is because Fox was so much bigger and better capitalized than Desilu, and Fox was thus able to do things bigger. This gave them very dynamic, versatile filming capabilities, like the impressive starfield and weightless rigging John Robinson enjoyed.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

All you have to do is look at the other 3 Irwin Allen sf series and you can make a good guess. The plots would have become repetitive and silly with weird silver skinned aliens and lots of "duplicates" of the regular cast to save money. It never would have retained the feel of the first episodes and probably not lasted as long as it did.

Land of the Giants actually moved from the initial shock/discovery conflicts between earthlings (or "little people," as they were described) and giants, to the running storyline about the government's various agents pursuing the "little people" as a threat (and an interest in earth technology). So, repetition did not set in as in other Allen series.

 

[davejames]

I find that I cannot think of a single standing set from the Enterprise that they built a duplicate of for special situations. Am I missing anything? It seems like there was only one of every set on Star Trek, and you can only do so much with the way a given set is built.

I think the closest would probably be the Galileo interior, which was a bigger version of the interior built into the actual shuttlecraft (although I think all we saw in that one was a couple of chairs).

 

[Ssosmcin]

Well, the first season did kind of settle into the "little people captured and everyone else has to climb and climb and climb for 45 minutes to rescue them" formula that made the latter half of the first season pretty dull. The second season sort of started the same way but then got "Irwin Allen wacky" with time travelers, radiation hallucinations, clones, and secret cities. This actually made the series a lot more fun for me.

It is that wackiness I'm talking about mostly. Without Smith, Lost in Space probably would have been a weird show with eccentric aliens either way, but played straight by the cast, leaving the absurdity to the situation instead of the reactions of the characters. Admiral Nelson vs a spy and Admiral Nelson vs a flame monster: the only difference was the adversary. Basehart played them equally straight, but the latter episode was still weird and considered pretty danged silly.

 

[Christopher]

I think the closest would probably be the Galileo interior, which was a bigger version of the interior built into the actual shuttlecraft (although I think all we saw in that one was a couple of chairs).

To the best of my knowledge, the shuttle exterior mockup had no interior beyond the bare minimum that needed to be visible through the door. I don't think it counts.

I wondered if there might've been more than one turbolift car, one behind the bridge doors and another on the corridor set, or just standing by itself so a camera could easily see in. But all the TOS set blueprints I can find show only the car on the bridge set and just dotted circles where a turbolift could go on the corridor set, suggesting that they only had the one car and moved it as needed.

 

[davejames]

Never really considered it before, but I think Guy Williams would have made a pretty awesome Enterprise captain.

I always thought he was a really compelling and charming presence on screen, and thought it was a shame we saw less and less of him as the show went on.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Never really considered it before, but I think Guy Williams would have made a pretty awesome Enterprise captain.

I always thought he was a really compelling and charming presence on screen, and thought it was a shame we saw less and less of him as the show went on.

I think Shatner was a little more accomplished as an actor, but Williams would have been very good in his own way. Both men made a conscious effort to move with a cool, catlike, athletic gracefulness. Maybe Williams would have played Kirk overall in way similar to Shatner. Leonard Nimoy might have found the same kind of "space" in which to fulfill Spock's potential.

On the other hand, it's doubtful that the Spock role would have ended up so similar if Mark Goddard had gotten it.

Photoshop by Charles Thaxton.

 

[Christopher]

^Good lord, they cut Penny off at the waist and stuck her onto the back of a chair!

 

[davejames]

I think Shatner was a little more accomplished as an actor, but Williams would have been very good in his own way. Both men made a conscious effort to move with a cool, catlike, athletic gracefulness. Maybe Williams would have played Kirk overall in way similar to Shatner. Leonard Nimoy might have found the same kind of "space" in which to fulfill Spock's potential.

Yeah I haven't watched LIS or Zorro in awhile so I don't remember what kind of acting range he had, but I can definitely see him having much the same kind of energy and commanding presence as Shatner. And the dynamic between him and Nimoy probably would have been pretty similar as well.

At the very least, it would have been cool to see him as a fellow Starship captain in an episode.

 

[Melakon]

^Good lord, they cut Penny off at the waist and stuck her onto the back of a chair!

Half a Penny is better than none.

 

[Maurice]

I think the most Guy ever had/got to do in Lost In Space was in The Antimatter Man.

 

[CrazyMatt]

^Good lord, they cut Penny off at the waist and stuck her onto the back of a chair!

Thanks, I just about had an accident!

 

[jpv2000]

At the very least, it would have been cool to see him as a fellow Starship captain in an episode.

I would have enjoyed that. Guy Williams was one of the very few things I enjoyed about LIS.

 

[NTRPRZ]

I think Guy's frustration showed in a number in third season shows. He seemed particularly grouchy in many of them.

Jeff

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

I seem to recall that he and June Lockhart were removed from at least one episode for laughing too hard at the silly script.

In all honesty though, I can't blame him for being grouchy. He was reduced to playing 4th fiddle behind Smith, Will and the Robot until the last 5 minutes when he'd come in to save the day. Being the hero is fun and all, but as an actor he had to want more than that.

 

[Galileo7]

People who bitch that hard about Lost in Space are taking it all too seriously. LiS was a good counterpoint to Star Trek's serious take on the genre. And in the 70's every SF TV series was compared unfavorably to Star Trek. Until Star Wars changed the game, Trek had to be every SF TV producer's millstone.

Agree.

No matter my opinion and even after all these years I still think the Jupiter II is very cool. It seems such a pity they designed a cool ship and then after the pilot (worked into the first few episodes) we never saw it fly again until the third season, which by then the show was in colour and so ridiculous it was practically unwatchable.

Fortunately, the Jupiter II did fly in the early episodes of the second season beginning with the first episode "Blast Off Into Space". However, it was grounded after four space bound episodes for the remaining second season twenty-six episodes.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I seem to recall that he and June Lockhart were removed from at least one episode for laughing too hard at the silly script.

Two, actually. Fugitives in Space and Space Beauty. They were still paid for them, so at that stage of the game, it was no punishment.

 

[Nerys Myk]

When I was six or seven I really liked Lost In Space. I even had a couple of pullover shirts that I thought of as my "Will Robinson shirts". I also had two sisters who could play Judy and Penny.