Finally after all the years a resolution!
I can sleep at night now.
Never to worry about the uber-creepy Dr. Zachary Smith returning to Earth.
Too bad about Maureen, Judy and Penny.
Especially Maureen.
“Well, it’s good that he eats his vegetables…but it’s a little weird how he mutters ‘and now you die, alien scum’ between bites.”
They had to end the series before survival of the species necessitated Penny and Judy fornicating with Dr. Smith. Ewwww.
“Upon his death, the sweetheart (Robert “Bob” Harris) inherited Jonathan’s complete collection of Lost In Space fanfic scripts”.
You do know you avoided any gender labels in that post, don’t you?
His wife was named Gertrude Bregman.
The smell was enough for me.
I used to love reruns of LIS as a kid, but rewatched some a few years ago and boy, what a letdown. Still better than the movie, though.
Lost in Space did have a weekly cliffhanger: instead of scenes from the next week’s show, they’d show the first minute or two of it (and sometimes it was a standalone cliffhanger that had nothing to do with the plot*). But there was no story arc and, like all TV shows of the era (other than The Fugitive), no season or series finales.
*“Why not open a window?”
Is it my imagination, or did Jonathan Harris resemble Hans Conried? To me, they looked very similar.
When I was eleven I thought Lost in Space was the best TV show EVER.
i was watching it Wednesday, June 8th, 1966, and I was annoyed because the stupid TV station kept breaking in with stupid tornado watch announcements. Then, just before 7:00PM Central Time the sirens went off, and the F5 tornado went rolling through town.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/top/events/66tornado.php
I never got to see the end of the episode.
I don’t really think shows like that (See Also: Gilligan’s Island) had any ‘plan’ in mind for how to end things. There was no continuity or story line. Just same people, same situation, new encounter, reset button, wait for next week.
If they had known it was going to end, there would, at the very most, been a two part episode. But mostly likely it would have just been a single episode “They encounter another ship from Earth and are guided to an Earth Colony or pointed back to Earth.”
Lenny Bruce had a bit about working in small towns. The ladies would ask him “Liberace, is he, well, you know?” Bruce would tell them “No, not a bit. Georgie Jessel now…”
Lost in Space always reminded me of Gilligan’s Island. Almost every episode some traveler would drop by this uninhabited planet. None of them ever rescued the Robinsons.
Gilligan was the same way. Lost in Space was so camp that it almost was a comedy at times.
Marta Kristen played Judy Robinson (the older daughter). She did a hard R film a few years later. Screencaps are easily found.
Don’t forget The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The pilot episode comes around every now and then, if you’re bored. No Dr. Smith, no Robot, not much Jupiter 2 even. Painful thing to watch.
Apparently back then the networks thought that a bad enough dramatic series would make a great comedy, and LIS was a decent one by 60’s standards (McHale’s Navy was another show that started as a drama). How a film studio could have thought a film of a comedy series would work better as a drama instead remains a mystery. I’m sure Gary Oldman could have done a prissy Dr. Smith as well as he did an evil one.
Joe Flynn’s fussy Captain Binghamton (and Bob Hastings’ even fussier Lt. Carpenter) on McHale’s Navy predated *Lost In Space *by a couple of years. Tony Randall was playing his usual character at least as early as 1953 on Mr. Peepers. For that matter, Paul Lynde’s first appearance as Uncle Albert was in October 1965, so Dr. Smith only got on the air a month or so earlier.
Back in the early 1990s, the story of the Robinsons was continued in comic book form by Innovation comics. The first 12 issues were stand alone stories. With issue 13 a 12 issue story arc written by Bill Mumy began dealing with the Robinsons finally arriving at Alpha Centuari. (Hint: it does not go well) Alas the book was canceled after six issues of the arc was published. Fast foward to 2005 and the story line was completed in a graphic novel. Lost in Space: Voyage to the Bottom of the Soul. Recommended.
Even as a kid, I found Lost in Space embarrassing.
The idea of a “Space Family Robinson” was always a good one. supposedly Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks had suggested it a long time ago.
In 1962 Gold Key Comics started a serious adventure comic of that name that was pretty good: Space Family Robinson - Wikipedia Note that this is three years before the TV series Lost in Space. Considering that both feature a family with father, mother, kids (only two) in their own far-traveling space ship, it’s hard to believe that the TV series didn’t steal from the comic. Fortunately, the comic had no Dr. Smith and no Robot (the family had a couple of pets). After the TV show came out, the publisher didn’t want to antagonize the company making the TV series, since they licensed rights to their shows, so they simply added “Lost in Space” to the top of the cover and rode on the free publicity The comic book long outlasted the TV show.
As noted, there was a later “Lost in Space” comic, scripted by Billy Mumy. I bought the first issue, which was awful. I think Billy was fantasizing about his female cio-stars, or imagined his fans were, and played to that.
Some time ago I started the joke of flapping my arms up and down awkwardly and saying “DANGER, DANGER!” when my boys were about to do something unwise. Now that I’ve explained the joke (to them and Mrs P) they’ve started doing it too, even though they have never seen the show.
BTW, the talking carrot was portrayed by Stanley Adams, best known for his role as Cyrano Jones, tribble trader from “Star Trek.”
This is one of those series where the longer it has been since I watched an episode, the better I like it.