1960's TV Series "Lost In Space"-How Does It End?

[ftg]

@SCAdian

Fish heads,
Fish heads,
Roly-poly fish heads…

Holy moly, Billy Mumy was one of the faux “Barnes”? Did not know that.

I remember that video playing in the dead time in the early days of HBO. (When looking things up on the Internet wasn’t so easy.) I still sing it once in a while to liven things up.

(Or maybe I did know it at one point but somebody wished that memory into the cornfield.)

[Johnny_L.A]

Will Robinson got back to Earth once, though I don’t remember exactly how. He was in a small town and everyone had heard of the loss of Jupiter II, and nobody believed he was Will Robinson. It all could have been cleared up with a simple phone call, but nobody would let him use a phone. I remember that he needed to obtain a bottle of carbon tetrachloride from the general store, for something or other.

So…

Soes anyone else say ‘Where there’s a Will, there’s a Robinson’?

[campp]

@Johnny_L.A

Will Robinson got back to Earth once, though I don’t remember exactly how. He was in a small town and everyone had heard of the loss of Jupiter II, and nobody believed he was Will Robinson. It all could have been cleared up with a simple phone call, but nobody would let him use a phone. I remember that he needed to obtain a bottle of carbon tetrachloride from the general store, for something or other.

So…

Soes anyone else say ‘Where there’s a Will, there’s a Robinson’?

Black and white episode. He was beamed there with an alien device. The great Rita Shaw was in that episode.

[BrainGlutton]

@Czarcasm

The series was dropped with no resolution.

Gilligan & Crew never got off the island, either.

[BrainGlutton]

@Robot_Arm

I was about to say the same thing. I found an episode guide on Wikipedia that gives a bit more detail. It says that a fourth season was planned, but that the show was then canceled after the third season finale was shot.

That’s actually how I remember most TV shows being done in that era. There were no storylines spanning multiple episodes; each one had to be self-contained and no matter what happened the characters would end up just about where they started. And it was rare for a show to do a final episode that offered any resolution.

Granted, if there had been resolution, that might have been even worse.

[BrainGlutton]

TVTropes:

**Series: Lost in Space **
Format(s): Dramatic Hour Long
Genre(s): Speculative Fiction/Fantastic Comedy

“Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”
—The Robot

Classic camp sci-fi series from the Sixties that lasted three seasons. Featured the adventures of the Space Family Robinson, Major West, the Robot and shanghaied saboteur Dr. Smith as they search for Earth, after they become Lost… In Space.

Lost in Space was a rival for Star Trek: The Original Series in the realm of serious sci-fi, which might explain the show’s turn from serious Speculative Fiction into Fantastic Comedy to keep a share of the viewing audience. Notable for its beautiful music (including two opening themes by Johnny Williams (as John Williams was then known), sets, skin tight ski-spacesuits, aliens, inventive and surreal plots, and highly articulated Robot, itself a “cousin” of Robbie from the film Forbidden Planet (who also guest starred on the show). The original plot had the Robinsons as explorer/settlers, with Dr. Smith as a saboteur paid to program The Robot to kill the Robinsons and ruin their mission. The first episodes were in black and white and involved exploring the planet they crash-landed on. When the show shifted to camp it involved their conflicts with resident or visiting aliens of all sorts.

One of a family of shows created by Irwin Allen, along with Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and The Time Tunnel.

May well be one of the classics of sci-fi for no other reason than the scene-chewing Large Ham glory of Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) and his pained and witty repartee with the Robot. While its going from serious to camp may well have been a blow to later efforts at serious sci-fi, it was nonetheless a surreal joy to watch. The recent attempts to reboot it as a serious series may be doomed to fail because of this, as it’s best remembered as a humorous series.

The series received a film adaptation in 1998. It was a modest box office hit* best remembered for knocking Titanic out of the #1 box office position it had occupied for four months but often dismissed as a “dim-witted shoot-'em-up” by critics. An attempt to create a television remake in 2003-2004 went nowhere.

Say – who was Dr. Smith working for? Who hired him to sabotage the mission? The Russians were never mentioned, that I can recall.

[ralph124c]

This is getting interesting!
I had a few more questions:
-where is “Robby” the Robot now?
-did Robby make an appearance on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”?
-the “danger Will Robinson” schtick-when did it first appear?

[terentii]

@BrainGlutton

Say – who was Dr. Smith working for? Who hired him to sabotage the mission? The Russians were never mentioned, that I can recall.

Sinister forces. Like on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” “Time Tunnel,” “The Avengers,” “Man from UNCLE,” “Mission: Impossible,” and other shows, the Russians and Red Chinese were often implied but rarely (if ever) mentioned directly.

[Chimera]

I admit it. I was “the sinister forces” behind Dr. Smith.

Please forgive me. I was only three at the time.

[Johnny_L.A]

@ralph124c

-where is “Robby” the Robot now?

Robbie the Robot, from Forbidden Planet, belongs to director William Malone.

Robot B9, from Lost In Space, is in two places. The ‘hero’ robot (i.e., the robot used for ‘acting’) had an actor inside of it. The costume/prop is now in the collection of producer Kevin Burns. The ‘stunt’ robot (i.e., the one without the actor in it) is on display at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.

[johnpost]

@BrainGlutton

Say – who was Dr. Smith working for? Who hired him to sabotage the mission? The Russians were never mentioned, that I can recall.

KAOS they were behind everything bad, headquartered in Delaware because of taxes.

[Fear_Itself]

KAOS was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ramjack Corporation.

[alphaboi867]

@BrainGlutton

…Say – who was Dr. Smith working for? Who hired him to sabotage the mission? The Russians were never mentioned, that I can recall.

Well in the first pilot there was no Dr Smith (or Robot). Also they were on a 98 yr trip rather than 5 yr trip. When Smith’s character was added for the 2nd pilot he was orignally given a very “exotic” sounding name, but Irwin Allen changed his mind and decided to give in the most American sounding name possible. It’s never specified who he’s working for, but I think’s it’s pretty obvious it’s either the Soviets or the Chinese.

[control-z]

@alphaboi867

Well in the first pilot there was no Dr Smith (or Robot). Also they were on a 98 yr trip rather than 5 yr trip. When Smith’s character was added for the 2nd pilot he was orignally given a very “exotic” sounding name, but Irwin Allen changed his mind and decided to give in the most American sounding name possible. It’s never specified who he’s working for, but I think’s it’s pretty obvious it’s either the Soviets or the Chinese.

Ok that makes a lot more sense, the reds sent a gay spy to sabotage 1960’s American values and the mission.

[ralph124c]

This planet that the family wound up on…it appeared to have no water, no vegetation, and no fun places. How come the family didn’t start killing eachother off?
Guy Wiiliams seemed to take little interest in the teenage girls…was he warned by Dad not to dip the wick in company ink?

[terentii]

@ralph124c

Guy Wiiliams seemed to take little interest in the teenage girls..was he warned by Dad not to dip the wick in company ink?

Guy Williams was Dad. Mark Goddard played Maj Don West.

[That_Don_Guy]

@terentii

Yep, I remember that one. It was aired right around Christmas, 1965. (I watched it sitting on the floor at my dad’s and playing with my new slot car set.) It was one of the black-and-white episodes.

Are you sure? I thought it had the “countdown” opening (with the second theme song, that was also used at the end of the movie), which was used only in the later color episodes. They never did explain how they got back from 1947 to the late 1990s/early 2000s.

There was another episode where Will and Dr. Smith landed on Earth (right outside of Chicago, I think), but, IIRC, there were other creatures on board, and they left the planet again before Dr. Smith had any chance to get off.

[terentii]

@That_Don_Guy

Are you sure? I thought it had the “countdown” opening (with the second theme song, that was also used at the end of the movie), which was used only in the later color episodes. They never did explain how they got back from 1947 to the late 1990s/early 2000s.

The one I’m thinking of had to be first season (Christmas 1965), ergo in B&W. I don’t remember how it began, I just remember the local folk thinking Will Robinson was a bit tetched and the ship taking off at the end.

They never did explain the time discrepancy, no.

As you say, there was certainly more than one time-travel episode. Maybe you’re thinking of a different one.

[johnpost]

@terentii

The one I’m thinking of had to be first season (Christmas 1965), ergo in B&W. I don’t remember how it began, I just remember the local folk thinking Will Robinson was a bit tetched and the ship taking off at the end.

They never did explain the time discrepancy, no.

As you say, there was certainly more than one time-travel episode. Maybe you’re thinking of a different one.

think of the possibilities if he landed in the 1968 Arizona desert.