Seven years ago I bought the complete series of Lost In Space. I’ve never had the time to watch it. I did see several episodes when I bought it. Since I know I’d watched ‘No Place to Hide’ and ‘The Reluctant Stowaway’, tonight I popped in ‘The Derelict’, and am now watching ‘Island In The Sky’. (I’m pretty sure I watched through Episode 15: ‘Return From Outer Space’, where Will gets back to Earth, and probably through Episode 23 ‘The Space Trader’; but it’s been too long.)
So far, good, serious science fiction. I like Dr. Smith as a Bad Guy. Though his Craven Buffoon in later episodes is fun.
I remember an episode in which a father and son were on a hunt, a manhood ritual or something for the young man. This was a rerun I saw on Nick some years ago, maybe ten?
I kept looking at the young man and saying “I know that guy!” until I finally recognized Kurt Russell as a teenager.
“Lost in Space” was my favorite show when I watched it in the mid-sixties. I remember a Wednesday, June 8, 1966, when I was watching. My eleven year old self got more and more annoyed at the local weather alerts that kept interrupting the broadcast. Finally, just before the end of the episode, the sirens went off here in town and we had to head for the basement as a giant tornado tore right through the city. I was scared and nervous, but I also remember thinking “I won’t get to see the Charlie Brown special at 7:00!” God, I was a dumb kid.
I used to watch it when I was a kid in the 60s, but lost interest when Dr. Smith became comic relief. He started out as sinister and homicidal, but soon became an incompetent buffoon. I’ve started watching it again on Saturday Nights on MeTV.
They just showed “War of the Robots,” where Robby the Robot tries to turn the Robinsons over to his alien masters and is defeated by the Robinsons’ own robot. I thought it was pretty decent, as well as most of the first-season episodes.
I even liked “The Sky Pirate,” in which a man from the 19th century had been picked up for study by aliens and had managed to escape from them. It is one of the more interesting sci-fi tropes that aliens have been observing us since before we had industrialization, electronic communications, aviation, and our own space program.
There were a few good episodes, and Dr. Smith camping it up was always entertaining. Overall, though, the show was not particularly good.
The ones I do recall as being good were “The Magic Mirror” (where Penny meets Michael J. Pollard behind a mirror) and “The Questing Beast” (with Hans Conreid and which had a silly premise and a ridiculously fake monster, but managed to be quite touching in the end). “Visit to a Hostile Planet” also was a nice idea.
I had a bit of a crush on Angela Cartwright during the first run of the show. I’d be too embarrassed to watch it again. And those episodes where the robot with clamps for hands plays “Sloop John B” on a guitar or there’s that chimp with the headdress? Naw, I’ll let it stay in my past.
And although she appeared in only two eps, if you saw them, you could never forget Vitina Marcus. (Irwin Allen also used her in several different projects. Hmmm. . . .)
That was *exactly *why LOS got so campy in the third season, it was up against Batman’s time slot!
I wasn’t old enough to see it first run but watched it everyday after school in the early 70s. And that episode, The Magic Mirror, scared the bejesus out of me! Even though the monster was as cheesy as any of them, the fact that it was in B&W made the kid’s mirror world very dark & creepy and knowing there was a bug-eyed monster wandering around doubly so!
I can’t believe that the internet has failed me! I can’t find a shot of it…
Never got to watch much of the show when I was a kid, but I do recall a part of a scene (not, AIUI, integral to the plot) which had Penny and Will* bickering over whose music was going to be played on the entertainment system. They seemed to be having a tug-of-war over a silvery cylinder with the approximate dimensions of a Red Bull can, and the shine that we tend to associate with compact disks. In fact, when CDs first appeared upon the scene, I was struck by how much they reminded me of the entertainment cylinders aboard the Jupiter 2.
Or maybe my brain is just making up stories for its own amusement.
*I checked the wikipedia article on the series to remind me of Penny’s name, and was surprised to find an older daughter Judy, whose existence had slipped my memory. Maybe Penny was fighting about music with her and not Will.
the show was cheesy as was all of Irwin Allen tv work.
he shared props between his shows. dye the costume a different color and use it on the other show.
it was like having a chance to do Mystery Science Theater decades early. or like watching Under the Dome. the hard part is to not laugh loud and miss good dialog.