Why Did LOST iN SPACE Change?
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- 25th ANNIVERSARY LOST iN SPACE REUNION
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As a kid, I was fascinated by the early episodes of "Space." But as it morphed into the "Will & Dr. Smith Comedy Hour," I stopped watching. Even an 11-year-old knew garbage when he saw it.
Same here. I loved the early B-Ws and liked the attempts early in S3 at getting back to something a little more serious, but otherwise, count me out. Even as a kid.
Actually, some of LIS's best and most memorable episodes were from Seasons 2&3. However, most of them were indeed crap...
Allen did the same campy/silly things with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. All these shows became monster-of-the-week affairs with little or no substance. None lasted more than 3 or 4 seasons. Cheers....
I was a teenager at the time. I saw something in the Will Robinson and the Robot characters that made the show a winner. And Penny was drop dead gorgeous!
The change in Lost In Space in many ways paralleled the changes to Happy Days a decade later. Happy Days started as a realistic (and humorous) look at the 50's and later, to get better ratings, it became the Fonzie show. Fonzie and Dr. Smith had much in common with their roles.
That's true too and is why I stopped watching that show, too.
Good point. The show that inspired the phrase "jumping the shark".
Yeah, Wayne! Happy Days' first season was the only one I cared for.
Yes, they jumped the shark. Rather Irwin Allen did.
The same complaint was made by "Star Trek's" co-stars, as Shatner carped to Roddenberry, that he wanted more screen time. Major script changes were routine. Nichols and Takei were very upset.
I seem to remember the same thing sort of happened with Allen’s “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” series.
That is very true :-) I've got some Voyage videos coming up :-) stay tuned, Dan
True. If they'd installed seatbelts in the Seaview, the show would have SUNK due to boredom. LOL
@@MoviesMusicMonsters I love Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Tv series. I 💕 the espionage, Political And Ailen Stories. I didn't like the monster of the week stories in the 4th & Final season. The Terrible Leprechaun is the worst episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Also Brand of the Beast ,The Mummy, The Terrible Toys , Savage Jungle Fatal Cargo & The Plant Men are also terrible episodes.
ABC believed the audience for Voyage was boys. So seasons 2-4 evolved into a juvenile adventure. Thought the penultimate episode “The Death Clock” was trippy-hippy. 7:30 pm was for family shows. The WWII series 12 O’Clock High went from an adult drama to an action show, because ABC moved its timeslot to 7:30 pm and replaced lead actor Robert Lansing with the younger-looking but chronologically older Paul Burke. I am convinced programming decisions like this made this network consistently third-place in ratings until Jiggle TV in the 70s.
Some of those Television execs from yesteryear look increasingly narrow minded and short sighted in retrospect. When I was a kid, the early episodes of "Lost In Space" scared the heck out of me.... but I LOVED IT! I was also watching "Dark Shadows" and the original "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" for many of the same reasons: because a lot of kids like scary movies and shows! The goofier "Lost In Space" got, the less I liked it!
Billy mumy should have sent Mr smith to the cornfield 😅
Voyage to the bottom of the Sea had the same problem serious the 1st season campy when it went to color
I always thought the show went downhill the moment Jonathan Harris started to camp up the Dr. Smith character. It was like this decision of his marked the beginning of the show's unwatchability. I had also heard or read long ago that Harris believed his character was on the chopping block, so he decided to ham it up as a "F--- you" to those calling for his character to be removed from the show. Maybe that information was incorrect, but I still feel that Harris going camp marked the end of the show's watchability for me. It took the character of Harris' voiced Lucifer in _Battlestar Galactica_ to partially redeem the man in my eyes.
Doctor Smith is analogous to Gilligan in Gilligan's Island. Both the Robinsons and the Seven Castaways are in similar predicaments, and Doctor Smith serves a similar role as Gilliigan in driving the plot of each episode.
@@thomaskalbfus2005 Gilligan was more successful.
@@leerhode1021 that was because Gilligan's Island wasn't a science fiction show, though it did have a professor capable of inventing a bunch of crazy gadgets, but none of which got the castaways off the island!
@@thomaskalbfus2005 👍🏾
I was 9 years old when "Lost in Space" debuted. By season 2, I started losing interest. If the network was trying to appeal to my age group, they failed miserably. Jonathan Harris got more script lines, Guy Williams' and June Lockhart's talents were wasted. For me it became the Dr. Smith Show - a campy piece of sh*t. By 10 years of age, I determined that kind of programming was too low-brow. I didn't even like "Batman." What crap!
Man, those first 5 episodes were awesome before the start of the slow decline into corporate marketing madness.
I never understood it. Even as a kid, I was so disappointed when it de-evolved from a top notch Sci Fi show into a campy Sid and Marty Krofft pre-school comedy. The only thing missing was the talking flute.
You might have been a more observant kid than me. I just rolled with the changes and didn't much think about it. When I look back, though, my favourites were early episodes like Hungry Sea, There Were Giants on Earth and Follow the Leader and the Keeper.
My only complaint was with silly space versions of Earth - space pirates and Vikings. I was there for weird aliens monsters, not pantomime characters!
I was lucky to get to have lunch with Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen once. Very nice people, down to earth. They both had nothing but the highest compliments for Johnathan Harris. They said he was the nicest man they ever worked with. Lots of praise for Guy Williams as a professional. Marta Kristen and Mark Goddard were very nice too.
I once met Marta Kristen and Mark Goddard at a convention. Mark was a little uppity, but Marta was very friendly and a pleasure to talk with. I even had lunch with her.
At the time I met them, I was working at a foster home as a teacher. Mark Goddard was doing the same kind of work in Philadelphia. We talked shop most of the time. To me he seemed quite nice. Also working with kids at a foster care facility requires some bit of kindness. Maybe you caught the guy on a bad day. But yes, Marta was also really nice.
@@richardranke3158
Marta is very sweet
The first five or six episodes of this show was very good science fiction and then it had to change. I prefer the black and white episodes overall.
Me too. The first half of the first season is great sci-fi Adventure :-) hope you had a great holiday, Dan :-)
I used to note a pattern with nearly all Irwin Allen series from the 60s. They start out great and then erode into silly. I recall really enjoying most of the first season of 'Lost In Space'. The darker tone of the show as well as straight science fiction scripts appealed to me. I even had the Aurora robot and cyclops model kits. I lost interest in the show when it became silly. The same with 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea'. I never gave the others much of a chance because of this. But I imagine TV shows succumb to network execs like this all of the time.
Being in my mid teens at the time (and a huge Sci-fi fan), I was bitterly disappointed with its deterioration into crude pantomime and stopped watching the show. The fact that it only ran for three seasons proved that it was a short sighted decision to dumb the show down.
I liked Lost In Space, but didn't care for it when it went camp. Thankfully, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea & The Time Tunnel never went that way.
When I watched Lost In Space reruns as a kid, I saw the second and third seasons before the first. When I saw the earliest episodes, especially the pilot, I was shocked to see Dr. Smith and the Robot out to KILL the Robinsons and Major West! It felt like I was watching a different, darker show. I wondered "How could the Robinsons let this murderous duo travel with them on the Jupiter 2?". Actually, "murderous duo" is present-day me talking, 9 year-old me just thought those two were really, really BAD! How can this be?
At the very least, the Robot should have been dismantled or reprogrammed and Smith should have been put in a freezing tube. Instead they were treated like part of the family, albeit Smith was treated like an annoying ne'er do well uncle like Joe Carson in Petticoat Junction.
You are way off the mark and quoting Kevin Burns is never a good idea. "The Family Viewing Hour" was not introduced by the FCC in the U.S. until 1975 and was designated from 8:00 to 9:00 eastern time, so your theory doesn't work. The truth of the matter is that Irwin Allen was excellent at coming up with great premises for shows. He was also good at the crafts and hardware incorporated in those shows. However, Allen never knew what to do with the idea after a few shows. He was lousy at new ideas. ALL of his shows devolved in short order into silly children's monster populated nonsense, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Time Tunnel. The initial ideas were always great, but they all eventually turned to crap.
is it just me... or is this narrator's voice just pure GOLD! 👍
Haha, hey thanks so much :-) Dan
"Last week as you recall....."
They wanted Star Trek to be like Lost in space. Thank God it was not done that way.
I credit the actors with the success of early Star Trek.
As a kid, the switch from Sci Fi to childish nonsense was so disappointing. I was their target audience and I remember being so confused. I loved reading Sci Fi and I was expecting an adventure, and after the first episodes, Lost in Space turned into a kiddy show. I sometimes watched, but it was so cringy.
It turned into the Dr. Smith / Will screwing up show, not about exploration. Or 25% about family. Itturned stupid real quick. Love the Robot, Jupiter 2,Chariot. Thats about it.
Jonathan Harris was also a voice actor on “Battlestar Galactica”, as Lucifer.💜😈
Yes he was and he was awesome :-) I'm doing some Battlestar Galactica videos coming up this month :-) hope you had a great holiday, Dan
"By your command."
Yep yep yep,
And every time he KNEW it would come back to bite them on the ASS❗️💜😈
The Anti-Matter Man is one of the series best episodes.
It's certainly is. One of my all-time favorite :-)
Unwatchable after season 2. Thank god for Star Trek.
Seasons 1 & 3 were the best ones. 2 is campy and cringey. It could have been a great sci-fi show if they kept Smith as a traitor and Guy Williams would have been allowed to be the heroic lead. It was a wasted potential. Bill Mumy realized this. His sequel comic books moved the story forward with the first season tone and they were great. Even the movie and the Netflix remake realize the premise of the show works when taken seriously.
I didn't love it. As a kid, I got so bored with Will, Dr. Smith, and the robot...over and over. I was Angela Cartwright's age. I wanted to see more of her and only watched episodes when she or the rest of the cast had something to do. But it was stupid. I hated it then. I hate it now. However, this video was interesting; it's not something I'd heard of. It's also a shame about Harris - I had seen him do a wonderful job as Charles Dickens on a Bonanza episode, and he was wonderful. He was a good dramatic actor. But he blew it all to Smithereens.
I was also a penny fan...I love all of her episodes ...I did not care for will...I have the dvds...but only watch the penny shows or the ones dealing with the other family members and don
I'm definitely in that club.@@joelast645
I think color TV also had something to do with it.
Other good shows that started with black-and-white episodes (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea springs to mind) turned into a pointless, repetitive, formula show shortly after transitioning to being "IN COLOR".
Could it be the production cost of color production made more imaginative shows prohibitively expensive?
Born Jonathan Charasuchin in the Bronx to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Harris adopted the stage persona of a classically trained British actor. And that is just cool!
Yes it is!
Did a good job of getting rid of the NYC accent, if he had one.
This is why Star Trek succeeded abd most of Mr. Allen's stuff didn't after 1970
Such a shame. The first season was brilliant. Once it went to color...it became a live action cartoon for kids. Even as a kid, I presumed that Dr. Smith had a mental breakdown, going from proper villain to hapless victim of his circumstances.
It went from a sci-fi series, to the Dr Smith and Will show.
I'd say the 'Dr Smith, Robot and Will' show. A perfect triple act. The rest of the LIS cast basically just faded into the background, and apparently they were not too pleased about it - but I guess they just kept getting their paychecks season after season, and were not doing anything too demanding, so just shrugged their shoulders and kept quiet about it.
@@frglee "The Evil Triumvirate" as I think of them now! LOL
My favorite piece of “Lost In Space” trivia was finding out a while ago that Bill and Angela hooked up a few years after the show ended and almost got married.
It was a much better show in the early episodes. Didn't care for the human/carrot aliens.
Actually, Dr. Smith WAS better in his later version. it is very realistic to imagine a bad guy who had a fixed plan of sabotage when he started out, but when those plans fizzled out and he realized he was basically alone in outer space, he became terrified. He''s now a man without any plan, or any means to hide his anxiety. So Smith flashes at turns a kind of desperate bravado, and at other times open cowardice over his situation. It was plausible character development, that just happened to evolve in an improv way.
@@teresadesirey5449 True - but a little Dr. Smith goes a long way! As a kid, I watched for John, Don and Judy. Liked the show best whenever the Jupiter 2 ship got away from the super boring Arizona set and Smith wasn't the featured player.
RIP Mark Goddard 2023
"Family Hour" didn't become a thing until the 1970's. Lost In Space was on opposite Batman. That's why they changed.
After the first season it was unwatchable even for my 10-11 year old self. It was summed up perfectly further down by markkomis6160 when he observed how Irwin Allen had amazing concepts that quickly deteriorated into schlock. The robot is still it's one saving grace!
Not long ago, it was showing on some broadcast network and I snagged it. I remembered it as a child and thought parts of it was really stupid but that certain segments were entertaining. Watching it as an adult, I think two episodes got me to tell my DVR to delete all.
I can't binge watch "Lost In Space" like I can other classic Sci-Fi series. No disrespect to Jonathan Harris, but I can only take so much of Dr. Smith at one sitting.
Show was too silly for me, even as a kid, especially after watching an episode of Star Trek.
Well, Lost in Space was made for children. Star Trek was made for older people. I like both.
@@MoviesMusicMonsters TBH I was drawn to the B9 robot, anytime he was on, I perked up.
I hated that Netflix series thought, the robot was all wrong.
What happened to the space chariot, the badass jet pack... And Penny's alien monkey (debby?). Some of the coolest things in the show... All gone after color transition.
Smith went from an evil spy to a spineless jellyfish, all in one season. Oh the pain...
The original pilot lacked Smith and the Robot. CBS wanted conflict.
I rewatched it around 10 years ago. My wife wasn't a fan. But we laughed our asses out watching the carrot episode.
That was the best! I heard Jonathan Harris say he asked the writers about how bad it was and the guy said he just ran out of ideas. LOL
I, as a kid, hated the change. I felt they really cheated us out of a good , smart show. I loved the robot, but hated the character of Dr. Smith. He was beyond annoying.
Dr Zachery Smith was annoying as intended, he was my favourite hahaha.
Dr. Smith was a social engineering tool in the same manner as Homer Simpson is now.
If you find yourself sounding or acting even remotely like either one, you’re doing it wrong.
No doubt.... but I'm probably a touch younger than you...I loved it.... Penny definitely was a preadolescent crush.., Peace
Agreed. I couldn't stand the Smith character.
100%
I stopped watching it after it got so campy/blatantly stupid.
My favourite character was always Penny; sweet and very smart. I hated it how she was always getting put on the backburner to make way for adventures with Will, Smith and the Robot.
I found both Dr Smith and Will the most annoying.
I think they left Penny completely out of the War of the Robots episode, With No Explanation.
Long ago I read a very different assessment about why the show changed. MONEY! After the first season, budget concerns cropped up. Therefore, instead of outer space special effects and multiple outer space sets, now the Robinsons are stuck on a planet with sets lifted from old sci-fi movies, and costumes borrowed from the studio closet (giant carrot? Yikes!) I tend to believe this account, because at the end of the day everything comes back to greenbacks.
My favorite show as a kid. The Dr. Smith-robot dynamic was hilarious. And the aliens were interesting.
When they changed the show, they ruined it. As. a 10 year old, I hated it.
I liked the first season the best.
For myself, it's pretty damn simple. Despite his prolific efforts, Irwin Allen never really understood SF very well. (Kind of like George Lucas, IMO.) Lost in Space was never serious science fiction. Star Trek was.
A) If you're launching your first expedition to another star (Alpha Centauri), you don't send a family.
B) If you're launching your first expedition to another star, your security is going to be so thorough that Dr. Smith ain't making it through.
These are writing conventions that Allen acceded to, right from the get-go. At the age of 9, when it first broadcasted, it seemed very cool to watch. But as I got older, I realized it was mostly a trash TV show, with a flying saucer representing the first interstellar ship (also pretty ludicrous). Blame the studio if you wish (and they are no doubt responsible for how the original concept got dragged into the mud of mediocrity with such alacrity). But writing for a serialized TV show in the 60s did not exactly resemble writing for something such as a movie. You make the studio happy, you make the sponsors happy...in fact, you make everyone but the serious viewer happy, because they're in a minority anyway, so who cares about them?
If you want to look at a creator who took his idea seriously, and stood his ground with the studio, look instead at Gene Roddenberry. The studio didn't want a pointy-eared alien on the crew, but we got one anyway. The studio didn't want a woman being part of the command crew (and so Number One was ditched), but the studio also didn't want a black woman as part of the crew at all, much less the command crew. Well, Roddenberry got his way with that, too.
Lost in Space spent exactly zero time discussing the current state of Earth - geopolitical status, what had changed - any of that. Star Trek did, albeit in minor snippets of conversation, but we still got the impression that Earth in the 23rd century made one helluva lot more sense than Earth in the 20th century. Star Trek spoke to morals, ethics - all that high-falutin' stuff that good SF writers like to discuss, and hack writers don't. Lost in Space did not speak to these issues, pretty much ever.
Been waiting for this one as well
Enjoy :-) let me know what you think :-) Dan
@@MoviesMusicMonsters , loved every second of it especially your spot on impressions , gave it a like cant wait till the next one , also do you have any resources or links for anyone wanting to keep up on the progress of the chariot restoration ?
The changes ended up spoiling what could have been a great show. It didn't 'evolve', it devolved.
RIP Mark Goddard as, "Maj. Don West" who passed away in 2023.
It was the same with "voyage to the bottom of the sea"
Started off as a good sci fi program to some idiotic program with pathetic stupid stories.
Both programs totally ruined.
I hated the change. You could have made it more family friendly but still have it be a science fiction adventure with family exploring the universe and trying to figure out how to get back to Earth.
Lost in Space started out with a fairly good premise but soon lost its way with poor production values and even worse scripts. Even as a kid I was very disappointed with it and stuck to Star Trek.
Thanks to Jonathan Harris. He ruined the show.
@@diogocatalano9557 CBS' decision to focus the show on Dr. Smith and Will was what ruined the show, not the actor Johnathan Harris.
Harris in my opinion was a disaster by himself, just see him actin in other shows, he was always playing himself. Besides, he didn´t respect the other actors at all. When they were invited to do a Family Feud reunion, he said to Mumy that if they hadn´t them both, they will have nothing. @@paulmckenna5224
It wasn't just Jonathan Harris it was the writers that ruined that show and that was from the very beginning.@@diogocatalano9557
Another show The Wild Wild West also transitioned into camp. Also switch from B&W to color.
I preferred the darker version of the show. I found it more intriguing.
Same here. If they had stayed with that tone it would have possibly made for one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.
I loved this show... Even to this day, and I'm 64, I still every now and then fire up those 1st season black and white eps ...They really ruined the show when it turned from dark and serious to silly and campy..
Its a shame that happened ..one can only wonder had it been let progress along its original lines...The robot being menacing, smith being a spy, a saboteur and an assassin, those were just so cool and the 1st season was so atmospheric! The opening episode , the reluctant stowaway, That was Fire! The ship crashing on a planet for the 1st time with everyone in the freezing tubes, Invaders from the 5th dimension, the 1st season finale episode with john robinson taken over by Quanto, ect... some fantastic episodes and writing ...
I WATCHED IT BECAUSE IT HAD ZORRO IN IT. I WATCHED IT TO SEE ANGELA CARTWRIGHT...I GOT SICK OF SMITH, MUMY, AND THE ROBOT SHOW, SO I STOPPED WATCHING IT....WAY TO GO, STUPID CBS EXECUTIVES.
That was an interesting analysis. I never thought about the time slot it was in. But it seemed as if all of Irwin Allen's shows (like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel) started off with serious intentions and gradually veered into campy fantasy. Maybe it was hard to find enough writers to crank out 26 "serious" episodes each season. I read where the writer of The Great Vegetable Rebellion had simply run out of ideas. BTW, all of the interviews with Jonathan Harris are priceless. He was quite a raconteur.
It's no mystery. The emergence of Dr. Smith as the star of the show changed the series. He was originally intended as a minor character on a serious minded Sci Fi show. Once he become the star his personality and sense of humor inevitably transformed the show into a non serious camp comedy. I didn't like it. The 1st black & white season was by far the best. After that it was crap.
Dan, I love your impression of Smith. When my son was little back in late 90s we watched it regularly here in England and when I did the Smith impression he went into hysterics, he still does. Bungling ninny was another
It was Swiss Family Robinson in Space . High Adventure but even so it was purely awful once they camped it up
I faithfully watched Lost in Space when it first aired. I was 9 years old and had all the merchandise. However, I much preferred the first season even at my young age and became a Star Trek fan when the original series aired. I also enjoyed Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.
You know Lost in Space and Star Trek have the same parent, that is the movie Forbidden Planet, the seeds of both shows are in that movie. Forbidden Planet has a flying saucer, a robot, an organization called the United Planets, the crew of the saucer in Forbidden planet is much like the crew of the Enterprise, they have a quasi military organization similar to Star Fleet.
@@thomaskalbfus2005 Forbidden Planet has withstood the test of time, and it is still a very enjoyable movie, and it is well over sixty (60) years old.
Doctor smith was beyond annoying!
Yes he was, but that's what kept the ratings up there :-)
@MediaMasterDeysign You're brain cells depleting
Yes, he was. It was the same thing in every episode. No wonder Guy Williams was fed up.
It definitely went down hill in seasons two and three. That said, as camp as it was the original Lost in Space is still far better than the WOKE reboot.
Woke In Space.
The original pilot didn't have Dr Smith or the Robot and major West was not in the military but a Dr West.
Change is good but Carrot Men.goes too far! 😮
Noooooooo😮😮😮veggie rebellion tooo coool😊
What do have against Carrot People, anyway?...😏
I loved the show, but I think they really missed an opportunity to develop the characters of Don West and Judy. They kind of touched upon a romantic relationship between them in the first season, but then dropped it (and them) off from the spotlight.
I know and what other choices were available in the setting?
What is your thoughts on the 2018-2021 Lost in Space Series?
I've only seen the first season and all I can say is why was Penny even there??
I like Lost in Space but even as a child I wanted serious science fiction. But adults.
I, like many others, loved the first season. I tolerated the next two seasons because I loved Lost in Space that much. On a personal note: I hope if there is ever a resurrection of the show that You do the voice of the robot! I was very impressed with your take on it!
Hey, thank you so much :-) I appreciate the support. I would love to do the robot voice LOL :-) Dan
@@MoviesMusicMonsters You do a pretty good Dr. Smith too!😂
They did do a resurrections on Netflix.
@@timothyirwin8974I meant if they ever bring back the original robot, I would like him to do the voice.
No, it was BATMAN's influence. The entire "family hour" concept wasn't really carved into concrete until 1974 -- plenty of violent westerns aired at 8pm in that era. The robot and effete Dr. Smith was frustratingly repetitive and killed the show.
Some of it was the camp culture, and yes batman. However it was not the initial reason. I would recommend looking through the trilogy of books by the amazing author Mark Cushman. Hope you had a great holiday, Dan
Batman had nothing to do with it ace. Listen to the video.
@@superstrangevideo ... I DID listen to the video. I even watched it. You think BATMAN "had nothing to do with it"?? It had everything to do with it!
@@harmlessgrandpaagree. Batman’s influence on pop culture was enormous.
@@moorlock2003 .. And network executives were asking producers to go camp in the wake of BATMAN..
Hey when you are only 6 years old it doesn't seem campy at all. I was born in 1970 and was watching this when it was long into reruns, but I didn't know it at the time. I remember watching it religiously every Saturday when it would come on after the cartoons.
Funny fact. I don't ever recall seeing those first few episodes with the darker tone when I was 6, 7 or 8. Perhaps the network I watched them on deliberately shelves those ones. It was only in the early 90's when one of the UHF channels I used to love played Lost in Space again and I actually caught episode 1 and the next several in a row. I remember saying to myself damn it actually started off as a much more mature level show. Dr Smith was a totally different character from what I remembered. then I theorized to myself that maybe they decided to go more kid show because of Star Trek. For years that's what I believed until just watching your vid now.
I believe In the 1970’s they would usually only offer the color episodes in syndication as it gave the appearance of newer programming.
@@tomhollingsworth8201 That could be party true but I did see the black and white episodes of season 1 when I was a kid. Its like I said above the only episodes not shown where the first several where Dr Smith was evil and the Robot was not friendly. In the early 90's I finally seen them for the first time. All the rest of the episodes I seen multiple times when I was a kid. The first several where defiantly withheld from my viewing during the mid 70's.
From good sci fi to campy. Oh the pain, the pain.
Same thing happens Voyage to the bottom of the sea
CBS wasn't called the called the "princess" network for nothing!😄 Even during extreme campiness of the second season there were a handful of good episodes. Thanks Dan!!👍👍
I totally agree :-) thank you so much :-) Dan
I don't know the original time slots, but a similar changed happened to "The Man from UNCLE". It was a serious spy series in the black and white episodes and when it switched to color it gradually got campier to the point of being completely silly. I still blame TV Batman for this shift.
I am afraid you missed the effect of the drug and hippy culture- and the writers coming up dry. A little LSD- booze and ennui affected all of the 1967-69 culture- Even Star Trek had space hippies.......
As a kid in the early '70s, I loved Lost in Space... at first. I would come home from school in the afternoons and watch reruns of the first season of the show, on TV. It didn't bother me that those episodes were in black & white. I was fascinated! At school, I would daydream of being Will Robinson's brother and being Lost in Space with him and the Robinson family. I even began writing stories of us having adventures together. But then the show started getting campy, and I eventually lost interest. It was the same with me and the Batman reruns on TV. Even though I was an avid reader of comic books, as a kid, I did not care for that "Batman" - I found it to be silly and uninteresting.
I think the theme songs and opening credits played into the change as well. The first having more of a sci-fi scare to it and the b&w animated family floating in space on a safety line. Then the second being more upbeat and pop sounding, bright colors and the actual actors in the credits with their colorful, mod costumes.
I love both equally as an adult. But as a little kid, I liked the 2nd opening more.
Have no fear! Smith is here!!!!!
James Aubrey was the President of CBS. He was the executive behind Beverly Hillbillies and Giligan's Island. The campy comic LIS was a lot cheaper to produce than the early sci Fi episodes. Cost was a major factor in the demise of The Twilight Zone.
I couldn’t stand the shows you mentioned either! So stupid!
I always believed it was because the writers started using LSD.
Thanks for all your work. Bill Mumy said about Harris' role in his first episode, "It was actually implied that this villainous character that sabotaged the mission and ended up with us was going to be killed off after a while." The series was successful upon its debut and, midway through the first season, Harris began to rewrite his own dialogue to add more comedy because he felt that his strength was in portraying a comic villain. Due to Harris's popularity on the show, Irwin Allen approved his changes and gave him carte blanche as a writer. Harris subsequently stole the show, mainly via a seemingly never-ending series of alliterative insults directed toward The Robot, which soon worked their way into popular culture. However , after listening to Mr. Monroe's excellent explanation of the rest of the story I now understand the actions and causes of the change. Thank you, Mr. Monroe. The elephant in the room was why would the parents permit the evil Smith to go on excursions with their child and the Robot. The first black and white season was fun. The Dr.Smith and Will Robinson show was silly and very strange. ‘Oh the pain … the pain’.
I was six back when this first aired in the 60s, and I was already a big science fiction fan, spurred on by my oldest brother who was deep into the genre. Initially, I loved the show (especially the robot and the Jupiter 2), but as the show grew sillier and Smith increasingly became the focus of it, my interest flagged--which is about the time when Star Trek hit the airwaves and gained my allegiance. Better ship. Better adventures. Better SFX. Better characters. And, more importantly, some of the best writing in television at that time.
Lost in Space had some decent episodes that I can even now watch and enjoy (though Smith never ceases to irritate me), but far too often it got even the basics of science wrong. It's amazing how ignorant and/or how (clearly) indifferent the writers (and producers) were to getting even the simplest of facts about space and space travel correct. I mean, you knew they were clueless and/or uncaring when terms like solar system and galaxy were bandied about as if they meant the same thing. And there were so many improbable situations, not least being the litany of encounters with other people (some from Earth) who never seemed to be able to help the family get back on track and find their way home (or at least to the oft-mentioned Alpha Centauri).
When you watch the original pilot for the series, you get some inkling of what the show might have been had they not had the Smith character chewing up the scenery and turning each episode into a wearying display of ham acting and over-the-top camp. I don't think it was ever going to be the measure of Star Trek, but it could have been a far better and more memorable (at least in a good way) series than it was.
By the time the third season aired my family had moved to Pakistan (because of my father's work on a Canadian aid project there), so I never got to see those final (excruciating) episodes. Even decades later, I've yet to view more than a handful of season three episodes, and of those there is little that can be said is redeeming. The Smith character had become a parody of himself, so inanely ridiculous that one couldn't even laugh at the spectacle. And you had to feel sorry for the rest of the cast, who often looked as if they'd reached the end of their tether and were just going through the motions, waiting for the nightmare to end. (Except, perhaps, Billy Mumy, who seemed to be gamely playing along with Jonathan Harris' buffoonery.)
In Pakistan I had the good fortune to discover the Gold Key Space Family Robinson: Lost in Space comics, which I initially bought because I though they were adaptations of the TV show. However, the comics were unrelated to the Allen's series, and, in my opinion, generally better. They also had a longer run than the TV series, in terms of years, and remain a favourite collectible for me. If you've never read them, you owe to yourself to seek some issues out and take a gander. Well worth it.
It cannot realistically be done seriously. Any good family would push Dr. Smith out of an airlock on Day One.
Once again, non-creative network/studio "suits" ruin a project...
I was always hot for Penny, not Judy, since Angela Cartwright and I are the same age. I was a Star Trek guy, anyway... ;-)
Same thing happened to voyage to the bottom of the sea. First season was great. Dealt with problems that was going on in the world. Then it changed with monsters, and aliens, and monsters and aliens, monsters and aliens……same old story
👍🏾👍🏾
"We love it"???
Speak for yourself, Dan. I hated those campy shows which were an insult to our stupidity. LiS started out Ok, but rapidly became unwatchable. Luckily, ST:TOS came along and for a couple of years TV became a worthwhile investment of our time. Of course, the moron programmers at the networks didn't understand or support what they had and continued to dumb things down, but general crappy programming decisions is a whole topic by itself.
Still, I enjoyed your vid. It was informative, well done and enjoyable to watch. Good job.
Born in 1960, loved the first season, but even at 6-7 years old I thought this show was too dumbed down and childish the second and third seasons.
@@joepauly2311 I'm 6 yrs older, but you nailed it.
Lost In Space was a favorite in my childhood. I watched every day after school. But it became stupid yes stupid. A 6yr old finding it stupid.
It came on at 4:30 Monday through Friday in Michigan. I had a awesome Robot toy. It ran on batteries.
I still havit and it's original box. It talked and moved around. My dad said Dr.Smith was a homo.
At 6yrs old i didn't know what homo was.❗️
Once it went to the Smith-Will-Robot show, I stopped watching.
Bill Mumy even said something like he didn't think it was fair he, Smith & robot became more centric - that it wasn't fair for the others.
As a kid we loved Lost in Space , when i watch an episode now I wonder how my parents put up with it.
Horrible writing invaded their show.
You have a great radio voice!
Thank you :-)
It went from Intriguimg in Season 1 to Stupid in Season 2 to assenine in Season 3.
Born in 1958.
Must admit that Smith pushed all of my buttons. I hated him.
"Basically becoming the straight man to Jonathan Harris" 😂😂😂