Lost in Space
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Lost in Space is a science fiction themed TV series produced by television producer Irwin Allen for the American television network CBS. The show ran for three seasons, with eighty-three first-run original episodes airing between 15 September 1965 and 6 March 1968. An unaired pilot episode, different in format and details, was filmed but not aired until decades later.
Conceptually the series is a space-age riff on the classic adventure novel Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss. Initially, the series follows the adventures of an astronaut family that is shipwrecked on an alien world while en route to Alpha Centauri. In the later episodes they travel to other worlds in their search for Alpha Centauri.
Lost in Space followed Allen's philosophy that TV was supposed to be fun, as opposed to educational. His series, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants, were all very fast-paced and exciting, often at the expense of logic.
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[edit] Characters & Cast
The regular characters of the series were the Robinson family, their pilot, their Robot and their unintended passenger, Dr. Smith.
- Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams) is the commander of the Robinson family expedition. He is an expert in astrophysics and applied planetary geology.
- Doctor Maureen Robinson (June Lockhart) is John's wife, and a trained biochemist. She is the mother of their children, Judy, Penny and Will.
- Major Don West (Mark Goddard) is the pilot of the expedition's spacecraft, the Jupiter 2. Don is romantically interested in Judy Robinson, and distrustful of Dr Smith. In the original pilot film, Don West was also an astrophysicist and expert in interplanetary geology.
- Judy Robinson (Marta Kristen) is the oldest Robinson daughter. She was planning on a career in musical theatre on Earth, but agreed to go along with her family on the Alpha Centauri mission.
- Penny Robinson (Angela Cartwright) is the middle child. She loves animals and classical music.
- Will Robinson (Bill Mumy) is a child prodigy in electronics – he is the youngest and brightest, and a particular friend of Dr. Smith and the Robot.
- Doctor Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), ostensibly a specialist in environmental and intergalactic psychology and a Space Corps colonel (but in fact an enemy agent for the mysterious "Aeolus Umbra" agency), he was in charge of medical preparations for the Robinson party. His attempt to sabotage the mission saw him stranded aboard as a "reluctant stowaway," from which the first episode takes its title. The Doctor originally began as a rather sinister character, but while he never lost his self-serving quality he evolved into comic relief. A coward, he frequently traded barbs with the ship's Robot, often referring to the Robot as a "Bubble-Headed Booby."
- The Robot is a Model B-9 Environmental-Control Robot, which had no given name. The Robot was designed by Robert Kinoshita and performed by Bob May in a suit built by Bob Stewart, with voice by Dick Tufeld, who was also the series' narrator.
- Debbie is Penny's pet "Bloop": a creature found on the planet which seemed to continually make "bloop" noises, which were electronic sound effects, portrayed by a chimpanzee wearing a fur hat to represent a pointed head with unusual ears.
[edit] Series History
Irwin Allen first produced a pilot film for the proposed series, titled No Place to Hide.
After CBS picked up the series for its 1965 season, the format was changed slightly to add the characters of Dr. Smith and the Robot, neither of whom appeared in the pilot. Also, the ship was redesigned to feature a second deck, and rechristened the Jupiter II, whereas it had been the Gemini 12 in the pilot. No Place to Hide was cut into pieces, and new scenes written and filmed around them, thus making economical use of the expensive pilot footage to flesh out the early episodes of the series.
The first season was filmed in black-&-white and was more serious in tone than subsequent seasons. It chronicled the adventures of the Robinson family starting in the year 1997, a group of Earth pioneers whose mission to colonize Alpha Centauri almost ends in disaster after saboteur Dr. Smith attempts to destroy their spaceship.
The second and third seasons were produced in color, and were more whimsical and fantastic in tone. These two seasons seemed skewed more towards children than for other demographic groups, with stories about space cowboys, space hippies, space pirates, and space beauty pageants. The show was aired opposite the Batman series, and it's been suggested the lighter, campier tone was adopted in order to compete. In the third season there was some attempt to go back to more adventure-based stories, but episodes like the penultimate "The Great Vegetable Rebellion"—featuring one of the few intelligent space carrots in cinematic history—proved that the camp was still with the show right to the end.
In the first two seasons, each show ended with a cliff-hanger "To be continued next week!" which was not integral to the main plot of the current week's show and could be tacked onto the end of any episode. In the third year, the end of each episode merely showed clips from the next episode.
The show had high enough ratings to ensure a fourth season, but it was abruptly cancelled for budgetary reasons. The cast members were never told; every member learned that the show had been cancelled by reading about it in the newspapers. In the wake of the expense of 20th Century Fox's disastrous movie foray Cleopatra, all television and film divisions of Fox were to collectively absorb the losses. Irwin Allen felt his portion of the cuts were unacceptable and refused to produce Lost in Space for the following season. Similar stories of budget cuts as the reason for the cancellation appear in the book Lost In Space: The True Story by Ed Shirfres', and in My So-Called Career in Hollywood by E. Klass. Robert Hamner, one of the show's writers, states (in Starlog, #220, November 1995) that Bill Paley, the head of CBS, despised the show so much that this dispute was used as an excuse to terminate the series.
In 1975, Allen returned to the original source material to produce The Swiss Family Robinson, a short-lived TV series based upon the novel.
[edit] Ratings & Popularity
Although it retains a cult following, the science-fiction community often points to Lost In Space as an example of TV's bad record at producing science-fiction (perhaps overlooking the series' deliberate fantasy elements), comparing it to its supposed rival, Star Trek. Ironically, Lost In Space was a ratings success, unlike Star Trek, which received poor ratings during its original network TV run. The show's fans tend to split into two groups: those who enjoy the more serious episodes of the first season, and those who enjoy the wild, campy episodes that came later.
The general public now most recognizes Lost In Space via the memorable, oft-repeated warning lines of the Robot, "Warning! Warning!" "That does not compute," and, of course, "Danger, Will Robinson!"; although the actual sentence "Danger, Will Robinson!" was only used once during the entire three seasons. There were different variations of this used. Doctor Smith's endless put-downs of the Robot are also still popular ("You bubble-headed booby!") as his often-repeated whines: "Oh, the pain... the pain of it all!" and "My back is extremely delicate today." The latter phrase Smith would consistently remark when asked to work on manual tasks.
[edit] Music
The theme music for the opening and closing credits was written by John Williams. The title theme in the first two seasons was a bit "cartoony" matching the opening credit sequence.
In year three, the opening theme was changed (again by Williams) to an exciting faster tempo action theme and featured a pumped-up countdown from seven to one to launch each episode.
Much of the incidental music in the series was written by Alexander Courage, who contributed six scores to the series, his most recognizable, "Wild Adventure" included his key theme for "Lorelei", composed for organ, woodwinds, and harp thus cementing this highly recognizable theme with John Williams' own "Chariot" and main theme for the series.
In the unaired pilot episode "No Place to Hide" the opening theme music, and much of the incidental music was borrowed from the 1951 classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
[edit] Legal Questions
There have been some challenges to the artistic origin of the series.
Ib Melchior, a notable science fiction writer, had conceived what was essentially the same idea (but with different characters) years before either the television series or the comic book, and in 1964 filed his property with Writers Guild of America. He had called his version "Space Family Robinson", which was also the original production name for Lost in Space. Ed Shifres' book Lost in Space: The True Story details how Irwin Allen allegedly plagiarized Melchior's concept, with two outlines presented side by side.
Years later, Melchior was hired by Prelude Pictures as a consultant on the "Lost in Space" feature film adaptation. But Melchior's contract, which guaranteed him 2% of the producer's gross receipts, was later sold by Prelude to its co-production partner New Line Cinema. Although an Appellate Court ruled Melchior's favor, on November 17th, 2004, the Supreme Court of California denied a petition to review the case.
[edit] References in Popular Culture
The animated television series Freakazoid features a character named Professor Jones. The generic name, and the lines given to the character were obvious riffs on Dr. Smith (such as "Weren't you on a TV show with a robot?"), and the character was in fact voiced by Jonathan Harris.
The song "Blast Off" by the Stray Cats makes reference to both Dr. Smith and the Robot.
[edit] Myths
Gene Roddenberry—the creator of Star Trek—often claimed that CBS executives listened to his Star-Trek pitch only in order to glean ideas for doing sci-fi on a TV budget. But this is unlikely given that by the time Roddenberry pitched Star Trek, Irwin Allen was already a successful, Emmy award winning producer who already had a science fiction television series television in production: (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).
Another myth is that Lost in Space became campy in response to the serious tone of Star Trek. However, Lost in Space had already gone campy by the start of its second season, the same time Star Trek went on the air. If any show directly influenced a turn towards camp, that show would have been the hit show Batman, which began airing on the ABC television network in January 1966.
It has been reported that Lost In Space was the favorite TV series of John F. Kennedy, Jr. while growing up in the 1960s.
[edit] Equipment
In addition to the Robot, the primary tools used by the Robinsons in their exploration of strange alien worlds included the twin-decked Jupiter II flying saucer spacecraft, a glass-walled tracked exploration vehicle called the "the Chariot", and the space "Pod" (a small spacecraft modeled on the Apollo Lunar Module). On occasion, characters (notably John Robinson) used what was then an exciting new invention: the jet pack.
[edit] Trivia
- Although the Robot had no name, in the third-season episode entitled "The Time Merchant," it was shown in its packing crate, and the crate was labelled "ONE General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental ROBOT" with the G, U, N, T, E, and all letters in "ROBOT" in red capital letters, while all the other letters were black; some have suggested that this was supposed to convey the acronym "GUNTER"; see these screen shots.
- Doctor Smith and the Robot did not appear in the first, unaired pilot episode (which has since been made available on iTunes and on the DVD release of the entire series). Story editor Anthony Wilson came up with the idea of including a "Long John Silver" type villain to act as a constant irritant to compensate for the lack of conflict within the Robinson family. Writer Shimon Wincelberg fleshed out the character, giving him an exotic foreign-sounding name. Irwin Allen wanted a plain all-American name for the doctor so it was changed to the generic "Smith." (Starlog, no. 159, Oct. 1990).
- According to Lost in Space: The Ultimate Unauthorized Trivia Challenge for the Classic TV Series, by James Hatfield and George "Doc" Burt, the role of Doctor Smith was originally written for Carroll O'Connor (who turned it down). Character actor Jack Elam was also considered before Jonathan Harris was chosen for the role.
- Smith is blamed, in "The Reluctant Stowaway", for the Jupiter II encountering a meteor swarm just a matter of minutes after leaving Earth -- his weight caused the autopilot to miscalculate so it could not dodge the swarm. However, as learned in the third-season episode "The Time Merchant", the Robinsons owe Smith an enormous debt because, had he not been aboard, the stable, planned flight path would have caused the ship to collide with an uncharted asteroid six months into its flight.
- Harris was the last to be cast but chafed at the thought of his name appearing at the end of the opening credits. To enhance his billing status he invented a title for himself: "Special Guest Star."
- In early episodes Dr. Smith is a purely evil, cold-hearted saboteur who makes repeated attempts to murder the Robinsons. He was even given eye-liner to make him look more sinister and cat-like. Harris hated playing the snarling, unappealing villain and knew his character would soon be killed off unless changes were made. To that end he saved his role—and, many say the series itself—by gradually transforming him into a sympathetic comedic-villain. The revamped Smith was really a composite of previous roles. On The Bill Dana Show Harris played the pompous, irritable manager of a snooty hotel—imperious to his employees and obsequious toward his guests. On The Third Man he played a fussy, cowardly, eager-to-please accountant. Combine the two and add some childlike flaws (lazy, selfish, and deceitful) and you have Smith. In fact, Harris played a variety of Smith-like characters, or characters with one or more of those traits, throughout his long career.
- Two of the show's stars did not appear in the final episode, supposedly as punishment for being unable to keep from laughing during the filming of "The Great Vegetable Rebellion.
- The Jupiter 2 was evidently modeled somewhat on the spaceship C-57D from the classic '50s sci-fi film Forbidden Planet
- The Forbidden Planet character Robby the Robot guest starred in two episodes: War of the Robots, and Condemned of Space.
- The Robot has inspired a dedicated fan base, many striving to build their own Robot (see: B9 Robot Builders Club). Since the series conclusion, hobbyists around the world have built at least 15 detailed full-size replicas of the Robot, although the original outfit still exists in deteriorated condition.
[edit] Spin-offs
[edit] Comics
Bill Mumy scripted an authorized Lost in Space comic book for Innovation Comics.
Prior to the appearance of the TV series, a comic book named Space Family Robinson was published by Gold Key Comics and written by Gaylord DuBois. Since the TV series used many of the characters and situations from the comics, the title of the comic book was renamed Space Family Robinson Lost in Space The comic book is not a spinoff of the TV series but was in print prior to the conception of the show.
[edit] Cartoon
In the 1972-73 television season, ABC produced The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, a weekly collection of 60-minute animated movies, pilots and specials from various production companies, such as Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, and Rankin-Bass -- Hanna-Barbera Productions contributed animated work based Gidget, Yogi Bear, Tabitha, Oliver Twist, The Banana Splits, and most importantly, Lost in Space. Dr. Smith (voiced by Jonathan Harris) was the only character from the original program to appear in the special, along with the Robot (who was employed in flight control rather than a support activity). The spacecraft was launched vertically by rocket, and Smith was a passenger rather than a saboteur. The pilot for the animated Lost in Space series was not picked up as a series, and only this episode was produced.
[edit] Feature Film
In 1998, New Line Cinema produced a feature movie adaptation. It included numerous nods, homages and cameos related to the series, including:
- Dick Tufeld as The Robot's voice;
- Mark Goddard played the General who gives Major West his orders for the mission;
- June Lockhart played a teacher of Will Robinson's;
- Angela Cartwright and Marta Kristen appeared as reporters.
The film's Jupiter II was launched into orbit by a vehicle called the Jupiter I, which closely mimics the series' spacecraft, complete with rotating propulsion lights. Reference is made to the Chariot and Space Pod, both of which are reported wrecked.
Additional links to the series were considered, but did not make it to the film: Jonathan Harris was offered a cameo appearance (as the Global Sedition businessman who hires, then betrays, Dr. Smith). He turned down the role, and is reported to have said "I play Smith or I don't play". Other reports say that he was unsatisfied with the size of the role, saying "I've never played a bit part in my life and I'm not starting now." Bill Mumy was at one point considered for a key role in the film, that of an aged Will Robinson who appears in the 'Spider Smith' sequences, but another actor was cast instead. Guy Williams, the remaining original cast member, had died some years earlier.
[edit] Second TV series
In late 2003, a new TV series, with a somewhat changed format, was in development in the U.S. It was intended to be originally closer to the original pilot with no Doctor Smith, but including a different-styled robot. A pilot was commissioned by the WB network, directed by John Woo, produced by Twentieth Century Fox TV and Regency Television, and screened to executives in May of 2004.
The "Jupiter 2" inter-stellar flying-saucer spacecraft of the original series was changed to a non-saucer planet-landing craft, dispensed from a larger inter-stellar mother-ship.
The pilot script featured the characters of John and Maureen, but an elder son, David, was scripted, as well as Judy, an 'infant' Penny, and Will. There was no Doctor Smith character, but the character of Don West was described as a "dangerous, lone wolf type".
The confirmed cast included Brad Johnson as John Robinson, Jayne Brook as Maureen Robinson, Adrianne Palicki as Judy Robinson, Ryan Malgarini as Will Robinson and Mike Erwin as Don West.
It was not among the network's series pick-ups confirmed later that year.
However, the producers of the new Battlestar Galactica show bought the sets. They were redesigned the next year and used for scenes on the Battlestar Pegasus.
[edit] Title translated
- Brazilian Portuguese: Perdidos no Espaço
- Croatian: Izgubljeni u svemiru
- French: Perdus dans l'espace
- Japanese: 宇宙家族ロビンソン (Uchuu Kazoku Robinson = Space Family Robinson)
- Korean: 우주가족 로빈슨 (Uju Gajok Robinseun = Space Family Robinson)
- Polish: Zagubieni w kosmosie
- Spanish: Perdidos en el espacio
[edit] See also
- List of Lost in Space episodes
- Battlestar Galactica - subsequent TV series.
- Red Dwarf - Doug Naylor, Rob Grant, and Ed Bye cite Lost in Space as an inspiration for this British science fiction television series of the 1980s and 1990s,
[edit] References
- Lost In Space: The True Story, by Ed Shirfres, Windsor House, 1996.
- My So-Called Career in Hollywood, by E. Klass, Three Hole Punch Publishing, 2005.
- Starlog: issues #21 (Angela Cartwright), #48, #163, #214 (Bill Mumy), #57 & #201 (Bob May), #72 & #198 (June Lockhart), #96 & #248 (Jonathan Harris), #100 & #102 (Irwin Allen), #114 (Guy Williams), #135 (Marta Kristen), #159 (LIS writers), #190 (Mark Goddard), #219-220 (writers/directors).
[edit] External links
- Official TV series site
- Lost in CyberSpace - fan site
- Lost in Space (TV series) at the Internet Movie Database
- Lost In Space B-9 Robot Dance
Categories: Science fiction television series | 1965 television program debuts | 1968 television program cancellations | 1960s American television series | CBS network shows | Television series by Fox Television Studios | Space opera | Innovation Publishing | Science fiction crews in film and television
