MovieChat Forums > Lost in Space (1965) Discussion > The ending of Follow The Leader

The ending of Follow The Leader

posted 7 years ago by sevenlilxenos
4 replies | jump to latest

MeTV just showed the last ep of Season 1 (the last to be in B&W) late Sat night.

At the very end we had:

Father and son (John and Will) in a life or death situation
Father had previously been consumed by an evil spirit or force
Evil spirit commanded the father to kill the son
The son professed his love for his father and urged him to resist being influenced by the evil
Father becomes conflicted
Father takes mask off
Father throws evil mask down a deep chasm as evil screams NOOOOOO!
Son has helped Father remember and regain his good former self

While not exactly the same, does this seem a lil familiar to to the ending of Star Wars ROTJ to you?
I like to think George Lucas was a fan of this LIS ep which is one of the best in the entire series.
It was also one of Guy Williams favorites for obvious reasons.

[–] ElRaisuli 7 years ago

True. I've mentioned the exact same "coincidence" on this board a couple of times. If you look for them, you can find a number odd coincidences between "Star Wars" and "Lost in Space." Somewhere, I have a pretty long list of the similarities I've noticed. There's been more than one thread on it over the years.

Lucas would have been 21 years old and a Junior at USC's School of Cinema & Television in 1965, when "Lost in Space" first came on TV and this episode aired. It could all be coincidence, but even Irwin Allen's wife, Sheila Matthews Allen, says on the Blu-Rays that both Lucas and Spielberg have said they were influenced by Allen's shows.

As an example of other similarities, there's the space pirate, "Alonso" Tucker, whose first name sounds a bit like that of space pirate "Han Solo." In "Treasure of the Lost Planet" one of Alonso's "shipmates" turns out to be a giant, furry, growling, bandoleer wearing creature who bares a resemblance to a certain Wookie. There's also a scene in "The Sky Pirate" where Alonso uses Will to distract a recently landed "probe droid," which is pretty similar to the way Han and Chewie take out the probe droid in "The Empire Strike's Back."

Also, that scene at the end of "Follow The Leader," with masked John confronting Will on that finger of rock sticking out over the chasm, certainly reminds me of Darth Vader confronting Luke on that finger-like structure over that cavernous space in the Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back."

I think there was a whole thread on the similarities between the often fearful and indignant "C-3PO" and "Dr. Smith."

[–] Scarecrow-88 7 years ago

They certainly have similarities. I simply like that Guy had the chance to flex his acting muscles, and the father possessed convinced through the love of his son to usurp the powerful control of the evil force really resonated with me when I was a kid.

--
"Get the cheese to sickbay."

[–] ElRaisuli 7 years ago

Yeah, for whatever reason, the end of this episode ("Follow The Leader") and the end of "Invaders From the Fifth Dimension" really made an impression on me as a kid. I guess they are both similar in the sense that Will is in great personal peril at the climax of each episodes and it's his expression of love for his family that saves him.

[–] Emeglis 7 years ago

Reading the recently published books about the series, I was surprised to learn that Barney Slater went directly from writing "Follow the Leader" to the uninspired, lackluster "Forbidden World" - these were written only four weeks apart!