The Orbit of Priplanis, the First Season Planet
In "Return from Outer Space" Will says the first season planet is named Priplanus.
In "The Hungry Sea" Professor Robinson explains the orbit of Priplanus based on data in tape from the robot.
In my post dated about 5 years ago in the thread https://moviechat.org/tt0058824/Lost-in-Space/58c7261d5ec57f0478eea649/The-orbit-of-Plrplanus I did my best to explain how the planet could have reasonably Earthlike tempuratures most of the time occassionally swing rapidly from extreme cold to extreme heat. One would expect that the extreme cold would be separated from the extrme heat by weeks or months of more mild weather, instead of one following instantly after the other.
But it seems I did get one detail wrong in my discussion. Robinson described the orbit of Priplanus as a "flat" (long and narrow) ellipse. And in an elliptical orbit - all orbits are more or less elliptical -the body being orbited, like the sun of Priplanus, is at one of the two focal points of the ellipse, and thus not at the center of the ellipse.
And I wrote that Robinson described the sun Priplanus as being represented by a stone in the center of the ellipse he drew in the dust, which would be a big scientific error on the part of the writers, Irwin Allen, Simon Winchelberg, and William Welch, and the director, Sobey Martin.
But when I saw "The Hungary Sea" again early this morning on February 27, 2022, I thought I heard Robinson describe the sun as being near one end of the elliptical orbit, and point to a stone near one end.
If that is correct, I have remembered the scene wrong and falsely sneered at the incompetence of the creators of LIS for perhaps all of the 56 years, 4 months, and 14 days since October 13, 1965.
So I would be glad if someone could remember that scene, or post a transcript of it, or even post a clip of it.
Okay, I found an online transcript of "The Hungry Sea".
Here's this planet.
This is its sun.
Now, the orbit of this planet is nothing like the Earth's orbit.
It's a flat ellipse.
And the sun isn't in the center.
It's over here on this leg.
Then we must've been at this end, away from the sun.
That means we're heading back in close to it now.
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=lost-in-space-1965&episode=s01e05
So that indicates my memory was wrong for many decades. I hate that.
Added night of 02-27/28 2022 And I watched "The Hungry Sea" on the internet and Robinson does say that the sun is at one leg of the ellipse and not in the center.. share