Season One Is Fascinating.
For the life of me I don’t know if I have ever seen any of season 1 before & if I did I probably forgot about most of it. It’s been years since I’ve even thought about “Lost in Space” never mind watched it, but now that it’s on METV, I’m getting reacquainted with it again.
It’s fascinating to see how it originally was conceived. Smith as a villain? Smith as a potential murderer? He plotted to kill? Women & children? Dr. Smith? SHOCKING! In that fight he had with Don where Smith had a gun on him, to force him to pilot the ship & maroon everyone else on the planet or he was going to kill Don, that would’ve been it right there, game over, you’re OUT! If you don’t get me I’ll get you & end it.
The fact that neither him or John just didn’t either kill Smith or force him to leave is mind blowing given that his true hand was revealed. To keep him around & then worry about what the guy was going to do was just too out there for me. “Honey is he trying to have the robot kill the kids again? Darn I hope not”. Yeahhhh righttt. For him to BS his way out of it was something that Don & we should never have bought.
Then later on Don hands him a gun! HIM? LOL! In the episode where that Hillbilly lands on the planet they’re on & they go to investigate, he hands Smith a weapon. Then a few episodes later on Don has a line where he says to Dr. Smith something to the effect of “I’ll NEVER hand YOU a weapon Smith!”. Something like that. Uhhh excuse me, but YES you have! Guess the writers of this show never cared a damn thing about continuity or common sense.
What’s strange is early on Dr. Smith was drop dead serious, not whiny, hungry or even lazy. He actually offered to help John & Don physically with some stuff which was out of character for him. Yeah he still gabbed a mile a minute with his motor mouth but only half the usual nonsense came out of it. Wanted to see how far the series progressed til where Smith degenerated into what we have come to know & loathe him today. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it wasn’t the show’s writers or producers that were responsible for the change in his portrayal & character arc but rather Jonathan Harris himself that basically threw out all his scripts & ad libbed everything off the top of his head. That was bloody brilliant!
Irwin Allen who yelled at Harris about it told him “I know what you’re doing! KEEP doing it!” There’s a whole bunch of videos on YouTube where an older Jonathan Harris discusses the show, you all should take a look as it’s brilliant. Even the robot was menacing & as unlovable as I ever thought he could be. What changed that? Harris of course!
What’s flat out remarkable were the dynamics of the Robison family, you see John kneel down to pray with the family, indicating a faith we later on never suspected he had. He showed love & affection for his wife & children which we get to see where in the later seasons he barely even acknowledges them except to give Will or Penny orders. There was a camaraderie between Don & him but it was stressed early on that John was the boss & even Don who was a solider used to following orders got short tempered about it at times where he let him know what he thought.
Oh yes & there’s Marta Kristen, I always wondered if Judy & Don were ever a “thing”. But there was a very early episode that seemed to show they were if only for a brief instant. Blink & you’ll miss it. There was a interview she did where she confirmed it & the scene in question. She & Don were lying on a blanket on the ground with each other where they showed the slightest of affection for each other, laughing, touching, some mild horseplay, where John who was watching them along with Maureen quipped “We brought everything but a marriage counselor” & they both laughed. Kristen said “Yes we were a couple for a few seconds” & indicated that the writers & producers chose to never acknowledge it after that.
Best thing is we see her talking! Interacting! How at times, she had strong feelings of enmity towards Dr. Smith, where she’s just HAD IT with him & she verbally confronts the Dr. about his many misdeeds & then later on winds up feeling guilty about it. Kristen stated “In the later seasons I was lucky if I had any dialogue. There was an episode where I said only one word which was goodbye to a character.”
Later on the whole dynamic changed, we don’t see the love, care & concern of the family for one another anymore, not like it was in the 1st season. Well I understand more than anyone else the show had to change, to become something else in order to survive but c’mon! It became the “Dr. Smith” show where everyone played off of him rather than interact with anyone else. The 1st season was golden & I miss many of the things that made it special. We get to see what we never see again. So many opportunities wasted where doing certain things wouldn’t have hurt this show but ah say la vie.