I just wanted to express my appreciation to everyone who has posted a review here. I'm really flattered and happy to see the first season LIS DVD box doing so well. Of course I can't be objective about it, but the first season is definitely my favorite. It was a wonderful experience for me to make the show as a kid and it's a wonderful experience now to watch it with my kids and to see that it still excites and pleases people all over our woe begotten beautiful planet. So, on behalf of my fellow LIS cast members (who are still in touch with each other regularly and are still very much a "family") Thank you all for the kind words. Enjoy! Bill Mumy Lost in Space - The Complete First Season
I'm 44 years old and was 5 years old when this series ran on TV. I can still remember the horror and fascination of space in the mid-1960s, which at the time was completely new terrain. Giant blobs, tentacled creatures, plastic ray guns, laser beams - it didn't matter what tricks the producers employed, it was all NEW STUFF as far as I was concerned. Of course, if you compare the props, effects and plots with today's sci-fi, you'd probably burst out laughing and scoff at how primitive it was back then. Then again, you don't buy this DVD set for realism, or for cutting-edge special effects or even for the acting. Neither do you buy it because it pioneered the scores of space adventures that came later, like The Invaders, Flash Gordon or Star Trek. Instead, you buy it because you want to remember how it was when you were 5 years old and you sat in your parents' living room, hunched over a black-and-white TV set, scared out of your wits, yet thrilled to bits at the harrowing adventures of the Robinsons. You buy it because maybe even at that young age, you had a crush on Penny Robinson (Angela Cartwright) and you want to try and grasp that feeling again, which at the time was also NEW STUFF to you. So this is first and foremost a trip down memory lane and it won't appeal to anyone who never watched the show as a kid. For fellow reviewers who have expressed disappointment and have said they felt let down, I ask you - what the hell did you expect?
Like many of the posts here, I was about 8 when I first saw 'Lost in Space' and it opened up my imagination like nothing ever had. 'Star Trek' at the time didn't interest me as much as the adventures of the Space Family Robinson, the reluctant stowaway Dr. Smith, and the faithful Robot, who any boy (or girl) would have wanted as a best friend. It remained my favorite shows for years and I taped most of the episodes in reruns and also spent quite a fortune with Columbia House buying the better quality videos they offered. Season One is by far the best of the 3 seasons, but even though the series went campy ('The Great Vegetable Rebellion' anyone?) I'm looking forward to rewatching some episodes of Seasons 2 and 3 that I never did get to tape and haven't seen for many years. I think Fox will make a nice profit off this series, so hopefully seasons 2 and 3 won't be too far along.
"Lost in Space" (1965-68) told the story of the space family Robinson, who left Earth aboard their Jupiter II spacecraft on a five-year voyage to explore a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest neighbor in the galaxy. But then Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), an enemy spy, sabotaged the control system but did not get off the ship before it took off. "Lost in Space" were Dr. John Robinson (Guy Williams of "Zorro"), his wife Maureen (June Lockhart from "Lassie"), daughters Judy (Marta Kristen from "Beach Blanket Bingo") and Penny (Angela Cartwright from "Make Room for Daddy" and "The Sound of Music"), and son Will (Billy Mumy from a memorable episode of "The Twilight Zone"). The ship's pilot was Major Don West (Mark Goddard from "The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor) and completing the crew was the Robot (Bob May in the suit but Dick Tufeld providing the voice).
To be clear from the start, even though the first season of "Lost in Space" was in black & white it was the best season. That is because when the Robinsons first blasted off in the Jupiter II this was a dramatic science fiction show. By the end of that first season it was starting to change into more of a situation comedy and the last two seasons all too often involved the comedy team of Dr. Smith, Will and the Robot. But the first five episodes are classic science fiction that hold up to "The Twilight Zone," "The Outer Limits," or "Star Trek" in terms of 1960s television. There are also enough solid episodes to make up for the lame ones, plus the pure nostalgic value of this particular series for those of us who grew up on 1960s television, to justify rounding up to a five star rating.
A lot of the credit for the strong start goes to Shimon Wincelberg, who began writing television scripts for the "Kraft Television Theater" and ended with "Law & Order." In between he did scripts for "Voyage to the Bottom fo the Sea," "The Time Tunnel," "Star Trek" ("Dagger of the Mind" and "The Galileo Seven"), and the stories for the first five episodes of "Lost in Space": (1) "The Reluctant Stowaway" show how Dr. Smith's presence caused the Jupiter II to go astray; (2) "The Derelict" is where the Jupiter II is taken aboard an alien spaceship; (3) "Island in the Sky" is the one where the Jupiter II makes a spectacular crash landing on an alien world; (4) "There Were Giants in the Earth" is where the Robinsons explore Priplanus and encounter the giant cyclops; and (5) "The Hungry Sea" has the planet showing the crew a rough time. If you accept the premise of an American family blasting off into space and having to survive on an alien world, what happens is certainly more realistic than idealistic.
Unfortunately, after that point "Lost in Space" because a show of weekly guest stars as aliens stop by for a visit, beginning with Warren Oates as space cowboy Jimmy Hapgood in (6) "Welcome Stranger." There would also be Albert Salmi as Alonzo P. Tucker (18) "The Sky Pirate" and in the first season low point Mercedes McCambridge as Sybilla, the head of (25) "The Share Croppers." The other constant theme is that Dr. Smith causes trouble in his desperate attempts to get back to Earth, which means everything from giving an alien Will's brain in (8) "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension" and trading the Robot for food in (23) "The Space Trade" to becoming ruler of an alien world in (24) "His Majesty Smith" and getting the power to turn anything he touches into platinum in (26) "All That Glitters." Notice that Smith becomes the pivotal player in more episodes at the end of the season.
This is not to suggest there are not some solid episodes after the first five. The first season offered several episodes that played on classic science fiction films. The show's only two-part episode, (16-17) "The Keeper," had guest star Michael Rennie as the title character in a memorable performance. Rennie played Klatuu, the strange visitor from another planet in the science fiction classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still." When I first saw these episodes way back when I had not yet seen that film, but Rennie brings the same sense of intelligence and dignity to this role, which makes it the standout performance in the history of the series. In (20) "War of the Robots" the Robot has to save the Robinsons from Robotoid, played by Robbie the Robot of "Forbidden Planet" fame. No wonder the "Lost in Space" robot remains the coolest robot of all time for so many fans of science fiction.
The eight DVDs in this collection have the 29 episodes of the first season plus the unaired pilot. If you are looking for extras, you are going to be disappointed, but since many fans have been waiting since childhood to see these episodes again the complaints will be minor (besides, it is not like the cast members are seeing any money off of this to encourage them to do commentary tracks, interviews or anything else). Minor complaint: If they put the unaired pilot on the first disc instead of the last disc the two parts of "The Keeper" would be on the same disc. "No Place to Hide" (Episode 0) is fascinating because the unaired pilot has neither the Robot nor Dr. Smith, which is a big surprise given how they become the most beloved and pivotal character (respectively) on the show there is a website that lists all of Dr. Smith's insults of the robot, from "Adlepated Amateur" to "Wrong Way Computer"). At this point the show was going to be called "Space Family Robinson," but the Walt Disney people would have none of that. - 1960s - Tv Series - Science Fiction - Lost In Space'
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