Most people remember Lost In Space, if they remember it at all, as a very silly show filled with talking carrots, cyclops, and sexy floating green women. It didn’t start out that way, the first couple of episodes were pretty serious with a lot of Cold War tensions as Dr Smith is clearly an Agent for the Bad Guys. They fairly quickly dropped the Super Villain aspect of Dr Smith since this was a story that had no where to go. Either they killed Smith or they turned him into something less threatening. They chose the latter. He went from would be mass murderer to liar and petty thief. Many episodes revolved around Dr Smith doing something selfish and stupid that put everyone else in danger.
Flash forward fifty years or so and Netflix has made their own version of Lost in Space. Ok, sure, why not.
On the plus side Netflix spared no expense on the special effects budget. Lost in Space looks amazing. From random odd colored plants to a map of the universe, everything is spot on. But this is no big deal. Virtually everything produced today looks absolutely amazing. Gone are the days of spray painted wet-suits and colorful foam rocks that filled all of Irwin Allen’s original TV shows.
On the minus side, well, just about everything else.
Each of the ten episodes has a Disaster of the Week. Something that would kill lesser mortals, but which the Robinsons manages to overcome with vastly superior female intelligence. I was actually surprised they didn’t give the Robot boobs so it could be a woman as well. I’m all for equality and this is an improvement over the Mom in the original series who seemed to spend all her time calling everyone in for dinner, but I think they may have gone a tiny bit over board here. Lost in Space, where the women are all strong and intelligent and in command, and the men are all morons. Still, I could live with that, after watching Wonder Women and Abbot and Costello Go To Mars, I kind of like strong women and dumb men.
Dr Smith is a problem for me. A big one. He is now a woman, of course, but she isn’t so much evil as mentally ill. I know there is a long history of crazy people being the bad guy, but this character really strikes a wrong note. Having mental problems shouldn’t be the sole reason a villain is villainous. There is no reason give for anything in Netflix’s Lost in Space, but it is really annoying that this woman wants to kill everyone and we are never given any reason why she wants to do this. The original Zachary Smith was a spy and later a selfish bastard, but his goals were always clear:he wanted to go home and if he couldn’t go home, he wanted the best of everything he could get. This Dr Smith, well, she’s nuts and she wants, well, to remain nuts, and maybe kill everyone else, or maybe not. In a show filled with pointless characters, she is the most pointless of them all.
There are too many problems with simple and obvious solutions. At the start of the show we run into some Eels that eat the fuel the Jupiter 2 runs on. One of the super smart women says something to the effect, Our fuel must be like their regular food. Ok, fuel problems solved, find out where the Eels live and what they eat and you’ll have all the fuel you’ll ever need. But no, that is never mentioned again. The fuel problem is solved by other, equally ridiculous means. This kind of here’s a problem and oh, here’s a solution, formula is used in every episode.
Another odd bit is that the Colonists, yes, we have a whole ship load of Colonists this time round, all seem to be Pacifists. Not only do they not carry guns and rifles around at all times as their 1960s counterparts did, but they are forbidden from even making guns with the ships gee-whiz 3D printers.
Anyway, it’s the writing that sucks. Pure and simple bad writing on every level.
To paraphrase what Mr. Plinkett said about the Star Wars Prequels, it was nice that all these people got a paycheck for doing this, but it wasn’t so nice for those us that had to watch what they made. And no, I didn’t have to watch all ten episodes. but I did.
Lost In Space ends with a cliff hanger, leaving it’s many unanswered questions for a future that may never come.
Lost in Space had a few fun moments, but it was definitely a try-not-to-think while you watch it kind of show.
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