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The change in Lost In Space in many ways paralleled the changes to Happy Days a decade later. Happy Days started as a realistic (and humorous) look at the 50's and later, to get better ratings, it became the Fonzie show. Fonzie and Dr. Smith had much in common with their roles.
The same complaint was made by "Star Trek's" co-stars, as Shatner carped to Roddenberry, that he wanted more screen time. Major script changes were routine. Nichols and Takei were very upset.
Born Jonathan Charasuchin in the Bronx to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Harris adopted the stage persona of a classically trained British actor. And that is just cool!
I never understood it. Even as a kid, I was so disappointed when it de-evolved from a top notch Sci Fi show into a campy Sid and Marty Krofft pre-school comedy. The only thing missing was the talking flute.
You might have been a more observant kid than me. I just rolled with the changes and didn't much think about it. When I look back, though, my favourites were early episodes like Hungry Sea, There Were Giants on Earth and Follow the Leader and the Keeper. My only complaint was with silly space versions of Earth - space pirates and Vikings. I was there for weird aliens monsters, not pantomime characters!
I always thought the show went downhill the moment Jonathan Harris started to camp up the Dr. Smith character. It was like this decision of his marked the beginning of the show's unwatchability. I had also heard or read long ago that Harris believed his character was on the chopping block, so he decided to ham it up as a "F--- you" to those calling for his character to be removed from the show. Maybe that information was incorrect, but I still feel that Harris going camp marked the end of the show's watchability for me. It took the character of Harris' voiced Lucifer in _Battlestar Galactica_ to partially redeem the man in my eyes.
Doctor Smith is analogous to Gilligan in Gilligan's Island. Both the Robinsons and the Seven Castaways are in similar predicaments, and Doctor Smith serves a similar role as Gilliigan in driving the plot of each episode.
@@leerhode1021 that was because Gilligan's Island wasn't a science fiction show, though it did have a professor capable of inventing a bunch of crazy gadgets, but none of which got the castaways off the island!
Thanks for all your work. Bill Mumy said about Harris' role in his first episode, "It was actually implied that this villainous character that sabotaged the mission and ended up with us was going to be killed off after a while." The series was successful upon its debut and, midway through the first season, Harris began to rewrite his own dialogue to add more comedy because he felt that his strength was in portraying a comic villain. Due to Harris's popularity on the show, Irwin Allen approved his changes and gave him carte blanche as a writer. Harris subsequently stole the show, mainly via a seemingly never-ending series of alliterative insults directed toward The Robot, which soon worked their way into popular culture. However , after listening to Mr. Monroe's excellent explanation of the rest of the story I now understand the actions and causes of the change. Thank you, Mr. Monroe. The elephant in the room was why would the parents permit the evil Smith to go on excursions with their child and the Robot. The first black and white season was fun. The Dr.Smith and Will Robinson show was silly and very strange. ‘Oh the pain … the pain’.
As a kid, I was fascinated by the early episodes of "Space." But as it morphed into the "Will & Dr. Smith Comedy Hour," I stopped watching. Even an 11-year-old knew garbage when he saw it.
Same here. I loved the early B-Ws and liked the attempts early in S3 at getting back to something a little more serious, but otherwise, count me out. Even as a kid.
Great vid! I had believed Jonathan Harris' claim that he hijacked the show by his scene-stealing antics. Your explanation makes more sense. As a pre-teen kid watching LIS reruns in the 70's, I absolutely loved the show! As a teen who started getting into Star Trek, I began to totally scoff at the silliness of LIS' color episodes. As an adult, I appreciate the show for what it was. A bittersweet anecdote that demonstrates the impact this show had: I was caregiver for my elderly father who passed away at 93. During the last six years of his life, my father suffered from dementsia/Alzheimers which of course wreaked havoc on his memory. Although a college professor during his work career in the US, he came from a modest background: a Sicilian farm family. One night, my father asked me if I had "fed the donkey" thinking he was back in his old home town in Sicily. When I explained to him the reality that we were in the US and we weren't living on a farm, he realized just how messed his memory was and he replied "I'm Lost in Space like Doctor Smith!" Of all the things that still remained firmly implanted in his fading memory....
The voice of the robot, Dick Tufeld, was used in the opening of Lost In Space, The Time Tunnel and even, Peyton Place. I remember my mother sending me out of the room when Peyton Place came on.
Wow! I’m glad you mentioned that! I was sent to bed on the adult stuff too. I’m from the Seattle area. Star Trek came on at 9:00 pm. It was DEFINITELY beddie by at that time. I couldn’t watch it until reruns in the 70s😢
I faithfully watched Lost in Space when it first aired. I was 9 years old and had all the merchandise. However, I much preferred the first season even at my young age and became a Star Trek fan when the original series aired. I also enjoyed Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.
You know Lost in Space and Star Trek have the same parent, that is the movie Forbidden Planet, the seeds of both shows are in that movie. Forbidden Planet has a flying saucer, a robot, an organization called the United Planets, the crew of the saucer in Forbidden planet is much like the crew of the Enterprise, they have a quasi military organization similar to Star Fleet.
Such a shame. The first season was brilliant. Once it went to color...it became a live action cartoon for kids. Even as a kid, I presumed that Dr. Smith had a mental breakdown, going from proper villain to hapless victim of his circumstances.
As a kid watching it after school on weekdays all I remember are 3 things: 1. I loved the dark haired girl 2. Always wanted them to bust out the laser rifles and battle gear more often 3. Grew to utterly despise Dr Smith
Lost in Space reruns always came on after the morning cartoons in my town, so I watched a lot of it as a kid. It’s true that the early episodes had a lot of tension and seriousness, but it leaned into Dr. Smith’s antics after a time. Always entertaining 😂
That was an interesting analysis. I never thought about the time slot it was in. But it seemed as if all of Irwin Allen's shows (like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel) started off with serious intentions and gradually veered into campy fantasy. Maybe it was hard to find enough writers to crank out 26 "serious" episodes each season. I read where the writer of The Great Vegetable Rebellion had simply run out of ideas. BTW, all of the interviews with Jonathan Harris are priceless. He was quite a raconteur.
When I watched Lost In Space reruns as a kid, I saw the second and third seasons before the first. When I saw the earliest episodes, especially the pilot, I was shocked to see Dr. Smith and the Robot out to KILL the Robinsons and Major West! It felt like I was watching a different, darker show. I wondered "How could the Robinsons let this murderous duo travel with them on the Jupiter 2?". Actually, "murderous duo" is present-day me talking, 9 year-old me just thought those two were really, really BAD! How can this be? At the very least, the Robot should have been dismantled or reprogrammed and Smith should have been put in a freezing tube. Instead they were treated like part of the family, albeit Smith was treated like an annoying ne'er do well uncle like Joe Carson in Petticoat Junction.
I used to note a pattern with nearly all Irwin Allen series from the 60s. They start out great and then erode into silly. I recall really enjoying most of the first season of 'Lost In Space'. The darker tone of the show as well as straight science fiction scripts appealed to me. I even had the Aurora robot and cyclops model kits. I lost interest in the show when it became silly. The same with 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea'. I never gave the others much of a chance because of this. But I imagine TV shows succumb to network execs like this all of the time.
But overall far more serious in tone, despite absurdity like werewolf undersea island. Even Land of the Giants, a full on the nose allegory about the thread of communism, had its ridiculously campy moments.
I don't know the original time slots, but a similar changed happened to "The Man from UNCLE". It was a serious spy series in the black and white episodes and when it switched to color it gradually got campier to the point of being completely silly. I still blame TV Batman for this shift.
One of the best parts in many episodes was hearing Dr. Smith scream in fear. Priceless. I also got a kick out of when the Robot sometimes laughed at Dr. Smith. Too funny.
I was six back when this first aired in the 60s, and I was already a big science fiction fan, spurred on by my oldest brother who was deep into the genre. Initially, I loved the show (especially the robot and the Jupiter 2), but as the show grew sillier and Smith increasingly became the focus of it, my interest flagged--which is about the time when Star Trek hit the airwaves and gained my allegiance. Better ship. Better adventures. Better SFX. Better characters. And, more importantly, some of the best writing in television at that time. Lost in Space had some decent episodes that I can even now watch and enjoy (though Smith never ceases to irritate me), but far too often it got even the basics of science wrong. It's amazing how ignorant and/or how (clearly) indifferent the writers (and producers) were to getting even the simplest of facts about space and space travel correct. I mean, you knew they were clueless and/or uncaring when terms like solar system and galaxy were bandied about as if they meant the same thing. And there were so many improbable situations, not least being the litany of encounters with other people (some from Earth) who never seemed to be able to help the family get back on track and find their way home (or at least to the oft-mentioned Alpha Centauri). When you watch the original pilot for the series, you get some inkling of what the show might have been had they not had the Smith character chewing up the scenery and turning each episode into a wearying display of ham acting and over-the-top camp. I don't think it was ever going to be the measure of Star Trek, but it could have been a far better and more memorable (at least in a good way) series than it was. By the time the third season aired my family had moved to Pakistan (because of my father's work on a Canadian aid project there), so I never got to see those final (excruciating) episodes. Even decades later, I've yet to view more than a handful of season three episodes, and of those there is little that can be said is redeeming. The Smith character had become a parody of himself, so inanely ridiculous that one couldn't even laugh at the spectacle. And you had to feel sorry for the rest of the cast, who often looked as if they'd reached the end of their tether and were just going through the motions, waiting for the nightmare to end. (Except, perhaps, Billy Mumy, who seemed to be gamely playing along with Jonathan Harris' buffoonery.) In Pakistan I had the good fortune to discover the Gold Key Space Family Robinson: Lost in Space comics, which I initially bought because I though they were adaptations of the TV show. However, the comics were unrelated to the Allen's series, and, in my opinion, generally better. They also had a longer run than the TV series, in terms of years, and remain a favourite collectible for me. If you've never read them, you owe to yourself to seek some issues out and take a gander. Well worth it.
This made me go back and watch the original un-aired pilot with the "Gemini 12", set October 16, 1997) that was worked into the first few episodes (no smith, no Robot). It was an actual serious attempt at "Swiss Family Robinson" in space. It's still "out there" in cyberspace. It was actually a good pilot,with a couple interesting things.... Judy was planning a career in musical comedy before the family being picked, per the news commentator. Don West held a doctorate, not a military Major, and was their "assistant", not their "pilot", whose study was theoretical fitness for human habitation of other planets. A couple of nits to pick: For some reason, with the temperature dropping, John rejects Don's suggestion of staying in the ship, and to migrate south, as if a spaceship designed to travel in the cold of deep space wouldn't shield them from -150 degrees (I assume Fahrenheit). Don gets splashed off the roof of the Chariot trying to reconnect solar batteries in the stormy Inland Sea, and everyone thinks he's gone, when he's just hanging over the side, which they could see if they just looked at the clear side walls. John's written log entries (with a voice-over) which revealed that they were traveling in space for over 3 years before crashing (without details on their revival from suspended animation) were a nice touch, as was the ending, with "aliens" observing them after they get to the tropical area, leaving an open ending fit for a pilot episode. If Irwin Allen had stuck with that, he might have had a true competitor to "Star Trek", but definitely not "kiddie" sci-fi (but, I liked "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits" as a kid in the '60s). But, the later movie remake and the Netflix series showed that you can go "serious" with LiS, but still be cringe-worthy...
Actually the situation with the -150 degree temperature was not really that unscientific. In space objects hold heat much better because of being in a vacuum. In our atmosphere a big part of cooling is from convection, where air brushes up against an object and absorbs heat and carries it away. Same thing when submerged in water. However in space the only way to get rid of heat is by radiation, mainly through infrared light. Think of looking at something with a night vision camera, you are seeing the heat radiating from it. Infrared radiation only eliminates a limited amount of heat however, so the Space Shuttle for example and the International Space Station have to work hard to get rid of excess heat. So the Jupiter 2 insulation could handle being in deep space, but on the planet the -150 air which is coming in contact with the spaceship would pull a tremendous amount of heat out of it. As for the Chariot, I just saw that as a normal visual discrepancy, sort of like scenes that take place at night, we usually see things a lot better than someone would in real life. That's because if they portrayed how it actually looked then we wouldn't see much and it would not be as interesting to watch. Same thing with the storm, in "real life" it was dark, and the waves were crashing against the windows, sort of like heavy rain in a car with no windshield wipers. So it is quite conceivable that they could not see Don outside. However visually the scene was shot with plenty of light, although made to look somewhat dark and stormy, so that we as viewers could see what is going on. And there was just water (probably buckets of water) splashing against the windows but not enough to stop us (as viewers) from seeing through the windows so that we could see the waves and storm outside and add to the visual effect. So I give them a pass it wasn't really a "goof" in my opinion.
It turned into the Dr. Smith / Will screwing up show, not about exploration. Or 25% about family. Itturned stupid real quick. Love the Robot, Jupiter 2,Chariot. Thats about it.
@@MoviesMusicMonsters , loved every second of it especially your spot on impressions , gave it a like cant wait till the next one , also do you have any resources or links for anyone wanting to keep up on the progress of the chariot restoration ?
8 месяцев назад
The changes ended up spoiling what could have been a great show. It didn't 'evolve', it devolved.
As a child I was thrilled by the special effects that made certain scenes seem other dimensional. Some kind of larger dimension inside of a smaller dimension. That was fascinating and scary to me as a kid.
Long ago I read a very different assessment about why the show changed. MONEY! After the first season, budget concerns cropped up. Therefore, instead of outer space special effects and multiple outer space sets, now the Robinsons are stuck on a planet with sets lifted from old sci-fi movies, and costumes borrowed from the studio closet (giant carrot? Yikes!) I tend to believe this account, because at the end of the day everything comes back to greenbacks.
Nice video. Thank you. As I said in a reply to another comment, as a kid I actually preferred the earlier B&W episodes, with the darker tone, with that earlier theme, though I have come to like both, in more recent years.
Lost In Space was a favorite in my childhood. I watched every day after school. But it became stupid yes stupid. A 6yr old finding it stupid. It came on at 4:30 Monday through Friday in Michigan. I had a awesome Robot toy. It ran on batteries. I still havit and it's original box. It talked and moved around. My dad said Dr.Smith was a homo. At 6yrs old i didn't know what homo was.❗️
I hated the change. You could have made it more family friendly but still have it be a science fiction adventure with family exploring the universe and trying to figure out how to get back to Earth.
I know what you mean but there were few color episodes that were good. One was about a frozen prison where all the prisoners were frozen on a pedestal and Dr Smith messed with the controls only release some of them.
I didn't mind the campy nature after the second season . I was a little kid when it came out , and it was epic to me. Frankly at the time I never questioned Doctor Smith's softer , more goofy character after the first season. I just loved the adventures of that family in space. They could not have chosen a better cast of seasoned actors to play the adults , and a perfect mix for the kids. Still to this day I fondly go back and watch choice episodes on my DVD set of all the episodes.
My favourite character was always Penny; sweet and very smart. I hated it how she was always getting put on the backburner to make way for adventures with Will, Smith and the Robot. I found both Dr Smith and Will the most annoying.
Great analysis. I watched those shows as a kid and wondered about the change. A similar thing happened with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The first seasons were more serious and then the campy space clowns started in. That giant whale episode scared the bejebus out of me. The newer color season intro theme song was my favorite though. I got my folks reel-to-reel tape recorder to record it and played it over and over.
The show was really good up to (but not including) "Welcome Stranger," the episode with Warren Oates as a guest star. After that it turned silly and went down hill fast.
Excellent video. I remember us boys in grade 1 recess marching around and proudly saying, "Crush Kill Destroy!". I think it was 1967. Also popular was "That does not compute". Penny was my first crush.
I remember that :-) I really enjoyed the original Tom Baker Doctor Who stuff. Now you got me thinking :-) I'll have to do a Doctor Who video :-) hope you had a great holiday, Dan :-)
@@MoviesMusicMonsters There's a great docudrama called "An Adventure in Space and Time" that charts the origins of the Doctor Who series. It's a must for any Doctor Who fan, but also for anyone who just likes a good (and in this case, true) story about the behind-the-scenes production of a TV show.
Lost In Space was my favorite show when I was kid. I enjoyed all characters on the show, but Doctor Smith, Will, and the robot were my favorites. It was a great show to me.
She was great. I appreciated a lot of that show, especially because I knew Kevin Burns was behind it. I didn't watch it more than once, but I thought it was pretty good :-) hope you had a good holiday, Dan
I was 7 years old when this showed debuted and I loved it. You can imagine how bad it was in 3 years when they horrified the same 10 year old boy with what they had done with the show. The episode with Warren Oates is still one of the best TV episodes of all time. Thanks for shedding some light on what really happened.
I was about Will's age, the oldest of us four kids, when this show premiered. We were all in. We played "Lost in Space" off our deck in the backyard all the time. We didn't have a color TV so we kinda missed their transition from black & white to color. I had heard that CBS thought the pilot was a bit too slow and insisted on the addition of a saboteur and a robot to provide a bit more action in the beginning. As Johnathan Harris tells it, his character was to be killed off in the second episode, or at least by the fourth, but he kept coming up with character bits to keep Dr. Smith interesting. The Robot was a bit too scary in the beginning, but it was when he actually laughed that we stopped taking him so seriously. That "children's hour" theory goes a long way. If it had been on from 9:00 to 10:00 it would have been past my bedtime and we would have missed it. I do still like the Batman theory because likewise, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West also became more campy at the same time. Of course, Gilligan's Island and other such silliness were also very popular at the time. We did get tired of the "Will, Smith, and the Robot" show, though Will and the Robot were my favorite characters and they both played off so well against Dr. Smith. But I did like the way the writers worked to keep this from becoming the "monster of the week" show. The Vegetable Revolution was the point at which Lost in Space "Jumped the Shark" as it were. That was just a bridge too far, even for us kids. That first season is still my very favorite and hints at what this show really could have become.
Same thing happened to voyage to the bottom of the sea. First season was great. Dealt with problems that was going on in the world. Then it changed with monsters, and aliens, and monsters and aliens, monsters and aliens……same old story
Going in I thoroughly expected nearly 12 minutes padded out saying "Batman." I was pleasantly surprised with the incisive analysis of the rapid change of the original concept. As Irwin Allen said: "Do more!"
I remember that there was a comic book called Space Family Robinson before the series aired, so I can see why they thought of this as a children's show.
I loved this show... Even to this day, and I'm 64, I still every now and then fire up those 1st season black and white eps ...They really ruined the show when it turned from dark and serious to silly and campy.. Its a shame that happened ..one can only wonder had it been let progress along its original lines...The robot being menacing, smith being a spy, a saboteur and an assassin, those were just so cool and the 1st season was so atmospheric! The opening episode , the reluctant stowaway, That was Fire! The ship crashing on a planet for the 1st time with everyone in the freezing tubes, Invaders from the 5th dimension, the 1st season finale episode with john robinson taken over by Quanto, ect... some fantastic episodes and writing ...
As a kid this change was maddening. Dressing up humans and calling them "aliens" was phony and demeaning to the viewers. TO CLARIFY: I'm talking about the later episodes where they just put a guy in an outfit, like a pirate or a viking, and viola he was an alien. C'mon at least use some makeup or a rubber suit.
Very nice analysis. The time slot is something I never would have thought of. LOS was excellent when it was almost Twilight Zone, when it was more science fiction based than campy. We got used to what it developed into but the better episodes had a certain edge to them. The Keeper was classic.
@@MoviesMusicMonsters season 3 was the best season it was great to see penny grow into a beauty...haunted lighthouse and promised planet were my favorite shows
Those first 5 episodes are always my favorite as the danger the planet posed to the family really did make them seem like pioneers. Still pretty salty that we never got a follow up episode on that ancient dead civilization shown in episodes 4/5.
The Family Viewing Hour regulations were enacted in 1975. Laugh In premiered in January, 1968. What happened is Batman, and Irwin Allen being a cheap hack, looking for an excuse.
I prefer the B&W episodes, even though there are some of them in color very interesting. "The promised planet", for example, has a deeper message than it shows. Teeneagers who don´t want to grow up (or who can´t), who don´t want to face life and who just want to dance and listen to the music as a metaphor of alienation... many adolescents are like those characters today. The adults are called "square" and "old" just because they are responsible. "Lost in Space" was my first show and I still LOVE it. Thanks for the video.
I was a kid when Lost in Space came out, and it was really interesting watching the show later in life. I was the target demographic for the show and I guess it worked. I thought Dr. Smith was the star of the show, and Robby the robot was a toy every kid had. I wish I still had some of them now. I’d love to have seen LiS as it was originally imagined, because as I got older I appreciated good science fiction, but LiS will always hold a place in my young heart as a fond memory from childhood.
No doubt the serious early episodes are much better. As a young viewer at the time, I would roll my eyes as it got more campy. I later read in a Starlog magazine with an interview with the actor Boy May, who played the robot. Had a scene when the robot was dying in front of Will Robinson, that Bob May was crying even thou he was inside the robot costume. Can't hate the effort the actors put in.
Yes, I remember the first season was pretty good and then it started getting ridiculous. I also remember the vegetable episode and thought to myself that was a little weird.
I loved the show, but I think they really missed an opportunity to develop the characters of Don West and Judy. They kind of touched upon a romantic relationship between them in the first season, but then dropped it (and them) off from the spotlight.
The only episode I've seen is the one where they go to the planet of hippies, and the kids get hypnotised into doing this ongoing psychedelic dance. Reminds me of the Get Smart episode with The Sacred Cows.
Haha yeah, that's one of the worst. If you ever get a chance, check out some of the early black and white shows. They were quite good science fiction. Hope you had a great holiday, Dan
if memory serves, Mr Harris had another sci-fi style program on his resume 'Space Academy', where he was something of the commandant of the facility....
Yes, he played Gampu. He also appeared as a different character in the first episode of Ark II as well for the same production company, Filmation, known for He-Man, and the animated Star Trek.
"Lost In Space" Even the name sounds iconic. A massive part of my childhood, as was Land Of The Giants, The Time Tunnel & Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Irwin Allen my childhood babysitter, I salute you 🙇🏽♀
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space The Time Tunnel are my favorite Tv Series from Irwin Allen and 20th Century -Fox Studios. I hated Land of the Giants
I remember the black and white episodes being good and the color episodes being horrible - and that's from a kid's perspective. Irwin Allen's productions often suffered from no focus and bad writing.
I just watched one of the early episodes for the first time in decades and I could not believe how utterly evil Smith was, seriously just wanting to kill the family off. I could see how they wanted it to be more family friendly. Time slots mean everything, look at what they did to star trek in the third season moving it to the death slot of friday nights at 10pm, essentially killing it.
I totally agree, I thought it was an interesting Dynamic having Smith that evil. I can see why they made the changes. Yes, Star Trek had a similar situation with a time slot that killed it. Really sad. Hope you had a great holiday :-) Dan
@@MoviesMusicMonsters You have to wonder what the point was, of having Smith so irredeemably evil initially in the first place? It didn't seem to make any sense.
I was young when LIS first aired, so I liked both the serious and campy versions. If there were monsters, animals or strange aliens, I was happy. Dr Smith's robot insults were icing on the monster cake. I even had a nightmare that, when Mum and Dad were out, silver clad aliens like Athena from the green dimension were hiding in the dark of the bedroom. Then, all these spandex-clad aliens rushed out of the darkness to attack me!
