60 Years of Lost in Space: "Danger, Will Robinson!"

Today is the 60th anniversary of the network television premiere of the science fiction cult classic, Lost in Space. Can you believe it? Why, only ten years ago it was the 50th anniversary of Lost in Space!

Time flies.

I wrote extensively on the subject then — some eleventy jillion words, by my count — and if you want, you can read every one of them here (and here and here and here — it was in four parts, an epic!).

I won't rehash that mammoth exercise in boomer nostalgia except to say I think Lost in Space was much better than its detractors gave it credit for and its catchphrase "Danger, Will Robinson" is still part of the culture. Why, it even got a laugh on Young Sheldon a while back. Take that Petticoat Junction!



The original is available to stream on Hulu, may be purchased digitally from Amazon-Prime and shows up for free every Saturday night on MeTV. The Blu-Ray box set is pretty nifty, too! (Note: In 2019, the series was digitally remastered in widescreen for DVD. I don't own this set so I can't review it but I am intrigued ...)

But for Pete's sake, you don't want to watch all of it — even Will Robinson isn't that fond of the show.

Instead, allow me to recommend a single season's worth of the best Lost in Space has to offer, my highly subjective list of 24 Grade A to B-plus episodes in the order that they originally aired.

The Reluctant Stowaway — The first episode. Set in the distant future of 1997, the Robinson family and their pilot Don West (Mark Goddard) blastoff on a five-and-a-half year voyage to colonize the Alpha Centauri star system. A saboteur, Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), is trapped on board and when the mission's environmental control robot goes berserk, the ship becomes hopelessly lost in space!

The Derelict — The Robinson family encounters what appears to be a derelict spaceship in deep space. This episode features the best special effects sequence in the series' history — and maybe anybody's history.



Island in the Sky — Thanks to sabotage at the hands of the villainous Dr. Smith, first John Robinson (Guy Williams) then the Jupiter 2 crash land on an alien world.

There Were Giants in the Earth — As the Robinsons struggle to survive on their new home, they encounter a giant cyclops, mutant snap peas, and a malfunctioning robot hellbent for murder. This episode and the next one rely heavily on re-purposed footage from the unaired pilot.

The Hungry Sea — More challenges face our intrepid band of pioneers including earthquakes, electrical storms, cave-ins and an ocean cruise that makes the Titanic look like The Love Boat. This was the last of what I call the Origin Story Miniseries, five interlocking episodes that established the foundation of the show.

My Friend, Mr. Nobody — A rare episode that centers on Penny (Angela Cartwright), this is a poignant fairy tale about a lonely little girl and her not-so-imaginary imaginary friend. The sort of thing Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone excelled at.

Invaders from the Fifth Dimension — Mouthless, disembodied aliens need a brain to replace a burned-out computer component and notice Will (Billy Mumy) has a pretty good head on his shoulders. So they task Dr. Smith with bringing it to them on a metaphorical plate. The show would recycle this plotline over and over but the first time out, it feels fresh. Plus their spaceship is cooler than anything Star Trek ever served up.

The Sky Is Falling — Paranoia and xenophobia is the order of the day when colonists from another planet arrive on the Robinsons' world. Wait until ICE hears about this!

Wish Upon a Star — Filled with the first season's signature elements, this is a top-notch morality tale about the dangers of getting everything you want. Features wonderfully weird expressionistic cinematography, unexplained alien artifacts, and Dr. Smith's self-absorbed jack-ass-ery.

One of Our Dogs Is Missing — Way back in the series' first episode, June Lockhart's character is introduced as "Dr. Maureen Robinson." Apparently she got her PhD in Space Laundry because aside from baking the occasional chocolate cake, washing clothes is all you ever see her do. This is just about the only episode centered on Maureen, here battling an unseen monster terrorizing the camp. It's not perfect — the men are condescending [jerks] and Dr. Smith has never been sillier — but June Lockhart is one tough cookie.

Attack of the Monster Plants — As daughter Judy, Marta Kristen rarely got a chance to shine but here she showed off a saucy bite as her own evil doppelgänger. Like much of season one, there's a dream-like quality to the mood and cinematography that papers over some of the episode's nuttier flights of fancy.

Return from Outer Space — Will borrows an alien transporter and beams himself to 1997's equivalent of Mayberry RFD. Apparently the internet is down because nobody recognizes Will or believes his story that his family is lost in space. This is probably Bill Mumy's best work on the show and maybe the best thing he did after that Twilight Zone episode where he kept wishing people into the cornfield.

The Keeper (Parts 1 and 2) — The only two-parter during the show's run, this one stars Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still) as an intergalactic zookeeper looking for two new specimens for his exhibit — Will and Penny! This was the high watermark of the show's original (serious) concept of a family struggling to survive in a hostile environment. After this, the camp crept in with mixed results.

War of the Robots — The first episode where the Robot crosses over from a mere machine, no matter how clever, into a fully-conscious Turing-Test artificial intelligence. Featuring Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot. If Will was the show's hero, and Smith its plot-driving irritant, the Robot was its soul.

The Magic Mirror — Penny falls through a magic mirror into a dimension with a population of one — a boy (Bonnie and Clyde's Michael J. Pollard) who promises she'll never have to grow up. A beautiful and bittersweet fairy tale about coming of age on the final frontier.

The Challenge — Kurt Russell plays a young prince from a warrior planet trying to prove to his father (Michael Ansara) that he's worthy of his respect and love. A good story about father-son relationships, plus Guy Williams gets to show off the fencing skills that earned him the title role as Disney's Zorro.

A Change of Space — Will takes a ride in an alien space ship and winds up with the most brilliant mind in the galaxy. And still he has to brush his teeth before bedtime! This is one of those episodes that underscores my contention that not all of the trouble Will found himself in was of Dr. Smith's making.

Follow the Leader — The spirit of a long-dead warrior possesses Professor Robinson and turns this warm, rational man into a vicious, unpredictable bastard. Dark, moody, occasionally terrifying. Pop-culture critic John Kenneth Muir called this episode a parable of "alcoholism in the nuclear family." The last episode of season one, and the last in glorious black-and-white, this was one of the series' very best.

Wreck of the Robot — The only season two episode on my list, here three faceless aliens in bowler hats lust after the Robinson's robot for undisclosed and no-doubt nefarious purposes — I'm guessing as research for Elon Musk's next sex partner. Who knows. But it's a good episode and for once it's not Dr. Smith's scheming that drives the plot.

Condemned of Space — The Robinsons are captured by a prison spaceship and Major West winds up hanging by his thumbs. With Marcel Hillaire as a charming murderer who strangles his victims with a string of pearls.

Visit to a Hostile Planet — The Robinsons finally make it back to Earth only to discover it's 1947 and everyone thinks they're alien invaders. A cross between Star Trek and any given day on Fox News.

The Anti-Matter Man — An experiment gone wrong transports Professor Robinson into a parallel dimension where he meets his own evil self. The scenery is summer stock by way of Dr. Caligari, and Guy Williams (having the most fun as an actor since Zorro) gets to chew on all of it. The best episode of the show's third and final season.

The Great Vegetable Rebellion — Featuring a giant talking carrot played by Stanley Adams (of Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles" fame), this is, in the words of Bill Mumy, "the worst television show in primetime ever made." TV Guide respectfully disagrees, ranking it 76 on its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. This is either the apotheosis of camp or gloriously awful must-see tv. Don't miss it.

Trivia: Originally, the episode was to co-star a trained llama but it kept biting Jonathan Harris and he refused to work with it. Watching with me one day, the long-suffering Katie-bar-the-door muttered, "This would make more sense with an actual llama!" It was that kind of show.

And check out these episodes on your own time:
Season one — All That Glitters.
Season two — The Prisoners of Space, Trip Through the Robot.
Season three — Flight Into the Future, Space Creature, Target Earth, Time Merchant.

Well, that's it. Gosh, I sure do hope I'm around in ten years to do this all again!

TV's Lost in Space, Part 4: The 50th Anniversary — What To Watch

It was fifty years ago today that Lost in Space made its television premiere on CBS, and in a year chock-full of momentous events — the escalation of the war in Vietnam, the march on Selma, the assassination of Malcolm X, the establishment of Medicare, and lots of great new Beatles music — the premiere of Lost in Space was probably the most memorable.

Or at least it's the one I'm writing about.

I didn't see the premiere — my devotion to the show began during its first years of syndication, about five years later — but still, pretty exciting.

And at last, all 84 episodes of Lost in Space are available on Blu-Ray, fully-restored and remastered with documentaries, interviews, a cast read-through of Bill Mumy's reunion script, and much, much more. Heee wackity do!



I assume most of you pre-ordered your set and are ripping the cellophane off the packaging even as you're reading this, planning to watch the entire series in single three-day marathon sitting. And who can blame you? But for the rest of you, maybe you don't know the series that well or — is it possible? — have never seen it at all, and would prefer to dip your toe into the shallow end of the pool, watching a few select episodes for free (with limited commercial interruption) on Hulu.

Whatever your plans, here's a list that might help you decide where to start (click on the title to watch the episode):

THE ORIGIN STORY "MINISERIES"

Not really a miniseries, of course, but interconnected chapters of one storyline, these five episodes take us from the initial liftoff through the family's first few months on an uncharted planet. Along the way, you'll discover how the Robinsons got lost in the first place, how they reacted to their first close encounter with an alien species, and how the show's best known characters, the villainous Dr. Smith and his odd-couple sidekick, the Robot, came to be on board. Featuring all the best set pieces from the unaired pilot, if you're new to the series or just looking to skim the cream off the top, this is a good place to start.
The Reluctant Stowaway
The Derelict
Island in the Sky
There Were Giants in the Earth
The Hungry Sea

BEST EPISODE OF SEASON ONE

My Friend, Mr. Nobody — A rare episode that centers on Penny (Angela Cartwright), this is a poignant fairy tale about a lonely little girl and her not-so-imaginary imaginary friend. The sort of thing Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone excelled at.

MOST TYPICAL EPISODE OF SEASON ONE

Wish Upon a Star — Filled with the first season's signature elements, this is a top-notch morality tale about the dangers of getting everything you want, featuring wonderfully weird expressionistic cinematography, unexplained alien artifacts, the harsh reality of frontier living and Dr. Smith's self-absorbed jack-ass-ery.

WORST EPISODE OF SEASON ONE

The Space Croppers — A family of shiftless space hillbillies (led by Oscar-winner Mercedes McCambridge) cultivate a carnivorous crop that threatens to devour the Robinsons. This was the series' first full-blown foray into WTF. It wouldn't be the last.

BEST EPISODE OF SEASON TWO

The Prisoners of Space — In this, the best episode of the worst season, a menagerie of alien creatures put the Robinsons on trial for violating the laws of outer space. Kafka with monsters.

MOST TYPICAL EPISODE OF SEASON TWO

Revolt of the Androids — A couple of androids drop in on the Robinsons, Dr. Smith hatches a get-rich-quick scheme, and human sentimentality wins the day. This one did at least spawn the catchphrase "Crush! Kill! Destroy!"

WORST EPISODE OF SEASON TWO

The Questing Beast — So many to choose from, among them "The Space Vikings", "Mutiny in Space", "Curse of Cousin Smith", etc. Here, Penny befriends a papier-mâché dragon that is being hunted by a bumbling knight in King Arthur's armor. How can something so campy be so boring?

BEST EPISODE OF SEASON THREE

The Anti-Matter Man — An experiment gone wrong transports Professor Robinson into a parallel dimension where he meets his own evil self. The scenery is summer stock by way of Dr. Caligari, and Guy Williams, having the most fun as an actor since Zorro, gets to chew on all of it. Great stuff, and for those philistines among you who won't touch black-and-white, the best of the color episodes.

MOST TYPICAL EPISODE OF SEASON THREE

Visit to a Hostile Planet — Season three was wildly uneven, but at least it was trying, leavening genuine science fiction with campy comedy. Here, the Robinsons finally make it back to Earth only to discover it's 1947 and everyone thinks they're hostile, alien invaders. A cross between Star Trek and Dad's Army. Good stuff.

WORST EPISODE OF SEASON THREE

The Great Vegetable Rebellion — Featuring a giant talking carrot played by Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones of Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles"), this is, in the words of Bill Mumy, "probably the worst television show in primetime ever made." So bad, it's good, this is gloriously awful must-see tv.

BEST GUY WILLIAMS (PROF. ROBINSON) EPISODE

Follow the Leader — The spirit of a dead alien warrior possesses Professor Robinson and turns this warm, rational man into a vicious, unpredictable bastard. Dark, moody, occasionally terrifying, pop-culture critic John Kenneth Muir called this episode a parable of "alcoholism in the nuclear family." One of the series' very best.

BEST JUNE LOCKHART (MAUREEN) EPISODE

One of Our Dogs Is Missing — Although set in 1997, the show usually ignored the fact that Betty Friedan was already a household name by 1965, but here June Lockhart gets to show her chops when Maureen is left in charge of the ship while the men are away. Threats abound and she handles them all with brains, bravery and quiet resolve.

BEST MARK GODDARD (MAJOR WEST) EPISODE

Condemned of Space — I've already mentioned "The Hungry Sea" and "The Anti-Matter Man", so I'll go with this one where the Robinsons are captured by a prison spaceship and Major West winds up hanging by his thumbs on an electronic rack. Admittedly, he had more lines in "The Space Primevals" and "Fugitives in Space", but both of those episodes suck. With Marcel Hillaire as a charming murderer who strangles his victims with a string of pearls.

BEST MARTA KRISTEN (JUDY) EPISODE

Attack of the Monster Plants — As daughter Judy, Marta Kristen rarely got a chance to shine but here she showed off a saucy bite as her own evil doppelgänger. Like much of season one, there's a dream-like quality to the mood and cinematography that papers over some of the episode's nuttier flights of fancy.

BEST BILL MUMY (WILL) EPISODE

A Change of Space — As the series' true hero, there are a lot of Will-centered episodes to choose from — "Return from Outer Space", "The Challenge", "Space Creature", among others — but I'll go with this one in which Will takes a ride in an alien space ship and winds up with the most brilliant mind in the galaxy. And still his father doesn't take him seriously! This is one of those episodes that underscores my contention that not all of the trouble Will found himself in was of Dr. Smith's making.

BEST ANGELA CARTWRIGHT (PENNY) EPISODE

The Magic Mirror — Well, the second best, and like the previously-mentioned "My Friend, Mr. Nobody", this is a poignant fairy tale about coming of age on the final frontier. Here, Penny falls through a magic mirror into a dimension with a population of one — a boy (Michael J. Pollard) who promises she'll never have to grow up. Beautiful and bittersweet.

BEST JONATHAN HARRIS (DR. SMITH) EPISODE

Time Merchant — Let's be honest, from best to worst, they were all Dr. Smith episodes. Originally, I planned to pick the episode where Smith isn't a colossal dick, but it turns out there isn't one, so instead I went with this one, an inventive and visually-Daliesque time travel story that poses the question, "What if Smith hadn't been on the show in the first place?"

BEST ROBOT EPISODE

War of the Robots — The first episode where the Robot crosses over from a mere machine, no matter how clever, into a fully-conscious Turing-Test artificial intelligence. Featuring Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot. If Will was the show's hero, and Smith its plot-driving irritant, the Robot was its soul. See also "The Ghost Planet", "The Wreck of the Robot", "Trip Through the Robot", "The Mechanical Men", "Flight into the Future", "Deadliest of the Species", "Junkyard in Space".

BEST GUEST STAR

The Challenge — A lot to choose from — among those I haven't mentioned, Warren Oates, Werner Klemperer, Kym Karath, Strother Martin, Wally Cox, Francine York, John Carradine, Daniel J. Travanty, Lyle Waggoner, Edy Williams, Arte Johnson — but I'm going with Kurt Russell who plays a young prince from a warrior planet trying to prove to his father (Michael Ansara) that he's worthy of his trust, respect and love. A good story about father-son relationships, plus Guy Williams gets to show off the fencing skills that earned him the title role as Disney's Zorro.

BEST ALIENS

Invaders from the Fifth Dimension — The cyclops ("There Were Giants in the Earth") is the most iconic, the "bubble creatures" ("The Derelict") the most outré, but I'm going with the mouthless, disembodied heads from this one. Stranded while visiting from another dimension, they need a brain to replace a burned-out computer component and notice Will has a pretty good head on his shoulders. So they task Dr. Smith with bringing it to them on a metaphorical plate. The show would recycle this plotline over and over but the first time out of the box, it feels fresh. Plus their spaceship is cooler than anything Star Trek ever served up.

BEST OF THE REST

The Keeper, Parts One and Two — The only two-parter during the show's run, this one stars Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still) as an intergalactic zookeeper looking for two new specimens for his exhibit — Will and Penny! Coming at the midpoint of season one, this was the high watermark of the show's original (serious) concept of a family struggling to survive in a hostile environment. After this, the camp crept in with mixed results.

Hope you watch at least one episode of Lost in Space. If you do, leave a comment and let me know what you think.

TV's Lost in Space, Part 1: Danger, Will Robinson! ("No Place To Hide," The Unaired Pilot)

September 15th is the fiftieth anniversary of the network premiere of the sci-fi classic television show, Lost in Space. In the days leading up to that anniversary, I'll be recycling a couple of old posts on the show and adding a couple of new ones.

Maybe it was the adult in me when I was a kid, and the kid in me now that I'm an adult, but I've always had a soft spot in my heart for sci-fi-flavored adventure tales — the cheesier, the better.

From Forbidden Planet and The Thing from Another World to Star Wars and Indiana Jones to Firefly, Orphan Black and the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, I'm a sucker for stories about laconic space captains, gutsy green damsels and jack-of-all-trade scientists who prefer to think their way out of trouble, at least right up until they blast something with a laser or phaser or ray gun du jour.

I like robots and androids and talking computers. I love time travel and warp drive and space ships that make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. And I happen to prefer my monsters thoughtful, my plant life savage, and my cookbooks written to serve man.

I guess if I had to hang my hat on one of them, I'd go with the Star Trek franchise — like its original stars, William Shatner and the late, great Leonard Nimoy, it's a combination of over-the-top ham-and-cheese and quiet, gentle dignity that hits me where I most often live.

And yet, as a kid, it wasn't the five year mission of a starship crew that captured my imagination, it was the "other one," the adventures of a boy and his pet robot wandering lost through the galaxy that put the goofy grin on my face and sent me running around inside the limits of my own skull.

I'm referring, of course, to that science fiction, well, if not masterpiece then timeless kitsch classic, Lost in Space.

If you've never seen Lost in Space — the television show, mind you, not the movie — the gist of the story is right there in the title. A family of would-be colonists, along with their pilot, a robot called "Robot" and a trouble-making stowaway named Dr. Smith, are shipwrecked on an uncharted planet somewhere in the outer reaches of deep space.

From week-to-week, the family struggled to survive on that most forbidding of final frontiers, grappling with the elements, drive-by aliens and, more often than not, the fallout from one of Dr. Smith's half-baked schemes to get home to Earth. The stories were a mixture of straight action-adventure, morality tale, pure fantasy and, increasingly as the series wore on, campy comedy.

The show lasted three seasons and while I can see with adult eyes that it doesn't quite compare to Star Trek, it did give us at least one enduring catchphrase:



It also served up one of the great comedic duos of television history, the lazy, manipulative, petty, scheming, dishonest and, above all, self-deluding Dr. Zachary Smith and the loyal, trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent Robot.



If you don't remember anything else about the series, odds are you remember them. Fifty years later, shows such as The Simpsons and The Family Guy can still get a laugh or two from evoking that most unlikely of outer space antagonists.

But perhaps what you didn't know is that both Dr. Smith and the Robot were late additions to the show and weren't in the original pilot episode at all.

Lost in Space was the brainchild of veteran Hollywood producer Irwin Allen. An Oscar-winning documentary maker turned television producer, Allen was looking for a follow-up to his hit show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a cheesy submarine thriller, and decided upon a space age version of the adventure classic The Swiss Family Robinson.

"America had become very space-minded," he said later, "and CBS was interested in a family show. We took the space and family and combined them."

To make the connection to the source material clear, Allen planned to call his show Space Family Robinson, but it turned out there was already both a Gold Key comic book series and a (never-produced) Walt Disney film project of that name so he settled on Lost in Space instead. With the financial backing of CBS, 20th Century Fox and, of all people, Groucho Marx and Red Skelton, Allen began filming a pilot for his proposed series in late 1964.

Playing the part of the family's father, Professor John Robinson, was Guy Williams, a handsome, real-life swashbuckler who had made his name playing TV's Zorro. June Lockhart (Meet Me in St. Louis, Lassie) played his wife, Maureen.

Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and "Billy" Mumy played their three children, Judy, Penny and Will. Kristen made her television debut in 1960 on The Loretta Young Show and had a supporting role in Beach Blanket Bingo. Cartwright had appeared in over 200 episodes of the Danny Thomas sitcom, Make Room For Daddy, as well as 1965's Oscar-winning picture, The Sound of Music. And Mumy, though only ten, had already worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Rod Serling and Jimmy Stewart, and had essayed one of the Twilight Zone's greatest villains, Anthony Fremont, the boy with magic powers who terrorizes a small town.

Ironically, Mumy had broken his leg at the age of four trying to duplicate a stunt he'd seen Guy Williams perform on Zorro.

"Will Robinson was everything I ever wanted to portray," said Mumy in an interview last year. "He had a laser gun — and he used it! How cool was that?"

The final member of the pilot's cast was Mark Goddard as Don West. Thirty years old, Goddard had been a regular on a couple of television shows, Johnny Ringo and The Detectives (the latter starring Robert Taylor).



Filmed in glorious black-and-white, the story, "No Place to Hide" by Shimon Wincelberg and Irwin Allen himself, is slam-bang action from beginning to end. Faced with a population explosion in the distant future of October 1997, the United States launches the Robinson family into space on a 98-year mission to colonize a planet circling our sun's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Shortly after liftoff, the Gemini XII (as the ship was then known) runs into an uncharted asteroid field and, damaged, drifts off course for years until it crash lands on an unknown planet.

There, the Robinsons struggle to survive in the face of overwhelming dangers, including, in quick succession, a giant cyclops (L.A. Rams defensive lineman Lamar Lundy in a costume made of dried palm fronds), an earthquake, a cave-in and a sudden monsoon that nearly drowns them all as they sail their nuclear-powered sports utility vehicle, the "Chariot," across an inland sea. And even when they arrive at the apparent safety of the far shore, a pair of alien creatures spy on them from the shadows.

Whew!

Further adventures in the same vein promised to follow.

It was all great fun, and there were plenty of B-picture science fiction staples including laser guns, rocket belts, silver space suits, suspended animation and a chimpanzee named "the Bloop" with over-sized fur ears.

You also got the barest hint of character development, with everyone playing stock television tropes. Guy Williams was a wise leader, Mark Goddard his brave if impulsive second-in-command, Bill Mumy was the pint-sized genius, Angela Cartwright, a friend to all living things. June Lockhart did laundry in a space age washing machine that folded the clothes and wrapped them in cellophane. Marta Kristen batted her eyes at the handsome Don West and was appropriately damsel-y.

"It was a very square family," co-writer Wincelberg later admitted, "where the father, mother and sister all behaved in a very nice and predictable way. [T]he actors were excellent, but it didn't have the kind of verve that you got from Dr. Smith and the robot." (Wincelberg would go on to write two episodes of Star Trek under his pen name S. Bar-David; after more than 40 years in Hollywood, he won an Emmy in 1997 for an episode of Law and Order.)

Nor was the Lost in Space of the pilot, strictly speaking, science fiction; it was really just a Western with a veneer of science laid on top — ray guns instead of revolvers, a spaceship instead of a covered wagon, a giant instead of Apaches. If Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek as "Wagon Train to the stars" then the Lost in Space pilot was "Little House on the Prairie with monsters." There was even a scene with Will playing guitar around a campfire. Except for the clothes and the space age hardware, you could have been watching How the West Was Won.

Not that that was an inherently bad thing. Far from being nothing but cowboy-and-Indian shoot-em-ups, the Western in 1965 was a more liberating genre than science fiction, which was often exiled to the cheap B-picture productions of the local drive-in. At its best, the Western allowed writers to explore topics much too sensitive to hit head on — racism, war, sexism, intolerance. And even at its worst, it was a familiar genre that promised lots of excitement.

Indeed, in 2002, Joss Whedon (The Avengers) made explicit the link between sci-fi-flavored adventure and the classic Western with his short-lived cult hit Firefly, which featured starships and six shooters as it followed the exploits of a crew of mercenaries shuttling cows and outlaws from planet to planet.

Although now mostly caricatured as a tightfisted producer of low-budget disaster flicks, Irwin Allen spent lavishly on Lost in Space, budgeting more money than ever before on a TV pilot. And then money in hand, he assembled a crack team of top-flight talent to spend it.

Robert Kinoshita, who created Robby the Robot for Forbidden Planet, designed the ship. Three-time Oscar-winner Winton Hoch (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and The Quiet Man) was the cinema-tographer. Emmy-winner (and future Oscar winner) L.B. Abbott provided the special effects.

The resulting production was first rate.

Admittedly, the pilot was less of a story than a series of special effects set pieces, often coming no more than two or three minutes apart, but it was exciting and the effects were actually very good, especially for the era.

Generally, I hate that expression, "good for its era" — for example, I see writers apply it to silent movies all the time without, apparently, having ever seen more than ten of them — but I've seen practically every special effects television show and movie since Georges Méliès hit the moon in the eye with a rocket he shot out of a cannon, and I boldly say the special effects in those early episodes of Lost in Space were top drawer.

"The props and the ship and the Chariot," Bill Mumy said last year, "it looks great, it holds up. I know it got really stupid, but the design of Lost in Space initially was really impressive. God, I loved it."

The special effects would go on to receive an Emmy nomination.

To Allen's chagrin, the executives at CBS giggled all the way through the screening of the pilot, but the important thing is they bought it. Lost in Space premiered on September 15, 1965.

Tomorrow: Part 2, From Pilot to Airwaves.