Lost in Space [Media Notes 28]

I’ve just finished season two of the remake of Lost in Space and, for some reason, am working my way back through season one. I never saw the original, which aired back in the 1960s, though I certainly knew of it and have seen clips. The new one is, of course, substantially restyled. The robot, for example, in the old series is reminiscent of the clunky Robbie, from Forbidden Planet, while the new robot is considerably larger and more organic in form. And the space transport and tech is of course redesigned for the CGI era.

But that’s not what this is about.

I’m not sure what I found compelling about the first season, but now that I’m going back through it, it seems rather overblown. That feeling first hit me while listening to some of the sound track, which seems to be in the heroic John Williams Star Wars mode, and that’s a mismatch. Lost in Space strikes me as a somewhat contrived family drama – apparently it was inspired by The Swiss Family Robinson, which I never read, though I probably saw the Disney film – that just cannot support the mythic mode of, you know, Star Wars. And, yes, I know, Star Wars is just a cosmic family squabble – they ALL are, no? – but at least it is conceived in mythic mode.

But Lost in Space is not. And it shows. The production, the art direction and design, the “skin”, to too big and heavy for the underlying story, which seems to be about a boy and his oddball pet.

Strange.

And yet, we all live with family drama. But few of us get to act on the world stage, much less from here to Alpha Centauri. Is this series about seeing grandeur in the mundane, heroism in the quotidian?

* * * * *

An exercise for the reader:  What are we to make of the robot's face? It's a screen in which appears...what? An image of stars in the cosmos?