"Danger, danger!..."

In case you're unfamiliar with the show, just think of Star Trek (had it been produced by Sid & Marty Krofft). :)

Space Family Robinson

In truth, it didn't really start out so strange. The early episodes did in fact embody what it set out to be: the adventures of the Space Family Robinson.

There was just one problem: the whole business got awfully boring pretty damned quick. After all, Star Trek had that great big ship (along with the proverbial "430 crewmen"), and they went tooling all around the galaxy looking for adventures/trouble. LIS was just one little family stranded on some rocky wasteland of a planet. How many stories could you squeeze out of that anyway?

Already by episode six they were improvising...in a show that featured Warren Oates as a sort of Space Cowboy who stumbles upon their planet, hoo-wheeing his way around the place and generally munching the scenery. Then came Albert Salmi as a Space Pirate...and by then the new tone of the show was beginning to be established.

A very young Kurt Russell shows up a bit later on too...as a character named Quano (and yep, it sounded just like Guano!).

Eventually LIS came to resemble a sort of Gilligan's Island. A place that the castaways can't ever quite seem to shake, even though a whole bunch of other people keep on landing there (and just as swiftly departing). :)

Dr Smith

Of course, from the start Dr Smith and Major West got along about as well as cats & dogs (or donkeys & owls!). Yet although Don often seems to be on the verge of slugging the not-so-good doctor, he never quite manages to do that (although he does sort of strangle him a few times).

Believe it or not though, Smith at one point DOES slug Major West! :D Okay, it wasn't actually Smith but his evil alter ego, this intergalactic vagabond gunslinger dude named Zeno (who speaks in a low, slow, guttural voice and calls everybody "Pus-sy-cat").

Smith (the real one) does at one point--amazingly enough--save the major's life (and so for around five minutes toward the end of that show they're acting downright lovey-dovey to each other)...although naturally the detente doesn't last very long.

Smith gets called Zach quite a bit (which he of course detests). He is also addressed at various points as Daddy Zach, Smitty--and even Mr Spindle Legs and Weasel Snout.

He starts out very much the cool, calculating Cold War warrior (a sort of live action--though serious-minded--Boris Badenov). Eventually though he ends up being the slimy, craven, epicene, neurasthenic villain we all came to love to hate.

Incidentally, Jonathan Harris pointed out that only in this way (by making the character a big, blubbering child) was it at all conceivable that anyone on board the Jupiter would've had any sympathy for him (and not stuffed him out the airlock in a trice).

The Robot

The Robot too started out quite a bit differently--as a juggernaut of destruction (and agent of foreign agent Smith).

At one point Dr Smith and the Robot actually traded personalities--and voices (with Smith holding his arms in similar fashion and intoning things and the Robot being all snide and waspish).

Later the Robot tells somebody--this guy who (I swear) resembled a sort of silver-painted, wine-swilling Frito Bandito--"I am not programmed to consume alcoholic beverages." But he gets drunk soon enough, and performs a rousing, or carousing (okay, downright sousing!) version of "Cielito Lindo." In the end he even gets a hangover--complete with icebag atop bubble.

Astronomy 99

There's often a decided lack of perspective (which is a polite way of saying "one scientific howler after another") to the show. At one point--having been blown clear out of the galaxy (for so we are told)--they set a course to return. Not to Earth though--but to their original destination of Alpha Centauri! lol (Talk about splitting hairs...)

Eventually I decided they were getting "galaxy" mixed up with "solar system."

Then there's the Jupiter II radar, which looks like this:

And which they are constantly consulting throughout the show. I swear to God, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME every time they do that...but still they somehow manage to derive useful information from it.

All btw very much in the style of producer Irwin Allen (before he became the Master of Disaster for the big screen). Irwin was definitely big on Panels Of Flashing Lights--and those reel to reel cabinets lined up against a wall, with tapes that go wobbling back and forth.

Whenever some big vehicle has to lift off, there's an explosion in the foreground blotting out the screen (and then the vehicle is gone)...thus saving the production considerable expense. :) And there are endless recycled shots: that same missile coming at the Jupiter in space, and that same alien rocket blasting off (later on they gave the whole frame a blue tint, for when an alien had to leave their planet during the daytime).

Oh yeah, and "comets" look pretty much like bolides (and give off searing amounts of heat). Then there was the nearby "supernova" which they were once called upon to evade. :D Several times too they had a tendency to leave both doors to the airlock open whenever something rather noxious was brewing outside.

You Have to Take the Good with the Bad

It wasn't all eyes to the ceiling and groans though...and the fun didn't come just from the snarky repartee between Smith and his Booby/Ninny.

There were those episodes I still remembered from childhood. Like the one where the Robot becomes huge and they have to go inside him to effect repairs. Also that "Crush, Kill, Destroy!" guy (though I thought it was Robbie the Robot who said that). And that one where the Robot has to pass through a minefield and he calls out the numerical power of the successive explosions in an increasingly quailing voice (and which I actually remembered being a lot more harrowing than it turned out to be). And of course the Hand Popping Guy! (Fritz Feld).

There was also "The Anti-Matter Man" (the one where Major West's evil counterpart sports a beard!)...which featured nicely stark purplish Waiting For Godot sets and that cool Dimensional Bridge gizmo:

And early on an oddly affecting episode ("My Friend, Mr Nobody") involving Penny along with the disembodied title character's voice...a sort of parable about adolescent loneliness, I suppose you might call it.

At any rate, LIS certainly gave a whole new wacky way of looking at things--all quite in keeping with the era that gave it birth. Or, to quote Tybo the Carrot (and yeah, that does sound rather like Thibault!): "I loathe vegetarians. Eating vegetables is MURDER!" :D