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Lost In Space

😝😝😝😝😉


On: Netflix
Length: 10 Episodes


      To say I sacrificed for the greater good by viewing this first season of the Netflix original series Lost In Space would be hyperbole. Yet somehow that's how it feels.
      I do like science fiction a great deal, even science fiction that incorporates wild imagination. However, this latest version of the 1965 television series (ran three seasons to 1968) seemed to make a particular effort to remove the "science" from the genre "Science Fiction". At least in the late 60s, the quirky stage sets and absurd plots lent itself to the sitcoms of the times, with occasional droplets of drama.
      This 2018 version, which ends with a "cliffhanger" for season 2, uses current digital video magic and actual landscapes to add realism to the production. That demands, in my opinion, that the story also incorporate real science into mix.
       Here the story and the characters are hopelessly ridiculous and are better suited for the pastel sets of the 60s TV series. There is a metallic, self-constructing, needlessly humanoid, super robot who pines for the small boy (Will) and freely commits "suicide" for the young lad...twice. Robbie, the 1960s bumbling robot made more sense.
      There is the evil Dr. Smith (now a woman) with a permanent frown who virtually cannot act in any other way than wicked. The Robinson family has the same characters but is also updated to be partly dysfunctional and mixed raced.
      The rest of the cast like the family, Smith, and robot is tragically one-dimensional. My favorite hoot was when the stranded space travelers realize they only need to gather monster bat poop to convert into rocket fuel to be saved. They are able to chip away and retrieve the droppings even as the monster, growling, razor tooth bats fly menacingly around them. I felt to change the channel would bring me to Petticoat Junction.
       Perhaps unwittingly, dear reader, I did this for you. Stay away from this series. There is nothing your time wouldn't be better spent on...including nothing.


4 Stinks 1 Wink

     

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