TV
Lost in Space
The Lost in Space franchise has been around longer than the Star Trek franchise, yet while there’s been more than 700 episodes of Star Trek on TV and 13 movies in the last 50 years, with Lost in Space there was only the original 93 episodes of TV that ended in 1968 and one poorly received film in 1998. But the original concept behind the series is even older. It’s based on the novel Swiss Family Robinson from 1812 about a family marooned on an island after a shipwreck which was almost certainly inspired by the even earlier story Robinson Crusoe from 1719.
Lost in Space has been gone so long that there are a few generations of people who’ve grown up without it, and their only connection to the material is the series’ catch phrase, “Danger, Will Robinson!” I know I’ve only ever seen a smattering of classic Lost in Space episodes as I don’t ever remember it rerunning in my area when I was a kid.
While there hasn’t been much Lost in Space since that 1998 movie that starred William Hurt, Mimi Rogers and Gary Oldman there was an attempt to reboot Lost in Space on The WB in 2004 that would have starred Adrianne Palicki (currently starring in The Orville) as Judy Robinson. But that series never got any further than a single pilot episode and was never brought to series.
But now, 50 years after the original 1960s series ended comes a new Netflix version of Lost in Space. Starting Molly Parker and Toby Stephens as Maureen and John Robinson, the duo along with their three kids are part of an evacuation of the Earth after it was hit by a comet causing an ecological disaster. But instead of ending up where they were supposed to be the Robinsons were separated from the rest of their colonists when their ship the “Jupiter 2” crash landed on an uncharted planet. This planet is full of wonders and dangers as the family must overcome obstacle after obstacle in order to survive even their first day lost in space.
I enjoyed this new Lost in Space if there was a bit too much, erm, danger going on in the first episode for my taste. If it’s not the family crash landing on the planet than it’s Maureen breaking her leg or Judy (Taylor Russell) trapped in ice or young Will (Maxwell Jenkins) being lost in a woods … and that’s not all that happens in the first episode that feels overloaded.
Lost in Space isn’t Stranger Things or even something like The Expanse — and I think that’s a good thing. This new show feels more like a family adventure show, something that’s really not made anymore. I’m interested to see where this new Lost in Space goes, if I hope it slows down a bit on the whole family in peril every few minutes thing.
The Expanse
Over the last few years the one bright, shining spot on the Syfy channel has been The Expanse. There was a lot of talk when this series premiered that Syfy was trying to turn its act around, to become more like the channel it used to be that ran series like the Battlestar Galactica reboot rather than what it had become known for more recently as the home to cheap-o movies and schlocky genre reality series. Yet here we are three years later and Syfy still airs those cheap-o movies and is still producing schlocky reality shows.
Oh well, while it might be on a channel questionable character, it doesn’t take away from the fact that The Expanse is still one of the best series on TV no matter where it happens to air.
I remarked at the time The Expanse debuted that we were experiencing a dearth of “very large ships in outer space” shows. Which three years later we still mostly are — there’s also Star Trek: Discovery that covers this same sort of ground too but that’s the only other one I can think of. Which is really odd. We live in a time where sci-fi, horror and other genre series are king yet the most traditional sci-fi show out there of people zipping around the cosmos in ships is still mostly missing from the crop of current series. I’m not sure if this is because that “very large ships” bandwidth is being taken up by 700+ episodes of Star Trek that seem to air in constant rotation on TV, not that I’m complaining since I love that stuff, or if what’s popular sci-fi now are more Earth based shows like Black Mirror or Westworld? But the last few years The Expanse has been filling a very large hole as it were in my sci-fi yearnings since there’s not much else out there new that’s like it.
In The Expanse, it’s a few hundred years in the future where mankind has colonized most of the solar system. People are living on the Moon, Mars and on asteroids out in the “belt.” But even though it’s a bright, shiny future we’re still squabbling over petty things and mankind isn’t going to let a little thing like the discovery of something in the depths of space that threatens all life in our solar system dissuade us from having an all out solar-system war with the Earth on one side, Mars on the other and the people living in the belt caught in the middle.
Much of the first two seasons of The Expanse focused on the lead-up to and the eventual start of this war and this new third season of the show picks up mere moments after the second season ended, with the solar system exploding in war all around the crew of the Rocinante while the one person who might be able to stop the bloodshed Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is being held hostage on a ship far out in space.
Much like with the Battlestar Galactica reboot The Expanse isn’t a show viewers can just start watching now, three seasons in. There’s so much backstory going on from plot to character relationships to politics it’s really only possible to start watching this show from the beginning.
So, if you haven’t seen The Expanse yet do yourself a favor and check the first two seasons first before jumping into this new third one. But it’s worth your time and effort to do so.
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