No Place to Hide

In the year 2001, the Robinson family (John, Maureen and their children Judy, Penny and Will) and geologist Don West leave Earth in the discoid starship Gemini 12 for a 97-year journey to Alpha Centauri. When the ship is damaged in a meteor swarm, the crew is forced to crash-land on a mysterious planet where they have to battle the elements (and a race of cyclopean giants) if they are to survive. They are..."Lost in Space". This is the much commented on pilot for the sometimes scorned but usually fondly remembered space-adventure series that ran for three seasons from 1965 to 1968 (83 episodes). The pilot is closer to its inspiration (The Swiss Family Robinson) than is the series, with the focus being on the family's struggle to adapt to the harsh world on which they are 'cast away 'but the most obvious difference is the absence of 'Doctor Smith' and 'the Robot', who ultimately became the 'main attractions' as the series devolved into a 'camp', kid-targeted comic-adventure series. Much of the footage was recycled in the first five episodes of the series (which required some contrived plot elements to explain the absence of Smith and The Robot in the older scenes). For the era and budget, the special effects are pretty good (the one-eyed 'giants' not withstanding) and are much more 'serious sci-fi' than the goofy, garish contraptions that started to appear (usually in a puff of colourful smoke) towards the end of the show's run. I doubt that actor Guy Williams, last seen as the family patriarch kneeling in the alien sand and praying for his family's survival, envisioned that in just three years, he would be wearing a pastel-coloured velour outfit and talking to a person wearing a giant carrot costume (Williams' disappointment with the series' metamorphosis into the comic 'Will-Smith-Robot hour' is well known). More than five decades have passed since this pilot was made, but it is fun to speculate how the show would have fared if it had maintained a 'serious' hard-science tone (especially as 'Star Trek', its main competition, debuted less than a year later). A must-see for frenemies of the show (or anyone interested in TV sci-fi in general).