Lost in Space

Sometimes it’s a good idea to remake a classic with new technology. Sometimes it’s not. This time it is not. I think I watched maybe an episode and a half of the original series, saw that it was silly, not funny, and that was that. Just those horrible costumes would have likely been enough. I guess what everybody remembers, even someone who never watched it, like me, is the line the robot was always saying: “Danger, Will Robinson!” In this new iteration the writers go to really elaborate lengths to include that line, right at the end of the first episode, and it makes no sense at all. Everything is, of course, extremely detailed CGI. The wreck of the mother ship is gigantic, and ho-hum. The new robot is Transformer-ready, and not nearly as interesting as the original one. But worst of all, the producers are so eager to get us into the action (otherwise we might actually have time to think) that they drop these unfamiliar characters right into the soup, putting three of the five into deadly peril within the first twenty minutes. I didn’t know them, and I didn’t care what happened to them. No matter how hard they tried to jerk my tears, I was not moved.

Two howlers I’ll mention, and then leave it alone. The planet they crash on seems to have large deposits of elemental magnesium. Why? Because the plot needed it. Magnesium does not occur in nature except in compounds, not on this or any other planet. Then, near the end, little Will Robinson is sitting on a tree branch about twenty feet off the ground. Below him is a raging inferno. I mean, everything is burning, the flames are almost touching his feet. This, of course, is just where you want to put meat when you’re cooking it. Very hot. After about thirty seconds you could just stick a fork in him … and I guess that’s just what I did.