Hey now everybody, hope you're having a great day, and welcome to my review of the Netflix television series Lost In Space! I don't usually bother reviewing TV shows because the seasons run for so long most of the time, and I don't watch a whole lot of them. But every once in a while something will catch my interest on Netflix, and I will feel compelled to watch it. The great thing about streaming TV shows is that I can binge watch the entire season in a few days, instead of waiting months for all the episodes to air. A friend of mine where I work turned me on to this show, at first I wasn't sure it would be any good, and I have a lot of other things to watch and play as it is, but after checking out the trailer I decided to give it a chance. Now that I've watched the whole thing, let's get into it.
Lost In Space is a science fiction television series developed exclusively for Netflix. It's sort of a reimagining of the original TV show from 1965, with the same characters and premise, but everything else is quite different. It follows the adventurous Robinson family as they go on a wild journey through space. To be honest I'm not sure how it stacks up to the original because I don't think I've ever seen it before. From what I've heard it's only loosely based off of it, I know some of the characters have been changed up, and this new one has a much bigger budget with fantastic special effects. So if you're a fan of the show from the 60's don't expect an exact remake, but if you've never seen that it's fine, you can enjoy this one on it's own.
The show begins in the year 2046 with a huge mysterious object, named the Christmas Star, crashing down onto Earth. This object does a great amount of damage to our planet, and now the human race doesn't have much time left. Our Earth is dying and everyone is scrambling to find a solution, some way to keep our species alive. This means leaving our planet and finding a new one to inhabit. To do this we've built a giant ship called the Resolute, which is an interstellar space craft, that will carry selected families through space to a new solar system, to hopefully find a suitable new planet.
The Robinson family is the main focus of the show, and they all manage to find their way onto the Resolute. The entire family is well trained in science and combat, making them an obvious choice to send to this new planet. After the journey begins and they're getting close to their destination, the Resolute gets attacked by hostile alien robots. It sustains a lot of damage and some people are forced to try and escape the mothership by using some of the smaller short range Jupiter ships. The Robinsons all get into one of these and evacuate, but flying debris smashes into it causing them and others to crash land on a nearby planet. Now they're all stranded in this alien environment, and desperately trying to get back to the Resolute.
Luckily for them this planet is much like Earth, and has breathable air as well as drinkable water. To enjoy this show you're going to have to be able to sustain your disbelief because these kinds of coincidental things happen all the time. Just keep in mind that it's a science fiction program and the entire premise is impossible to begin with. The first episode is all about the Robinson family and them dealing with crash landing on this new planet. There's the Mother and Father who are very likable and well done. Then you have the three kids, two older girls Penny and Judy, probably 16 and 18 years old, and finally the young boy Will who is 11.
Surprisingly I found all the members of the Robinson family to be the best part of the show, even the child actors did a great job and weren't annoying at all, which can be a big problem sometimes. They all have their own unique personalities and character traits that make them distinguishable, and when one of them is in danger I actually cared and wanted to see them come out of it ok. I know this sounds like it should be an obvious thing when watching a show, but you might be surprised by how many things I've watched where the characters are just so bad I really don't feel any attachment to them, sometimes even rooting against them because of the horrible choices they make. Then there's the real star of the show, the robot.
In the first episode Will, the youngest child, gets separated from the rest of the family and comes across a crashed alien ship. The robot who was inside is now torn in half and struggling to get back the rest of it's body. Will cautiously decides to help the robot in the middle of a desperate situation, ultimately saving it's life. Now this robot sees Will as a friend and becomes his bodyguard, following him everywhere keeping him safe. This becomes immensely helpful to the Robinson family and gets them out of many jams, even though they're all skeptical of it's true intensions. This thing is one of the best parts of the show, and some of you might notice it looks a lot like one of the species from the Mass Effect videogame series.
Not only do the Robinsons have to battle against this harsh new environment, but they're not alone here either. They come across many other survivors on their journey, one of them being the notorious Dr. Smith. Doctor Smith is the shows antagonist and this is where I started to get frustrated. Everybody else is so likable and well done, then you have this character who is just such a horrible person, and so obviously up to something, even though nobody seems to put it together. Dr. Smith continuously manipulates everyone, sabotaging things and causing trouble, but not in an interesting way that's fun to watch. Every time this character was on screen I just wanted her to get caught, or killed by something. It really detracted so much from the show, and that's a shame because everything else is so good.
As long as you're not too nit picky, and can suspend your disbelief, I think you'll find plenty to enjoy about this remake. With the exception of some corny dialog here and there, and the infuriating Dr. Smith character, this is a very well produced science fiction program that the whole family can watch. It's only 10 episodes, so you can binge it in a few days like I did, or take your time with it, either way it's not too big of an investment. From the looks of it I think there will be another season at some point. I can only hope they fix some of the little annoyances next time around that hold it back from being amazing, and really bring this to another level. I had a good time watching this for the majority of the episodes, regardless of it's shortcomings, and I'm going to give Lost In Space a grade of..................................
C+
Thank you for reading my review of Lost In Space, I hope you enjoyed it!