Best Geeky Finds – Space Family Robinson

My love of campy sci-fi has never been restricted to film. Sure, there’re plenty of bad movies out there that I’ll never stop finding tire fires to enjoy. The 60s was the space age though, and everywhere you looked there was a movie about humans traveling to another planet and being attacked by an intergalactic creature. In 1965 this was especially witnessed in living rooms. Lost in Space told the story of the family of astronauts whose ship was sabotaged and shot off course in an asteroid field, left stranded on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. The US was about to enter the space race (four years before the moon landing), and this sitcom showed what the world would be like afterwards. 

Looking back at this mission, it was failed to start with, given that their doctor was a psychiatrist (not to mention the actual saboteur) and his robot couldn’t keep loyalties to anybody so was always off on its own missions with the youngest Robinson, Will. Yet despite this, the show ran for three seasons.

The Robinsons’ mission has been remade by Netflix, this time more serious and extremely scientific. When a meteor crashes to Earth, creating a new extinction in 2046, a lottery is formed to choose the best families to colonize a new planet. When their Juniper ship crashes, however, a piece falls on Maureen’s leg (Molly Parker) causing her muscles to tighten and weakening her legs (something that might have already happened to myself in 2018, making me wish for their easily-made 3-D printed leg brace). The oldest daughter, Judy (Taylor Russell) is also trapped under blocks of ice after digging under water to get inside their sunken ship. Will (Maxwell Jenkins) goes off on his own mission for lifeforms after becoming separated from his father (Toby Stephens), only to find a strange robot creature that is one of the most terrifying creations I’ve seen in any horror movie – and yet, they’re friends. Meanwhile, Dr. Smith (Parker Posey) is on her own pod with an engineer from the base, though her plans are beyond anybody’s expectations from the start.

Having watched the first two episodes, I’m hooked on this new series, appreciating that it is far better than the 1998 movie that I continue to forget exists. We are far from the space age, and with Elon Musk’s Mars endeavors, this proves that you don’t need ridiculous plots to have a believable sci-fi story in space.

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