Category: Lost in Space
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This episode has such an exhausting amount of Toby Stephens being macho someone calls him on it to his face. Stephens is convinced the robot—now on Alpha Centauri with the humans—has gone rogue. Raza Jaffrey, who points out he almost stole a space-camper and abandoned over a hundred people to the elements, tells him to…
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Yet another short episode. And it’s got a huge dramatic beat in the latter half, but not for the cliffhanger. In fact, everything after the dramatic beat just serves to reduce the impact of that beat. It plays very awkwardly, which isn’t director Julian Holmes’s fault, just the script’s. Katherine Collins gets the credit; as…
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It’s another short episode, but it’s also a Leslie Hope-directed episode, and she does not disappoint. Even saddled with flashbacks to when Taylor Russell was a baby, and Molly Parker has taken her home to mom Colleen Winton’s farm to raise her. It’s where we find out Parker gave up being an astronaut to have…
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So far, this season has had fifty-ish-minute episodes. This episode’s only forty. It’s got a couple things to do, and it does them expediently, which makes it a bridging episode of sorts. While the kids are safely in spaceflight, thanks to Taylor Russell and Russell Hornsby, their parents—half a galaxy away or whatever—are in more…
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While I’m sure they didn’t bring in Russell Hornsby—as Taylor Russell’s long-lost (in space) biological father—to offset Toby Stephens’s energy vampiring, but Hornsby does have that effect. The nicest “Lost in Space” has been in ages is when Mina Sundwall, being introduced to Hornsby, gives him a hug. Hornsby will have an arc, mostly with…
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It’s only taken twenty-two episodes, but “Lost in Space” finally addresses some fundamental questions about its robots. Did something make them, or did they make themselves? The show skirts around the robots having agency and sentience to make the human eagerness to enslave them a little less creepy, presumably. Though Molly Parker salivates over the…
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When I said “Lost in Space” was going the “Battlestar Galactica: The Revival” route, I didn’t realize how far “Space” remake creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless were going to go with it. This season premiere opens soon after the previous one, with Taylor Russell in a spacesuit in the spaceship wreckage they found last…
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After spending most of the season away, this episode’s writing credit goes to reboot creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. I figured they were back to get the show in shape for season three, but I didn’t realize it’s all they were going to do. Sure, they spend fourteen minutes to resolve all the cliffhangers…
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This episode may be the perfect example of “Lost in Space: Season Two.” It’s got a bunch of problems, and they’re all ginned up and exacerbated by the main cast. Mostly Toby Stephens and Molly Parker because they’re the parents. But this device—ignore an obvious problem and then act surprised when it becomes a dire…
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Well, the robot’s back. Only took seven episodes. As Maxwell Jenkins teaches the robot how to care for horses, the episode flashback to JJ Feild’s intentions—cripple the robot and force it to fly the mothership to a new galaxy. Juxtaposed against the robot trying to tell Jenkins it’s not nice to subjugate other beings. And…
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JJ Feild is shaping up to be more likable than I was expecting, but also far flatter. “Lost in Space” shrugs through its male casting too much. He spends the episode being secretive about his plans if the robot-finding expedition is successful. He’s down on the planet with Molly Parker and Maxwell Jenkins, horseback riding…
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It’s nearly a concept episode of “Lost in Space.” John Robinson (Toby Stephens) is stuck at the bottom of a mine shaft, injured, without medical attention. Daughter Judy Robinson (Taylor Russell) is racing to get to him but her SUV breaks down. They’re on an alien planet and there are metal termites. She’s going to…
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Since this episode doesn’t have the opening titles, I spent the entire thing terrified Leslie Hope directed it too (she did the excellent job last episode), and that goodness was somehow a fluke. Nope, those intolerable, endless, pointless low-angle shots are courtesy director Jon East. It’s the worst direction on the show ever. I should’ve…
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After the casual nod here and there—the “hub” in the space-camper looks a lot like the Alien mess hall—this episode goes all-in on the Aliens homage, complete with a little girl (Nevis Unipan) surviving on her own for months and months with aliens out to eat her. Leslie Hope directs the episode. It’s excellent suspense…
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Alex Graves is back directing this episode; unlike last time, he lets “Lost in Space” take advantage of its John Williams theme music to do some Williams-esque riffs. The major disaster sequence, which sets up the rest of the episode, gets very emotive music. The action immediately follows the last episode, with the family assembling…
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After a reveal about last season’s finale, the episode reestablishing the ground situation—the Robinsons and friends have been marooned on a mostly water, very toxic planet for six months because the Cylon engine has stopped working. I may just call the robot’s “species” the Cylons. I haven’t decided. After they set it all up, the…
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If it weren’t for remake creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless getting the script credit, I would’ve thought there’d been a producer change in this season. This episode caps a maybe five-episode arc where they’re racing to get off the planet as fast as possible because it’s breaking apart, and their mothership can’t stay looking…
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It’s unfortunate Molly Parker and Parker Posey are only going to get antagonistic scenes together because they’re good opposite one another. “Lost in Space” hasn’t really tasked Posey, and this episode’s the closest so far. Posey has kidnapped Parker after inadvertently killing Toby Stephens and Ignacio Serricchio. How was Posey supposed to know Parker was…
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Will Robinson, falling for Dr. Smith’s shit since 1965. Having not seen the original show and not having great memories of the obvious evilness of Gary Oldman’s Dr. Smith in the Lost in Space: The Movie, I don’t know how this show’s version of Will Robinson, played by Maxwell Jenkins, falling for Parker Posey’s very…
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So, there’s a lot good about this episode. Director Tim Southam leans in heavy on the “we’ve got John Williams music anyway, let’s make it like a Spielberg” to good effect. There’s a very nice arc for Taylor Russell and Ignacio Serricchio (who still aren’t romantic, yay), and there’s a pretty good one for Molly…
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Another episode, another new writer and director. Also, the opening titles are back. It’s also the longest episode so far (I’m pretty sure), clocking in just over an hour. Because a lot happens, and everyone gets something to do. However, the script (credited to Ed McCardie) compensates for its numerous supporting players by sticking Molly…
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Even though this episode opens with Parker Posey trekking back through the forest after watching the Robinson kids hide the robot last episode… it seems like more time has progressed than a few hours. Unless all the survivors moved all their space-campers (the Jupiter space-camper) to the same campground overnight and legitimately elected, but dipshit…
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So Ignacio Serricchio is playing Don West, a character from the original show (Matt LeBlanc in the movie). If they mentioned his name before, I missed it. However, given Serricchio refers to himself multiple times in the third person this episode, maybe I wasn’t the only one confused. Last episode ended with the heroes finding…
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After two episodes making a lot of noise but not really doing anything productive, Toby Stephens finally finds something he’s good at—fighting fuel-consuming alien eels. It’s another job the killer robot could do better, but the killer robot is too busy protecting Maxwell Jenkins. Once the robot deems there to be too much danger for…
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This episode feels a little bit like “Pilot: Part Two” since it introduces Parker Posey to the series. The soft cliffhanger last episode had her assuming a false identity and getting onto an escape spaceship with mechanics Ignacio Serricchio and AnnaMaria Demara. As the bigger spaceship was under attack from a killer robot before all…
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I must confess I didn’t remember my “Lost in Space” enough to know they had three kids. I thought Taylor Russell was added for the new show. I also don’t think I’ve ever seen the original series, just the movie. But there are three kids. Besides Russell, who’s the Doogie Howser teen doctor, there’s Mina…
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For maybe forty minutes–from twenty minutes in to the hour mark–Lost in Space is actually rather engaging. It’s not any good as a narrative, but Hopkins’s direction of the space sequences is phenomenal. The film opens with something familiar, a dogfight out of Star Wars, but the later sequences are not. They aren’t original, but…

