September 15, 1965. The height of the Space Race. Just four months earlier, Edward White had become the first American to “walk” in space. The nation held its breath, dreaming of the cosmos. So, when CBS unveiled its ambitious new sci-fi series, Lost in Space , it promised adventure among the stars. What audiences got, however, was something far stranger—and far more memorable: a psychedelic, campy, and deeply dysfunctional family sitcom trapped in a spaceship.
As the Robot might say: “That does not compute… but it is very, very fun.”
Created by Irwin Allen, the self-proclaimed “Master of Disaster” ( The Poseidon Adventure , The Towering Inferno ), the show was initially conceived as a serious sci-fi drama in the mold of Forbidden Planet . The premise was simple: In 1997, the Jupiter 2 spacecraft, carrying the Robinson family (a scientist, his wife, their three children, and a pilot) veers off course, leaving them hopelessly lost on a strange planet.
