Who says Sci-fi can't be wholesome family entertainment and still, ya know, good? In their infinite wisdom--or should I say infinite budget--Netflix has seen fit to bring back Lost in Space for a ten episode first season. This is either a reboot to that one movie in the 90's (has it really been twenty years?!) starring William Hurt, Heather Graham and... Matt LeBlanc??? (Yes, you read that right). Or instead it's a reboot to that other, *FIFTY* year-old TV show from the 60's which literally first aired in black and white. OR MAYBE it's actually a sci-fi adaptation of the classic Swiss Family Robinson from even further back, but now with robots. Or... Okay, maybe not that one. But either way, it's here, it stars a not-necessarily-Swiss family that just happens to be named Robinson as they get--you guessed it--lost once more in space, for our enjoyment. This is not Battlestar Galactica. I still remember sitting in my dorm room, all alone one lonely freshmen year of college, watching the Sci-Fi channel years before it became known as SYFY, when I saw out-of-the-blue a commercial for a TV-movie/backdoor-pilot to a rebooted Battlestar Galactica by creator Ronald D Moore of Star Trek fame. Did I mention I was alone? Yes, I had no friends. But I knew instantly that this gray and gritty, harsh, fast-paced, frak-talking, special-effects fueled franchise was gonna get me through my not-so-arduous English Lit degree. Yes, I watched the frak out of Battlestar Galactica and I recruited new nerds to watch it with me, and I don't care what anyone says, Jim from The Office is wrong when he stated Bears Beats Battlestar Galactica. Nothing beats Battlestar Galactica. Not even bears. But... It has been a long time since those Cylon-shooting science-fiction hey-days of the mid-aughts. The Dark Knight Trilogy has been replaced with Batfleck. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has produced 19 films featuring snarky protagonists with hearts of gold. JJ Abrams' Star Trek Reboot has come and possibly gone already, too, from the rumors. Disney has bought half the entertainment industry and we now elect our presidents from mid-level reality television shows. The era of dark and gritty and edgy has plateaued with R-rated premium internet prestige such as Game of Thrones, Mr Robot, Orange is the New Black and the Handmaid's Tale. Stuff you can't and won't ever watch with your children. And though Netflix is as much to blame as HBO in this regard, the simple fact is that they probably know as much as anyone that this market is saturated. It's tired. It's been done and is being done to the point of cliché. Enter Lost in Space. There is no nudity. No sex. No dirty words (at least not the bad ones). And no depressing nihilistic hopelessness to masquerade as literary enlightenment. But don't for a second think this means there is no drama. No conflict. No sophistication. Or no entertainment. Lost in Space is a prestige level science fiction survival adventure series that explores the underlying and complex nature of humanity with as much nuance and honesty as anything else on television, dragons or no dragons. The family is at the center but they're not alone. Of course there are the two parents, the two daughters and the son you may have heard of who sometimes likes to get into danger, Will Robinson. And then of course there's a handsome bachelor, a flamboyantly maniacal Dr. Smith and a Robot who likes to warn "Danger" to Will Robinson, every time the drama gets too subtle (Note: in the original 60's series, the robot only ever spoke that line once). But unlike the original cast, these characters don't always get along, and in a move that will surprise no one, the parents have kind of a broken marriage. Ya know, to keep it relatable to modern audiences. This is where I think a lot of people might at first think the show is unoriginal. I won't argue that it doesn't rely on well worn tropes of inter-family dynamics, but in my opinion it manages to imbue them with a degree of genuineness that justifies the otherwise unoriginal. None of them are perfect even though they try to be. They're flawed, selfish, sensitive and sometimes just plain wrong in their blind attempts to do what they think is best at any given moment, and the few times they get it right, it comes with a price. The Cast: You might think Dr. Smith's villainous machinations are too tediously evil to take seriously, but Parker Posey (Queen of the Indies, who you might recognize from almost everything but nothing you can put your finger on), brings a certain self-destructive desperation to a character that's so deeply lost within her own deceptions that she's not necessarily sure anymore why she's doing it. Or is she just having fun with the part? Either way it works. Molly Parker (Deadwood, House of Cards) as the mom-Robinson, is likewise layered with complexity beneath her typical know-it-all, control-it-all OCD-mother archetype. She hides a vulnerability and moral fallibility to her secretly insecure and overcompensating control issues stemming from that less-than-subtly broken marriage with her husband. These two women carry the show. English actor Toby Stephens (a Bond villain once, during the Brosnan days) plays that husband at first like any standard army-guy, no nonsense and task oriented, except that he basically has to defer to his wife and children on anything science, which is always, because: science fiction. It drives him nuts to be so ineffectual beneath his dominant wife until you begin to appreciate the lengths he'll go to make amends for the family he almost abandoned in his backstory. The kids are all kids, and vacillate between dumb, annoying, emotional and unrealistically smart, but ultimately pull off convincing portrayals for being basically wiz-kids at their respective ages. Will comes off as appropriately earnest and impressionable. Penny wants to be a writer and fall in love but keeps her feet on the ground. Judy is a wannabe doctor but with no life experience who gets in over her head. Ignacio Serricchio, though, is much more fun as Don West, the bachelor, smuggler and mechanic with a goofball disposition splattered over his moral reluctance to inevitably do the right thing. These are the characters you already know from the original series who will no doubt end up together in the end, but I appreciated the series taking it's time bringing them there. Of course they all crash on an alien planet and of course after an entire season of obstacles they eventually survive and escape together only to get themselves LOST once again somewhere new for next season. But the way it plays out is what caught me off guard. There's a much larger cast, with much better development and ambiguity than I ever expected. A smattering of other survivors with personal secrets and struggles and insecurities of their own provide a more varied dynamic for the Robinsons to bounce off of (at least for this first season). These dynamics aren't just to stretch the plot or pile on the problems, but they help explore the different sides to human nature in their own right. An elderly Japanese biologist already knows of their hopeless predicament yet calmly catalogs his discoveries because he is at peace with the risks he accepted in return for getting to explore the galaxy. An anxious and scheming politician who nobody will admit to voting for is also the only one who cares about their collective survival enough to make the hard calls no one else is strong enough to make. A trauma victim who saw the real source of their crash struggles to assign blame as she lets her grief blind her to Dr. Smith's manipulations. Each of these recurring characters fulfill a mechanical role in keeping the plot moving at different times, but the writers never take them for granted and make sure to give each a full emotional arc of their own long after their function has played out. The writers aren't boxed in. The producers and creators may have settled for some straightforward archetypes in the cast, but the writers aren't having it. They refuse to waste an opportunity to elevate these characters beyond their types. They do their best to make every person and every conflict actually count. I can feel them struggle with the content they're given and I have a hard time not imagining some producers and executives handing down cheap story beats and trite genre tropes to a bunch of writers who insist on making it work in spite of itself. You may not be surprised by the twists and turns and the ways certain relationships develop, but if you can just enjoy the story for what it is, you may come to appreciate that at least they are going through the motions at a very competent level. Perhaps higher than most. No one is phoning it in. And that while they're doing these seemingly familiar plot turns they're also subverting the entire Hollywood trend of dark, edgy and sexy storytelling which, if you think about it, is a thousand times less original than what we have here. Besides the acting and the writing, the production value is also very high, with contemporary special-effects to compete with any modern movie by mixing practical props with frugal but subtle CGI (ya know, the way they make the new Star Wars films). The robot switches between CGI and a physical body suit pretty seamlessly. It isn't the retro-futurist design I would've hoped for, but he has a memorable face like a sky full of stars and belies just enough characterization to empathize with but not too much to contradict his robotic reality. The ships look as good as any model when they're in space but the life-size prop on the ground is just as believable. The environments are vast and they don't shy away from broad panoramic angles, with maybe one exception. The alien forest is a little too generic Colorado to me, but it never feels like they're on a set at least. Adventure for the whole family. It's not too heavy for kids but never too dumb for adults. It's one of those rare middle-ground shows that manages to retain a level of sophistication for the kids to grow into and a level of fun for the parents to feel young in again. The kind of hybrid Pixar has become famous for, except live-action and ongoing. It reminded me of all the friends I have who are turned off by the R-rated gratuity in most "prestige" television and the overhyped shenanigans that get touted as "bold" but which are becoming boringly cookie-cutter at best. This show could be for them, whether they watch it with a family or not (I didn't). The acting, the writing, the cinematography and the social commentary are as good as anything else out there. It's too bad the reviews and the response don't quite understand what to make of it without blood, boobs and backstabbing. Conclusion: 4.5 out of 5 stars. It may lack the attention-grabbing tricks of other shows but it does what it wants with just as much integrity and philosophical deliberateness. It just so happens that philosophy is more "wholesome" than TV has been in a while, but it never compromises the acting, writing, drama, or storytelling. The characters grow on you through both triumphs and failures. The ships look good. The science feels natural and grounded. The obstacles require rational problem solving. And the action is palpably adventurous. It gets better every episode. Give it 4 episodes until they introduce the rest of the supporting cast of survivors and I promise if you don't like it, you're a pompous prick and I don't care about your Westworld theories.
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