Date of release: April 13, 2018 (Netflix)
Parker Posey killed Selma Blair (or so it seemed if it weren’t for
the quick and easily missed shot of a bound Selma Blair when Smith was
walking out of the house)! Oh boy, fake Dr. Smith really must be a crazy
person, although you had to have noticed that she did her one or two
murders in a very indirect way, which means she may be able to be saved
by the Robinson family and that the premise of a redemption story could
be a possibility for the long run of Smith’s character arc, now that her
real name – June – is known to the audience. This episode being
June-centric, as well as diving into her character and what makes her
tick, made it look like all she wanted was a family to love and be loved
in return, and be taken seriously by her peers and family, but all she
got instead was something of a bitchy sister who may or may not have had
it better in life than June, and no chance to make a new life for
herself. Now that she was rescued by the Robinsons, a kid suddenly cares
for her and she got a hug from another woman. She feels respected and
cared for. Who knows, maybe June really is just a conflicted character
who has gone through the bad stuff and just needs to learn how to be a
good person, yet has decided to be a bad person because everyone is
calling her Dr. Smith. And the Dr. Smiths of LOST IN SPACE are always
evil and conniving. But are they also killers?
And this woman is evil. She killed one or two people (indirectly or not) and she already started manipulating Will, in the hopes of either controlling the robot or doing whatever her endgame is (so far it looks like she is scared of the robot because of what she witnessed happening on the Resolute), and even though LOST IN SPACE is a different show compared to the previous works of the franchise, June simply cannot be a good person, even in the long run, as it would ruin the backstory of her already murderous character. She needs to be evil to work in the narrative. The fact that June must be disturbed makes for an especially evil character because you can never expect what she is about to do next. Maybe she doesn’t even know what she is about to do. During the breaking of the glacier, all she could think of was getting out with the ship and leaving the Robinsons behind, which means she probably just wants to live, preferably with no one else around (making her a very lonely person, a wannabe recluse, a hermit). Something is going to happen soon that either makes her a seriously crazy woman or puts her on a path of redemption. Writers’ choice, I guess.
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| The doctor of science has another lifeform to dissect. |
The episode was a pretty-looking filler of sorts. Consider me surprised that the Jupiter 2 was actually out of the ice and sitting comfortably between glacier pieces, because I was thinking all the time that the ship never really surfaced and instead had ice all around it, or maybe even was still submerged in frozen water. But hey, now that the ship doesn’t have any fuel, the next potential episodic arc could be to find more crash sites and maybe salvage leftover fuel from all the Jupiter ships – because the Jupiter 2 might be the only functioning ship on this planet, which kind of gives an interesting perspective to the whole ordeal of the crash: The Robinsons have the only functioning ship, so let’s imagine what is going to happen when other survivors know about this little fact. June might not even be the only antagonist for the Robinsons on this planet...
The episode was very mainstream. It introduced some random and dangerous eel monsters that eat the ship’s fuel (how convenient), but they were small enough for a strong man to kill them (how convenient), so that the episode could depict some action between a human character and an animal-ish character, as if this is an episode of “Man Versus Wild” or something like it. While I liked that the situation with the fuel and the eels was used for some light moments when it could have served more thrill and horror (there are dangerous beasts on the Jupiter 2 – it’s like ALIEN, but on a family-sized spaceship), like John wrestling with one of the beasts while checking up on his family, it was conveniently written, as it was written to fill this episode with an adventure, with a problem needing to be solved, with the family sticking together to solve said problem, and with the Jupiter 2 needing to be out of the glacier, because even the ship needed to be part of the story somehow. All in a day to not get the Jupiter 2 out of the glacier for another episode and to prolong the necessary development of characters.
Meanwhile, this episode kind of had a different problem: It was the
first with proper opening credits, and it was the second episode with
flashbacks. So, were the first two episodes thought of as a two-hour
pilot? I mean, the first one only had “A Netflix Original Series”
flashing, while the second one at least showed the title card. And now
this one gives you a full opening credit sequence. I’m not sure what was
going on during production, but it seems weird and inconsistent. It’s
no problem in a narrative sense, but watching this show one episode at a
time, it’s noticeable how the opening minutes seem to have no rhyme or
rhythm when it comes to opening credits. That makes me wonder if the
issue could be contractual. After all, you get money when your name pops up in the credits, and the studio can save money by not having the actors' names pop up in any credits.
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| Fingerguns for the mighty robot bodyguard. |
The episode generally seemed like it was the episode after the pilot, begging the question if the writers simply didn’t want to burn so much fuel in the beginning and instead focus on the real danger of it all: the mysterious character that is Dr. Smith. Don’t care about where the Robinsons are or that the Resolute is still functioning in orbit (what? It didn’t look like that when it was sucked into the wormhole). Let’s not get into the story of Judy’s potential PTSD too much, because it has already been resolved at the end of this episode. Let’s not figure out why no one in the Robinson family thinks it’s weird that the robot is protecting Will the way it did in this episode. Because all that counts among the writing staff is that the robot believes it is dangerous to Will.
First of all, that would make the robot sentient, which is kind of intriguing in its own right. Secondly, it seems weird to have a two-faced robot in this show – a bad robot destined to crash the Resolute into a wormhole, and a good robot who protects Will at all costs, and both robots can’t remember each other. It’s like the Christian Slater dual-role TV vehicle MY OWN WORST ENEMY, and that seems too weird a plot for a LOST IN SPACE science-fictioner with a robot in it. But it puts the reminder in my head to get back to MY OWN WORST ENEMY at one point. It’s only a short show, it’s a ridiculous spy thriller, but it’s part of NBC’s history of the 2000s, which needs a dissertation.
