Date of release: April 13, 2018 (Netflix)
written by: Katherine Collins, Kari Drake
directed by: Stephen Surjik
Things get a little hectic, now that the season finale is around the corner and the characters were starting to fear for their lives. I am super glad the countdown clock started to tick in this episode and that the characters were fighting to get back to the Resolute by the end of this hour, but in hindsight, it makes the previous few episodes a bit meaningless. Between the glacier episodes, during which the Robinsons had to fight for their lives, and the Jupiter 4 rising into the heavens to reach the exit ramp quickly and selfishly, a lot of things happened, including Smith’s whole master plan of getting her own little robot, which is not necessary a plot point of interest any longer because now she is a real villain who does not even need a robot. This part of the episode was a little weird, even though it looked good that Smith is now a fully grown villain and that her manipulation has reached a state in which Will finds himself literally taped up.
Also, the cliffhanger of this episode is ... I do not know what to say
about it. This is still a family show, so it is pretty obvious that John
and Don are not dead. Those are the two major male players of the
franchise and you do not kill them off this way, especially not before a
final episode. Still, the final seconds of the episode were killer and
I am interested in seeing how the writers were solving this problem and
how they were attempting to explain John and Don’s survival. It is a fact
that they wanted to keep the viewers hanging during the end credits
sequence, which means there could be a chance that the end credits of
this episode have been the least-watched parts of the entire series,
simply because the viewers immediately clicked their way to the next
episode just to see how the cliffhanger was resolved. I would love for
Netflix to publish some of those numbers, just for the fun of it. But they will always be unable to do so, since their business model would implode – if the truth about streaming numbers come out, we would all know that it is a business to lose (or launder) money.
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| Take a 19-second nap before taking flight in a suicide mission. |
The episode was still solid, as long as Smith was not involved in any of it (thank the heavens that she was locked up for most of it). She became a major pain in the bottom with this episode, and I became less happy about her appearances or her decisions to manipulate her way to ... I do not even know what the heck she wants anymore and if getting safety on the Resolute is her only goal (especially now that she teased she could have screwed up the Jupiter 4). I thought she wanted to control the robot, but she did not even put him together here. I thought she wanted to take over the Resolute, but by kicking out Maureen and letting the Jupiter 4 burn to a crisp in the atmosphere, she wanted to stay on the planet or at least give the survivors no hope of safety. I thought she could be a murderess and do all the bad stuff she thought she could have the robot do, but because this is still a family show, she cannot just show up with a knife and slice a couple of throats.
I am not sure anymore if the writers knew what they wanted to do with Smith in this show, and since she is now a villain between a ton of rocks and a hard place that turns out to be soft, her involvement during the next two episodes is going to produce question marks over my head, and all I want is for this whole character arc to come to an end and tell me where Smith really stands as a character. Parker Posey is certainly made for this role, but unfortunately, there is something about the writing of this character that has gotten way off track within the span of two episodes.
When it comes to the rest of the episode, I was thoroughly entertained. John turned out to be an action hero in the making when he jumped his way into the Jupiter 4 – he even reminded me of Jason Patric in SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL for a fiery second, with the difference that John actually made it into the Jupiter 4, while Alex could not get out of the Seaborne Legend and hunt down the evil Geiger who just kidnapped his girlfriend played by Sandra Bullock. John continued to be an action-hero-to-be, as he went through the montage of simulations, which were great to follow and had nice montage-type editing to them. That was one of those examples, which makes this season of television a ten-hour long movie – if you take all the life-threatening situations the characters have been in, John’s simulation sequences are just another fast-paced action scene, capable of keeping the audience engaged because it is both exciting and, in a way, even funny, as Will was simulating the G-force pressing on John, and Judy was popping him out with the help of the conveniently discovered pressure regulator on the helmet (how convenient).
That John would be able to solve the liftoff crisis with the addition of Don was eyesroll-worthy and absurd, but it was a scene that finally established Don as the pilot of a spaceship, and as an action hero in his own right. Also, he finally shares a real connection with Judy. It was more than evident that the two had something of a connection when she put on her puppy face and he went straight into the simulation with John, ready to take on a mission he really did not want to take on.
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| The Robinsons are crying goodbye to their father. |
And finally, another piece of science-fiction media puts its name onto the list of things LOST IN SPACE was inspired by. Making the Jupiter 4 as light as possible was a definite reminder of THE MARTIAN, and how the Ares 4 was a shell of its former self for the climax of that film. I was impressed that the writers did not even go as far as THE MARTIAN did here, by even removing the outer hull pieces of the Jupiter, let alone show what the emptied Jupiter 4 looked like after all that shelving. I am pretty sure Don could have removed some inner hull pieces and all the doors – that is what I was thinking about doing when I would have been tasked to make the Jupiter as light as it can get. You do not need doors and walls in your ship. Those stupid things go out first. But I was getting that knowledge by having watched THE MARTIAN, something the characters on this show most likely did not do.
