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What Netflix's Lost In Space Takes And Changes From The 1960s Original

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"It was so long ago."

The original Lost in Space, which first aired between 1965 and 1968, is a classic of sci-fi television. It's no small feat to adapt it for modern audiences on Netflix, even without considering the polarizing 1998 movie version. But the show's creators know exactly what they want to retain--and what they want to change--from the original Lost in Space.

"The core of the original show is what we wanted to hold on to, which was the family stuff," Lost in Space's showrunner, Zack Estrin, said during roundtable interviews at WonderCon last month.

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"A lot of people watched the show when they were kids for the cool sci-fi, the jetpacks, the ships, but there were also a lot of people who watched it because they wanted to be part of the Robinson family. So for us that was a great way to capture new viewers and old viewers--to hold on to that core values of what the Robinsons were about."

Lost in Space follows the Robinson family--a name borrowed from the classic Swiss Family Robinson story--as they become stranded on an alien planet while en route from Earth to a distant colony. In the show's first episode, Will Robinson, the youngest of three, befriends a strange robot who helps the family throughout the series. There's a lot in the new show that's different from the original, and the robot's origin is just one of many iconic characters and story beats the Netflix show interprets in a new way.

Estrin said as a kid he watched the original and fantasized about being Will Robinson, having space adventures with his robot buddy. "You want to be Will Robinson. That's like, a thing," he said. "But I find myself now, older, connecting to different characters in different ways."

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Besides, the original show didn't exactly have a consistent tone or style. It went through multiple significant changes, even though it only lasted three seasons, according to one of the new show's executive producers, Kevin Burns.

"When we met with [the writers] for the first time, I said, 'It depends on which Lost in Space you want to make,' because there's three of them. First season is very serious--it's much more action adventure," he said. "But then when it went to color in the second season and it was on opposite Batman, it became a comedy show...They tried to bring it back to family by Season 3 but by then it was too late. It really became "The Will, Smith, and Robot Show," which was beloved, but it wasn't what I remember grabbed me as a 12-year-old kid."

"We wanted to say, 'Bring it back to what it started as before CBS turned it into a children's show,'" Burns continued. "Bring it back to what it was intended to be: an action-adventure space drama with a family in peril, but a family who loved each other. And that's what this is."

The Doctor Is Out

One of the characters who's changed the most is Dr. Smith. Jonathan Harris's original incarnation of the character went through transformations of his own, but Parker Posey's Dr. Smith on the Netflix show has a very different origin. She's introduced at the end of the first episode, but we won't find out how she got there until later.

"I'm a performer, performing an homage to a show--to a part--that I loved as a kid," Posey said. "I have to recommend the volumes one, two, and three of the Lost in Space books. They're pretty great. And the box set is pretty great. Just to see, you know, the promise that it had in a relatively short amount of time...what it was like then and compared to what it's like now. It feels like good timing, which I think is part of the appeal of this show."

"It's perfect timing," said Ignacio Serricchio, who plays Don West. "The values, and reminding people about family values, and reminding people that it's so much easier, and it takes less time and less energy, to focus on what you have in common with people. Don't focus on what you don't."

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"It was so ahead of its time," he said. "It was so long ago. That's two generations that had no idea what it was."

That is, unless they watched the 1998 movie, which nobody so much as mentioned during these interviews. Clearly, the original 1960s show is the main subject being reinterpreted here. Jon Jashni, another of the new show's executive producers, even compared his fellow producer Kevin Burns to the original show's creator, Irwin Allen.

"If there's anyone who has inherited Irwin's mantle, it's [Kevin]," Jashni said. "But what we both saw as the opportunity was to take today's technology, the resources of a platform like Netflix ...and the ability to build what is in effect a ten hour, hundred-million-dollar movie where the arc can be carefully plotted and built over time."

"I would only add something else," Burns interjected, "which is, Jon's being too modest. Jon was the President of Legendary, and Jon is an expert at re-realizing iconic characters."

One character who hasn't changed in essence is Will Robinson, the youngest member of the family, played in the new show by Max Jenkins, a former circus performer who retired from the ring to take up acting around the age of 10.

"I watched the first season of the show, and I also got to meet [original Will Robinson actor] Bill Mumy, and we're good friends now, which I'm proud to say," Jenkins said. "When we were filming Lost in Space you could feel the presence of the old show...I feel like it brings in the qualities of the old show, while also bringing in a new way...it's a modern version of it."

Lost in Space's 10-episode first season hits Netflix this Friday, April 13.

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mrougeau

Michael Rougeau

Mike Rougeau is GameSpot's Managing Editor of Entertainment, with over 10 years of pop culture journalism experience. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two dogs.

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