Lost in Space: Season 3
Dec. 7th, 2021 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakNetflix put up the third and final season of Lost in Space, the reboot, and I continued to love it. Am happy to report it ended on a narratively satisfying note, too.
Even the complaint I had about the pacing and seeming conclusion of Smith's redemption arc in s2 got fixed by virtue of Smith having faked her death (how? We're never told; she's Dr. Smith!) but still being on the rocky road to better personhood, complete with temptations into fallbacks and a different narrative conclusion. No sacrificial death, nor, I hasten to add, going back to villainy and dying a villainous death instead. Instead, the conclusion Smith got went straight to the heart of what had made her a villain at the start of the story - the refusal to accept any kind of responsibility for her failings, always blaming someone else and running away from the consequences. This is what she in-story and the writers on a Doylist level needed to address, and not by a dramatic death, and they really do.
But really, Dr. Smith is just one aspect of Lost in Space; the two hearts of the story - which thus is a Time Lord or a Centauri - are a) the relationships between the Robinson family members, and b) The "A Boy and his Robot" love story for Will and the robot. I'm not being flippant with "love story". It's one in the same sense that the central emotional arc of E.T. is between Elliot and the Extraterrestrial, and this version of Lost in Space kept this up for three seasons while also giving both Will and the Robot character and growing up development. Since the Robot and his fellow machines are also the remnants of an alien culture which for the majority of the show are enemies, this also works as a "love against incredible obstacles finally leads to understanding" trope.
As for the Robinsons, in retrospect, you can see each season gives the spotlight to different family member combinations. For example, s2 showed us something about Penny's difficulties (and reconciliations) with Maureen while also exploring Judy and John as father and daughter both in the past and present. S3, otoh, gives the spotlight to Maureen and Judy on the one hand and the siblings with each other. It also does something that could have gone incredibly wrong - letting Judy come across her biological father who, it turns out, was one of the earliest astronauts in space and ended up in the sci fi friendly cryotube. But all the possible ways this could go wrong are avoided. Judy, who has a great relatonship with John, doesn't seek an alternate father, but she is curious. The guy isn't a villain; nor is he used as the excuse for a stupid triangle, either a romantic one with Maureen and John or a paternal with with Judy and John. When they eventually meet, he and John don't get into a stupid contest. Everyone behaves as, gulp, adults, and leaves the triangle stuff to the actual teenagers (read: Penny and her boyfriends).
(Though I have to say the actress playing Penny by now looks far too old. Of course, that's a general problem when you work with children and teenagers and a tv season does not equal a year. The actor playing Will did a Jake Sisko and ended up taller than most members of the cast between seasons. They lampshaded this by letting Smith make a quip about it, and also provided a year long interlude between seasons 2 and 3, but since seasons 1 and 2 only take place within months in-show, that still leaves Will growing incredibly fast.)
Yet another quality I appreciated of this show was that it did a great balance between suspense and character stuff, and usually managed to unite the two. So Judy and Maureen aren't just trapped in a gigantic space worm trying to eat the Jupiter with them inside, they also while figuring out how to make the beast throw up (hello, Farscape!) manage to address Judy's issues about feeling the need to be the perfect, good daughter, and what it was like when it was just the two of them, before Maureen married John. And it doesn't forget the sense of wonder, or that this is a family of geeks. Mind you, I still love that Will isn't just exploring and recording the ruins the robot's creators left behind till the very last minute before take-off out of general geeky curiosity as you could first believe but because he thinks this knowledge could come in handy when they meet the other robots again, as indeed it does.
Of course, your mileage may very, and I can see the way the day is eventually saved coming across as narm to some viewers. But it absolutely worked for me and was fitting the overall tone of the show which starts out presenting a family in the stage of enstrangement and at a time of distress and then tells a story of healing, of change being possible and of a clear-eyed view of the past enabling a better future. And all this in the middle of adventures that embraced both the awesome and the silly (see also: space worm) while totally committing to the emotional reality of it all.
P.S. Debbie the chicken survives all seasons. In case anyone is wondering.
Even the complaint I had about the pacing and seeming conclusion of Smith's redemption arc in s2 got fixed by virtue of Smith having faked her death (how? We're never told; she's Dr. Smith!) but still being on the rocky road to better personhood, complete with temptations into fallbacks and a different narrative conclusion. No sacrificial death, nor, I hasten to add, going back to villainy and dying a villainous death instead. Instead, the conclusion Smith got went straight to the heart of what had made her a villain at the start of the story - the refusal to accept any kind of responsibility for her failings, always blaming someone else and running away from the consequences. This is what she in-story and the writers on a Doylist level needed to address, and not by a dramatic death, and they really do.
But really, Dr. Smith is just one aspect of Lost in Space; the two hearts of the story - which thus is a Time Lord or a Centauri - are a) the relationships between the Robinson family members, and b) The "A Boy and his Robot" love story for Will and the robot. I'm not being flippant with "love story". It's one in the same sense that the central emotional arc of E.T. is between Elliot and the Extraterrestrial, and this version of Lost in Space kept this up for three seasons while also giving both Will and the Robot character and growing up development. Since the Robot and his fellow machines are also the remnants of an alien culture which for the majority of the show are enemies, this also works as a "love against incredible obstacles finally leads to understanding" trope.
As for the Robinsons, in retrospect, you can see each season gives the spotlight to different family member combinations. For example, s2 showed us something about Penny's difficulties (and reconciliations) with Maureen while also exploring Judy and John as father and daughter both in the past and present. S3, otoh, gives the spotlight to Maureen and Judy on the one hand and the siblings with each other. It also does something that could have gone incredibly wrong - letting Judy come across her biological father who, it turns out, was one of the earliest astronauts in space and ended up in the sci fi friendly cryotube. But all the possible ways this could go wrong are avoided. Judy, who has a great relatonship with John, doesn't seek an alternate father, but she is curious. The guy isn't a villain; nor is he used as the excuse for a stupid triangle, either a romantic one with Maureen and John or a paternal with with Judy and John. When they eventually meet, he and John don't get into a stupid contest. Everyone behaves as, gulp, adults, and leaves the triangle stuff to the actual teenagers (read: Penny and her boyfriends).
(Though I have to say the actress playing Penny by now looks far too old. Of course, that's a general problem when you work with children and teenagers and a tv season does not equal a year. The actor playing Will did a Jake Sisko and ended up taller than most members of the cast between seasons. They lampshaded this by letting Smith make a quip about it, and also provided a year long interlude between seasons 2 and 3, but since seasons 1 and 2 only take place within months in-show, that still leaves Will growing incredibly fast.)
Yet another quality I appreciated of this show was that it did a great balance between suspense and character stuff, and usually managed to unite the two. So Judy and Maureen aren't just trapped in a gigantic space worm trying to eat the Jupiter with them inside, they also while figuring out how to make the beast throw up (hello, Farscape!) manage to address Judy's issues about feeling the need to be the perfect, good daughter, and what it was like when it was just the two of them, before Maureen married John. And it doesn't forget the sense of wonder, or that this is a family of geeks. Mind you, I still love that Will isn't just exploring and recording the ruins the robot's creators left behind till the very last minute before take-off out of general geeky curiosity as you could first believe but because he thinks this knowledge could come in handy when they meet the other robots again, as indeed it does.
Of course, your mileage may very, and I can see the way the day is eventually saved coming across as narm to some viewers. But it absolutely worked for me and was fitting the overall tone of the show which starts out presenting a family in the stage of enstrangement and at a time of distress and then tells a story of healing, of change being possible and of a clear-eyed view of the past enabling a better future. And all this in the middle of adventures that embraced both the awesome and the silly (see also: space worm) while totally committing to the emotional reality of it all.
P.S. Debbie the chicken survives all seasons. In case anyone is wondering.
