I had gotten away from the ocean of steaming content for a good while last year. That ended in December when The Man In The High Castle and The Expanse dropped new seasons. I was sorry to see The Man In The High Castle come to its conclusion, since I had really been enjoying its expansive interpretation of not just Philip K Dick’s novel, but the alternate world in which it’s set. I thought the end of the final season was a bit rushed as the show runners struggled to resolve the many intertwined plot lines. In the end however, it seemed fitting that many of the show’s threads ended with more questions than answers–just like the book did. And The Expanse has quenched my thirst for gritty space opera in a way it hasn’t since the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Given the tonal direction of The Deadly Analogues, it’s serving as a solid inspiration. I look forward to new seasons with the crew of the Roci!
But once I was done with these shows I felt bereft–and very much in need of quality, on-demand SFF programming. I knew about the embarrassment of riches in terms of content out there… but what to watch next? I had already watched Altered Carbon–and although I find Joel Kinneman perpetually annoying it was some top notch cyberpunk.
The first possibility to present itself came from the fantasy side of my watch list. The Witcher, on Netflix–I’d never played the game, but I’ve spent enough time browsing ArtStation to have seen countless renditions of the saga’s four central characters. I felt like I knew them already. I was immediately engaged by first episode. But I turned it off after 30 minutes, deciding that I wanted to read the books first.
What happened next was a happy accident. After additional browsing and an accidental toggling of the auto-play option… I found myself watching Season 1 of Netflix’s new Lost In Space.
Now keep in mind, I was more-or-less potty-trained on the original Lost In Space. (Long story–not now.) I still hold a soft spot for its gee-whiz trappings and high camp antics. And because of that I really wanted to like that 1998 reboot. But–as history has proven–the movie was vomitable*, and from that point I pretty much thought that any update of Lost In Space would be DOA. So when I heard about the new Netflix series, I thought, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
How wrong I was.
Coming to the new Lost In Space late, I had the pleasure of careening through both seasons in less than a week. I really appreciated the wholesale rethinking of the entire premise, making the journey of the Robinson family part of a much larger enterprise. The Jupiter 2 being but one ship in a whole fleet of colonists fleeing a dying Earth gives the story much more fodder for drama, over and above the alien-of-the-week formula of the old series. The robot is ingeniously reconceived as an alien with a startling connection to not just Will Robinson, but to the entire mission. The cast is amazing–standouts being Parker Posey as a tragi-comic reinvention of Dr. Smith, and Molly Parker as Maureen Robinson, the moral and emotional center around which the whole action orbits. It looks phenomenal. The visuals are among the best I’ve ever seen on TV–or on film. And at the end of the day, this new Lost In Space does not forget what the original was, under all that tin-foil and camp–the story of a family.
And I think that might be the part I appreciate the most. This ensemble show, where the relationships are as important as the explosions, remind me of how important the relationships and connections are among the crew of the Friendly Card. And in the upcoming installment of the Slagmaster saga–those relationships are going to be tested. It’ll be good to have a show like this to hold up as an inspiration as the draft unfolds.
Of course, once that was over, I was left adrift again… so here comes Disney+ and CBS All-Access to the rescue! Picard, Discovery and The Mandelorian are next on the list!
*One of these months I’ll post about some of my least favorite SFF films…