Everything comes to an end. Even if a show is done well, there’s a time for that show to conclude, preferably on its own terms. When I started watching Lost in Space, I honestly wondered how many seasons it would have. You could only keep up the pretense for so long. You can’t really stay lost in one place forever and hopping around would get tedious.
So, in the third season, the adults at least make it to Alpha Centauri. However, the children are left to fend for themselves on a strange planet. Oh, and they’ve still got that robot threat going on. They want their FTL drive back and they’re not going to stop until they get it.
I’m a little conflicted about this season. On the one hand, it was nice to have a resolution. Most of the characters had a happy life ahead of them. If a main character didn’t end up in a better place, at least you felt confident that they got what they dissevered.
On the other hand, I’ve never really liked a season-long story arc. Lost in Space usually felt like it was setting up a cliffhanger each episode and the third season was no different. In fact, some of the children have to climb up a sheer rock face. And the adults are facing an unstoppable force while having to worry that their kids are ok.
Another problem with the third season is that we don’t get all the answers that we might have hoped for. The children are on a planet that once had the aliens who built the robots, but not a lot of answers are forthcoming. In fact, we get very little. That aspect of the story is focused more on the children needing to get off the planet immediately, or else they’ll be stranded there forever. So, there’s no real time to study anything. In fact, it’s not clear why our Robot can’t master English. (He can talk to other robots in their native language, although I don’t know if it’s their own language or that of their builders.)
A big part of the problem for me was the gap between seasons. I lost a few of the details, which I had to remember as the third season went along. It might have helped to watch all 28 episodes at once. I don’t know. I probably still would have had a lot of questions.
There is also a sense of disappointment. We get to see the aliens, but not really. We get a sense of what the robots were for, but not really. There’s a sense of suspense, but not really. It gets to where it’s like a piece of gum that’s stretched too long. You have some substance on either end, but it’s a little thin in the middle.
I can see certain things. It would likely have been too expensive or involved to come up with an alien race, especially if was CGI. And we don’t really need it for this story arc. I could see that as a prequel series, though. Maybe we find out exactly how the robots overthrew their masters. Maybe we also find out why the robots are so single-minded in getting their tech back.
I really don’t see there being a fourth season of Lost in Space, though. It would have to be some other project at this point. That’s not to say that there aren’t other stories. It’s just that I think this chapter is done.
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