‘I know this may sound funny, but the experi-
ence had a curious effect. It was as though I
saw my whole life ... uh, frozen, as it were,
before me. It made me very much ashamed, I
can tell you. When I emerged from that tube,
I felt as though I were reborn, an entirely new
person. I asked myself, why all this strife and
bitterness, why this intense rivalry? After all,
we all belong to the same race, the human
race, embarked on an exploration of that
greatest of mysteries, the unknown Universe
... I just had a moment of weakness in wanting
to return to our Mother Planet.’
While it is Dr Smith’s immediate intention to trick
the Robinsons into letting down their guard so that
he can better kill them off one by one, his words
later become ironically prophetic. His lies become
truths. Over the course of the following weeks,
Dr Smith genuinely does undergo a transforma-
tion exactly like the one he described in his elabo-
rate ruse. While he does retain his many character
flaws, Dr Smith gradually realizes that his survival
depends on solidarity with his fellow earth
travellers. He grows to love the Robinsons, form-
ing an especially close bond with their 11-year-old
son, Will, played by Bill Mumy.
The optimistic message embedded here was that
youth did have the power to disarm the suicidal
and destructive intentions of the elderly genera-
tion.Will, for his part, representing the youth and
promise of the world, finds much to admire in
the elderly Dr Smith. While Will’s parents, and
especially the military Major West seemed less able
to adapt and compromise, it was the youngest and
oldest generations among the little community
who found it easiest to co-operate and work
together for the benefit of all. As such, Lost in Space
served as a potent model for the transformation of
American society.
According to the philosophy presented in Lost
in Space, the real obstacle to progress and stability
was neither the authoritarianism of elderly males
nor the revolutionary zeal of younger males.
Instead, the real impediment was the unbending
middle class whose innate conservatism compelled
them to fear, mistrust and fight against any changes,
even if they were improvements. Social progress,
according to the allegorical symbolism of Lost in
Space, was possible if the ruling elite and youthful
revolutionaries ceased their futile struggle against |
an unmoving center and instead worked at estab-
lishing a common bond based on co-operation.
The idea that there is a natural alliance between
the oldest and youngest generations within society
was made clear in the third-season episode ‘The
Promised Planet’7. Here, a planet populated
entirely by aliens disguised as rebellious, counter-
culture Earth teenagers lures the Jupiter II down
to the surface by tricking the Robinsons into
believing that they have accidentally stumbled
upon ‘the promised planet’– the planet orbiting
Alpha Centauri that was their original destination.
Although their intent is malevolent,the teenage
aliens encounter little difficulty in implementing
their plan to convince the Robinson parents,their
adult daughter and their pilot, Major West, that
they have no younger children and that they
should depart from the planet, leaving their two
youngest children, as well as Dr Smith behind.
Despite the tremendous age difference, Dr
Smith easily enters into a mutually beneficial
partnership with the teenage aliens. Although the
aliens disparagingly address him as ‘Methuselah’,
Smith adopts their ways with a facility as great as
the adult Robinsons’ inability to adapt to their
changing fortunes and as great as their gullibility.
Even though the ‘promised planet’ turns out to be
a deception for the adult Robinsons, it is revealed
to be a mythical ‘promised planet’ for the arche-
typal aging male who discovers that he has a natural
place and important role to play in this society. In
the story, the teenage aliens require extracts from
the blood chemistry of the two youngest
Robinsons and from Dr Smith so that they can
correct deficits in their own chemistry and embark
upon the aging and maturation process. The
symbolism is clear: the young Robinson children
who have already established a beneficial relation-
ship with Dr Smith are able to provide a model for
social evolution to the stagnant teenage society.
Progress, therefore,is only possible when there is
cross fertilization between the ideas generated by
both the youngest and the oldest elements in
society. The unyielding and inflexible center of
society plays no role in cultural or scientific evolu-
tion. The aging male, hence, is no longer a threat
to stability and progress, as presented in other
televised science fiction of the 1960s. Instead, he is
presented as a necessary and active participant in
the dialectic of progress.
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