Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Lost in Space: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Danger, cherished childhood memories.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 4, 2019

As I mentioned in our now long ago Lost in Space: The Complete Adventures Blu-ray review of the original Irwin Allen production which ran for three seasons on CBS, the relatively short lived series might strike some viewers as seeming like two different shows, with the first black and white season notably more dramatic and less campy than its subsequent years (especially the third and final year). Another perhaps more subliminal way in which the original Lost in Space was "bifurcated" was with regard to its wonderful theme music by a guy who was back in those days still billed as Johnny Williams. As I mentioned in the coverage of the supplements on the huge Fox set devoted to the original series, true fans know that Williams actually wrote two themes for the series, the first utilized for the first two seasons, and the second used for the last (and arguably silliest) season. In a kind of interesting “one from Column A, one from Column B” approach, this newish reboot of Lost in Space adopts the substantially more serious tone of the original’s first season, while also utilizing, if only in passing, Williams’ wonderful theme music from the third season, for this version’s closing credits crawl.

As might be expected, this “new, improved” Lost in Space both echoes the original in significant ways, while introducing a bunch of tweaks, some of which may strike fans of the original as rather smart, and some others that may strike fans as relatively needless. While the “Space Family Robinson” unit is more or less intact, a few changes are afoot, including the fact that Maureen (Molly Parker) is this mission’s commander, with husband John (Toby Stephens) providing support by virtue of his military background. In one of the kind of interesting twists that at least makes the “white bread” Robinsons a bit more diverse, Judy (Taylor Russell) is biracial (from a prior marriage of Maureen’s), and serves as the mission’s doctor (more about Lost in Space’s more “famous” doctor in a moment). Penny (Mina Sundwall) is the mission’s mechanic, and Will (Maxwell Jenkins) is initially shown to be kind of an insecure basket case, not sure what his role in the mission is supposed to be. Penny and Will are the children of both John and Maureen in this version.

What struck me as one of the smarter revamps this version offers is in its presentation of a whole bunch of Jupiter spacecrafts which are part of a colonizing effort after Earth becomes inhabitable. In that regard, Don West (Ignacio Serricchio) and a certain Dr. Smith (Parker Posey) arrive on board a different ship than the one the Robinsons crash land in. Dr. Smith is of course the same conniving sort he (in that version) was in the original, but here the character is taken to almost pathological levels. Interestingly, Don West is not pure as the driven snow in this version, either, and in one of the more interesting pieces of revisionism, even the legendary robot may have a few ulterior motives up its tentacles.

The chance of other survivors being stranded on the planet and even the fact that the huge space station from which the ships departed may be “out there somewhere” gives this iteration a kind of Lost ambience at times, with the focal characters trying to both discover others in their “neck of the woods” while simultaneously trying to reach out into the great beyond to achieve contact with some kind of outside entity. That similarity is probably reinforced by a structural conceit in the show, whereby "current" adventures of the survivors are interrupted by flashbacks revealing how they got there (so to speak). The series provides vastly more believable threats to the survivors than the original series did, but the series still manages to evoke the original in several ways, including a kind of retro-futuristic production design.

There may in fact be a bit too much subterfuge in this first season of Lost in Space, as well as some arguably overheated dramatics within the Robinson family in particular (John and Maureen with marriage problems? — perish the thought!, at least for those who grew up on the original version). A lot of the special effects work is quite well done, even if occasionally the CGI can look on the “cartoonish” side. The redesign of the robot is rather interesting, and may recall certain sci-fi spectaculars where the bad guys resemble mutant insects.

Lost in Space: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Lost in Space: The Complete First Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.00:1. The IMDb lists some interesting technical aspects for this production, including the fact that it was captured by the RED Weapon 8K camera, though the IMDb does fail to list what resolution the DI was finished in. The IMDb also lists Dolby Vision and HDR10, along with Dolby Atmos, which may beg the question as to why Fox hasn't released the series on 4K UHD (at least as of the writing of this review). The visual presentation here is often quite striking, with abundant detail levels even in less than optimal lighting, and some really precise gradations in fairly neutral tones, as in the huge snowscapes that make up a large part of the first episode. Fine detail on elements like the fur on Will's parka, Don's ribbed, rubbery looking spacesuit, or even the sinewy mechanics of the robot (one of the more effective CGI concoctions in a show where some of the CGI is a bit fake looking) are typically excellent. The palette is kind of surprisingly tamped down a lot of the time, though it does tend to favor cooler tones like blues. Occasional scenes are graded or lit intentionally kind of strangely, but detail levels only rarely falter.

Lost in Space: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Lost in Space: The Complete First Season features a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. The surround channels are regularly engaged in any number of effects sequences, and there are both fun directional effects as well as some rumbly LFE that regularly dot virtually every episode. Ambient environmental effects are recurrently utilized throughout the first season, and some sequences, as in a monsoon like storm, feature a glut of well placed elements that really help to create a believable sonic environment. Dialogue is always presented cleanly and clearly throughout each episode.

Lost in Space: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 3:42)


• "No Place to Hide" (1080p; 52:12) is the original unaired pilot for the old CBS series, presented here in a colorized version. It's kind of fun to see how the reboot takes various ideas in this formulation and tweaks them. The colorization isn't bad, as these things tend to go.


• Bill and Max: Lost and Found in Space (1080p; 10:10) is a delightful visit with the "two" Will Robinsons.


• Bill Mumy Visits the Jupiter 2 (1080p; 7:00) features Mumy as a tour guide around the Jupiter set.


• Designing the Robot (1080p; 5:20) looks at the refashioning of one of the original series' most iconic characters.


• Lost in Space Sizzle (1080p; 3:38)

Note: All of the supplements are found on Disc Three of this three disc set.

Lost in Space: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As I mentioned in the review of the original Lost in Space linked to above in the main body of this review, I grew up on that version and spent three years or so wishing I could magically transform into Bill(y) Mumy so that I could wear cool ski pants and a velour shirt and hang out with my own personal robot (like Will Robinson, I had two older sisters in real life, so felt I was already equipped to ignore Judy and Penny). The depiction of Will in this version was actually one of the things that kind of chafed at me personally, but others without the history with the original version may of course have a completely different reaction. The revisionism affecting several of the other main characters is often quite interesting, and there's some fun "meta" elements for fans of the original, including "little" items like character names that evoke the names of actors who portrayed roles in the original version. That said, I'm not sure if this Lost in Space has fully found its own distinctive identity — at least not yet. As reboots go, it's better than many others, but it's still finding its footing on its own planet, in a manner of speaking. Technical merits are first rate for those who are considering a purchase.