The Lost Civilization

Come on people..this episode deserves right around a score of 8 of 10. It is a classic black and white Season One episode..obviously not one of the best of the season but being from Season One pretty much automatically makes it better than all the colored episodes from the final two years.

The average score of only 6.9 at this web site is a gross under rank for this episode.

This story itself is played quite straight and adventurous, and it has that great survival theme, reminiscent of the great black and white early stories.

It may be a little implausible and cheesy in situation and characters (like some mention), but this is classic LOST IN SPACE, full of great fantasy and adventure.

Indeed, this is the one and only episode of the series where "special guest star" Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) does not appear, except for a cameo appearance in the final scene.

I love Royal Dano as a guest star here. Among other things, I loved Royal Dano appearing in a total of four excellent episodes of THE BIG VALLEY..one from each season.

This episode was written by William Welch, who was scarce as a writer for this Irwin Allen series. He only wrote a total of four episodes, with "The Lost Civilization" here already being his third.

This episode was directed by Don Richardson. It was only Mr. Richardson's third episode of the series to direct, but he went on to direct a total of 26 episodes of LOST IN SPACE, making him the most prolific director in the series.

Come on..get the grade up around 8 of 10 stars where "The Lost Civilization" belongs, here in classic and glorious Season One of LOST IN SPACE.

I will always remember seeing a rerun of this episode on Christmas morning in 1976.

Will and the robot fall into the domain of an underground civilisation where they discover a sleeping princess that Will, at the robot's instance, awakens with a kiss only to discover that he has set in motion an alien invasion of Earth. Like last week's 'Midas' themed episode, this tale taps into a fable - Sleeping Beauty - but then veers into some nonsensical space-politics. The premise is ridiculous (even by LiS standards) and the writer has given little thought to addressing even rudimentary questions like where is the light coming from in the caverns, but the quick glance of a 'frozen' army is an example of the series' better special effects shots. Kym Karath is cute in a TV-sort-of-way as the princess (too bad she didn't get together with her 'von Trapp family' sibling' Angela Cartwright and sing a duet about going to bed) but as the wicked Major Domo, Royal Dano, in classic 'Fu-Manchu yellow face', is just silly. Will's interactions with the robot continue to anthropomorphise and John and Don continue their slide into secondary character-status (even when Dr. Smith isn't around to gobble up the scenery).

A different adventure for various reasons, while in the previous episode the story focused on part of the family that was in the camp, in this episode the protagonists are the other half of the family that left in the chariot and after escaping from a erupting volcano end up being prisoners of a strange civilization, the script is a variant of sleeping beauty, with a girl crown princess of the throne of this strange world. The story is good, it's a shame that the production was quite limited and they used the facilities of the Seawie submarine from another Irwin Allen series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Always seeing a purely adventure and fiction episode where there is no comedy is comforting.