Lost in Space (1998) • 20 Years Later

20 years ago, Lost In Space failed to become the next big sci-fi franchise, so on the eve of Netflix’s TV reboot we reevaluate the 1998 movie…

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written by Remy Dean.

Hollywood seems hooked on needlessly remaking classic movies, and now the trend seems to have shifted to television series. Reboots aplenty try to reinvent them for new audiences, whilst exploiting the nostalgia of their original fanbase. Now, an update of Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space is set to debut on Netflix, 20 years after a failed attempt to reboot it as a cinematic franchise.

The original Lost in Space was a well-loved, though somewhat wacky, Golden Age science fiction series that ran for three seasons between 1965–68. It followed the exploits of the Robinson family, who set off into space to escape an Earth threatened by collision with a comet. They were joined by a state of the art robot and mad scientist, who’d been trying to sabotage their vessel but instead wound up becoming an accidental stowaway. The series was inspired by Swiss Family Robinson, but more likely the hugely popular 1960 Disney film, rather than the original 1812 novel by Johann David Wyss, which was written as an education in Christian family values. In Irwin…