The legendary Lost in Space turns 50 years old this year and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will celebrate the occasion this September by releasing the complete series on Blu-ray, with over six hours of bonus features included.
At Comic-Con, Daily Dead was honored to take part in roundtable interviews with Lost in Space cast members Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright, and Bill Mumy, who reflected on their favorite Lost in Space memories, the show's legacy, the upcoming Blu-ray, and much more.
The cast reflects on their favorite memories of working on Lost in Space from 1965–1968:
Mark Goddard: My moments are always the fun that I had with Bill [Mumy] on the show. I'm a prankster, and Billy came along with me during my pranks because I had to have him with me because I might get in trouble. If I had Billy with me, I wouldn't get in trouble because he was the star of the show, and they would leave Billy alone.
Marta Kristen: I was from Norway. I was adopted when I was five. I would drive to the studio at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning, and I would think to myself, "Here I am. I was an orphan. I was raised in Michigan, adopted, and then, here I am in show business. I'm going to the set at Twentieth Century Fox. I cannot believe my good fortune." Then I would get there and I would be treated so well. It was a dream. It was just hard to believe that I was in that situation, in that position to have my dreams.
I always wanted to act. My mother said that when I got off the plane from Norway when they picked me up in New York, I got off the plane walking like Charlie Chaplin. I remember acting and performing at the orphanage. Actors, they always say, go into that pretend mode because other things are so difficult. That was pretty much how I was handling life. You create your own family in an orphanage, but I know that I performed there, danced. My parents saw immediately that's what my interests were. I started right off in dance lessons and voice lessons, singing and a little theater, children's theater. Parents who see that in their children can enrich their children so beautifully, and that's what they always did.
The cast discusses the tone shift from the more serious season one to the campiness of the show's later years:
Marta Kristen: Batman and pop art and all of that was happening while we were making the show. The transition was almost a way to be a part of that. We were in color the second year and third year. The darkness of the first year and then more true science fiction in the way it started. We were competing with Batman and we were competing with all the other shows that were doing that sort of "Wham! Bam!" approach to campiness.
It no longer became Swiss Family Robinson or Space Family Robinson. It did become about the robot and Dr. Smith. I think part of the reason was because the writers found it very easy to write for that. It was much harder to write for the family dynamic as a whole.
Jonathan [Harris] made it very easy. He was a wonderful actor, a wonderful person, and he would rewrite most of his scenes. He did all the alliterations. Bumble-headed booby"—he wrote all of those himself. He was very accomplished as an actor and a writer, and he knew that if he continued to be the serious villain on the show rather than what he became—the villain with the heart of gold—he wouldn't survive on the show.
I had been doing every show on television. They would just call me and say, "Could Marta Kristen do such and such." When Irwin [Allen] called and asked if I would do the show, I said, "No. There are too many people in the show. I don't think I will participate in something that I'll just be part of the group. I don't see how you can feature me. And he said, "Oh no, no. I have storylines ready for you." I said, "Oh, well. Okay. I'll do it."
In the beginning, we had a really nice relationship. I thought it was really going in a good direction. I was really disappointed in not having anything to do in the second and third years.
Bill Mumy: I was very happy with the first season and it's by far my favorite season. I'm sure Angela [Cartwright] and the rest of the cast would feel the same way. What's interesting to note historically speaking is that when we went into the color-campy, fantasy pop-art episodes our ratings improved. Batman was a big shake-up for us, it was our opposition at the same time. When Batman came on it really shook things up, but I'm proud to say that Lost in Space was on before Batman and Lost in Space was still on after Batman had phased itself out and was cancelled, but Batman definitely affected the change of our show.
Also we were on in the family hour, we went on from 7:30 to 8:30 on CBS and they had an absolutely powerful mandate that there was nothing to scare little children in that hour. They had some complaints during the first season because it was kind of dark.
The tonality changed and a lot of people preferred the earlier stuff and I'm part of that crowd. But you can look at Lost in Space from almost three different perspectives: the black and white ensemble adventure perspective, the campy fantasy ridiculous humor—almost Three Stooges-esque—second season, and then the third season was more or less a melding of both of those, where half the cast was playing it very straight again and Jonathan was still over the top and playing it very comedic. So it works on all three levels, it was always a pleasant place to go to work.
Angela Cartwright: I don't think I really realized that there was going to be a big change until it aired and then it was like, wow, this is a whole new show. I knew my costume was brown and then all of a sudden it was orange, but it did take on this different feel about it. Probably the second season is my least favorite. I love the third season, I thought there were some really cool things in that.
The cast reflects on the high quality of the upcoming 50th anniversary Blu-ray:
Bill Mumy: When you look at the pristine, restored Blu-ray and the bonus features that we got to do which includes a cast performance of a resolution, I'm very proud of how it all strikes you. It looks fantastic. You could put it on the largest screen in the world and it would look fantastic.
Angela Cartwright: It's phenomenal that it was shot that hi-res to be able to transfer.
Bill Mumy: Kevin Burns, who has kept the flames burning for a quarter of a century now, has maintained control over all of this—the Blu-ray project—and he has really worked to the bone to make sure no stone is unturned, every little cool bonus bit could be included and that every frame of every negative is cleaned perfectly and it just sounds and looks fantastic.
Bill discusses the show's impressive roster of guest stars and John Williams' mesmerizing scores for the series:
Bill Mumy: We had great cinematography. We had John Williams writing our themes and scores when he was working incredibly hard to make a name for himself in show business.
We had Warren Oates, we had Strother Martin, we had Michael Rennie, we had Albert Salmi, we had a lot of really good actors, even if they were playing over-the-top, somewhat comedic characters, they were these really quality character actors that were doing guest shots on our show. When you see it again after all these decades from a mature perspective, from someone who's continued to work in entertainment for all these years. It's one thing to be eleven, it's another thing to be sixty. When you look at it and go, "Wow, they were great!" And that music... The Blu-ray's really cool.
Angela and Bill talk about the show's enduring legacy:
Angela Cartwright: We could very well have just melted into the past and we would not be sitting here. It'd be so easy to do because nobody comes in and loves a show and nurtures it to the point of the fiftieth anniversary and then actually gets people excited—"hey, look at all this cool material that's here for you again"—and recognizes that there's a fan base for it.
Bill Mumy: Kids and robots in space is a wonderful arena to let your imagination loose in. In the three years that we did our show originally, we covered a lot of territory, a lot of different styles.
The cast discuss respective Lost in Space projects they are working on:
Mark Goddard: I’m writing a book right now called Three Years of Being Lost in Space. It's very fun writing it. I wrote a book earlier called To Space and Back, which is out now. It's been a lot of fun selling that to people, it's been great, but the new book was a lot of fun to write. It brings me back to a lot of wonderful things about Lost in Space.
I'm writing it from the perspective of Mark Goddard and Don West as those two people, myself and my character, do the show with the people we worked with. It's exciting to be involved in that at this late age in my life.
Bill Mumy: Angela and I have a Lost in Space memoir—Lost (and Found) in Space—that we're putting together that's coming out when the Blu-ray comes out from the perspective of kids who were there and sharing both the sides of, yeah we're working and we're having a lot of fun.
Angela Cartwright: It's our memories and our thoughts and things that went on.
Bill Mumy: With countless never ever before printed pristine beautiful photographs. We were given access to, if you can believe this, eight thousand negatives that had never been printed. We've been given access to that and we're having a lot of fun remembering things.
Because it's all in the computer of our brains. It's there, but sometimes you need something to act as a catalyst to reopen a tiny little door. I remember this huge water fight that she [Angela] and I got into in the first season. It was like a Disney movie and it was completely real and I had honestly forgotten about it for thirty-five years. Something triggered it and it was like, "Boom! Oh my god!"
It was in the foyer between stage six and five and when you walked in there was a cigarette machine, a candy machine, a water dispenser and two bathrooms—men's on the left and women's on the right. Remember those triangle paper cups? Well, one of those cone cup got thrown and the next one got thrown back, and then one of us hid in the bathroom. We actually got in a lot of trouble for that.
Angela Cartwright: It was fun though, I remember it was so much fun.
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Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release all episodes of Lost in Space on Blu-ray on September 15th—exactly 50 years after the show debuted in 1965. The Blu-ray collection boasts a remastered transfer of the original 35mm film elements and includes over six hours of special features:
"Synopsis: Follow the heart-racing, cliff-hanging adventures of John Robinson and his family aboard the Jupiter 2, along with Robot B-9 and the delightfully devious Dr. Zachary Smith. This massive 18-disc set contains all 84 episodes remastered in high definition, and over 6 hours of exciting extras with recently discovered content you won't find anywhere else in the galaxy. It's out-of-this-world fun for everyone!
Special Features:
ALL 83 EPISODES - FULLY REMASTERED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CRYSTAL CLEAR HI-DEF!
OVER 6 HOURS OF BONUS FEATURES - Including NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED EXTRAS:
PLUS!
AND MUCH MORE!"
"There will be 6 episodes duplicated and will include original commercials from the time they aired. They are:
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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