"Lost In Space" Complete TV series coming from Fox Video on blu-ray Sept. 2015

I wonder how successful this series is going to be on Blu Ray. I'm going through the final episodes of the first season on DVD, and even in the lower resolution you can clearly see where the dirt floor ends and the painted walls of the studio are. Part of the problem is that the first two seasons take place almost entirely on the surface of two different planets, so there is limited changes of scenery. I've started noticing the same "rocks" appearing again and again. They really milked the plotline of some stranger appearing at the Jupiter camp and causing mayhem, and the crew never seemed interested in going with them at the end. Even Dr. Smith, when given the opportunity, chose to stay with the Robinson family.

 

I wish they would have done a dual DVD/BR release like they did with Batman.

 

as a pre-teen I would not have noticed that anyway, and of course BR will ruin the mystique...but hey, let's count hairs!

 

In a recent episode, Dr. Smith managed to sell himself to an alien trader and the family was all "you can't take our friend!" and I was thinking about how quickly I'd let him go.

I'm not a good person.

 

"Spare me your poisonous barbs" you "jabbering Judas".

 

Jonathan Harris certainly had a way of delivering the best lines of dialog in the show, didn't he???

 

without a doubt...damn! I miss him.

 

LOL! that's just so great!

 

Indeed! How dare you!

 

I'm not sure what that is. I'll have to take a look at the Blu-rays when they arrive. If the "line issue" is there, it should be even sharper and easier to see.

Do the lines move or are they static? I'm wondering whether this could be a compression issue (similar to what I've seen with other H.264 Long-GOP formats) or a transfer issue. The film scans were done at Illuminate in Studio City, and they generally do pretty good work. I can tell you there's nothing inherent in the 35mm negative that would cause a problem like this. I've never worked on a Lost in Space episode, but I did do a whole slew of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Time Tunnel episodes, and they were flawless and sparkling, even from 35mm IP (one generation down from the negatives). No weird lines, no artifacts, no nothin'.

And don't forget that Harris frequently wrote (or at least rewrote) his own dialogue, as his character became more popular and he got a little more say in what happened in the show.

 

Some of this is just due to budgetary problems, and some of it is pretty typical of the formulaic writing you'd see on network TV during this era. At 12 years old, I'd say, "jesus, look at those hokey paper-mache rocks! They're the exact same ones we saw last week!" But I understood these fake rocks were hauled out of the Fox prop department, and it was just kind of the way things were. The rocks inside the Batcave -- also shot at Fox -- were every bit as fake and hokey.

It's hard to judge a 50-year-old show today knowing how technically sophisticated and refined things are in contemporary TV shows. They can do all kinds of effects that were absolutely impossible in the 1960s, on any budget. A heavy effects show like Star Trek would have (at the most) maybe 40 or 50 VFX shots; there are series today that might have two or three times as many, only now they're done on computer with CGI. Back then, you'd literally have to wait 5 or 6 weeks to get the film effects done and cut them into the show, and often there was no time to redo them... so you'd see all kinds of mistakes, bad color timing, stars bleeding through the spaceships, lines around the composited edges, all that sort of stuff. We've gotten so conditioned to the sophistication of 2015 TV that I think you have to judge it in context and say, "eh, it's 1960s TV, so you have to kind of expect that it's gonna be cheesy, corny, and cheap looking."

 

Scripted TV fantasies like "Batman" and "Lost In Space" required maximum suspension of disbelief for their premises to work...and for the audiences to be "in" on the joke when satire/parody was part and parcel of the show's aesthetic...

 

"Oh the pain, the pain."
Been using that one quite a bit myself lately.
What a character. And to just learn it was a lot of improvisation on
Jonathan's part,makes it even better,
"Bloop,indeed."

 

My God! If the "line issue" is still there on the Blu-rays, it's an automatic no-buy!

These lines move. Sometimes a little up and down, and sometimes just in and out of the picture, generally near the edges of the frame is where they're most visible. If you can recall the old days of analog television, it looks very similar to when a faraway station on the same frequency starts beating against the local signal (ionospheric skip interference).

Those were magnificent and still look great, even on today's HDTVs. Thanks for the great job!

Harry

 

If they're moving, then I suspect bad analogue RF interference when a dub was made. Why they would be going analogue at any step, I dunno, but I have seen this problem before. The Bru-rays are from an entirely new transfer so I suspect it'll be substantially different.

 

yes! Voyage and Time Tunnel looked fab...Jonathan really enjoyed making up those insults...he would laugh about them on occasion...he loved saying he had Total Recall...

 

Received a Facebook post on my news feed page today from none other than Angela Cartwright...pictures of her and the surviving "Lost In Space" cast members June Lockhart, Mark Godard, Marta Kristen & Bill Mumy at Fox recording their audio commentaries for the upcoming 50th Anniversary blu-ray box set...IT'S REALLY HAPPENING, GANG!!!

 

great...now let's estimate the price...I'd say they are gonna slam us fans big time.

 

I'll wait, they will most certainly get heavily discounted several months after release once the buying dries out.

 

I finished up the first season last night (and strangely, the last episode ended with a "next week on Lost in Space" epilogue in color even though the next episode wouldn't have been broadcast for months) and am stoked with the idea of seeing those costumes and sets in HD.

I'll bet that the whole series lists for $199.

 

I dunno. I was saying the same about Batman and it is still too expensive. Maybe around Christmas 2015?

If the deluxe Lost in Space set includes a Robot figure I might have to go for it.

 

If you watched you could have got it for $135 last month.

 

Oh sure, if I'd been awake and checking price at 3AM on the Tuesday after Valentine's Day..

At least there is hope they'll make the drop permanent at some point. The increasing discounts are a good sign...

 

You can get email notices sent for price drops.

Plus you know what to expect come black friday/xmas 2015.

 

wishful thinking...