It appears that no one still has cracked the code for producing a decent version of Lost in Space.  My friends and I sat down after board and card games and gave the first episode of the rebooted series a play. Sadly, the episode did not work for any of the three of us.

There are numerous technical and scientific errors throughout the episode and while I was willing to overlook a number of these, media SF does a terrible job of getting its science correct, the sheer number coupled with poor story telling crippled any enjoyment.

In the rebooted franchise Earth has suffered a disaster that prompts a mass exodus and colonization effort of which the Robinson family are but one that have left for a new lift on another planet. Okay that’s much better than the original idea of a single family founding a colony. The genetics of that colony are truly terrifying to comprehend. Now instead of a devoted couple John and Maureen Robinson are teetering on the precipice of divorce. Where many married couple barely managed to stay together ‘for the kids’ and often that is a bad call anyway John and Maureen plan to live the rest of their live in the hard existence of a new colony while dealing with their marital strife. The children this time around are presented a little more realistically a little more naturalistically and that is an improvement.  The colonization effort is sabotaged en route and the families are forced to abandon the main ship in smaller craft with the Robinson’s naturally getting the Jupiter 2. The survive the destruction of the mother ship, the reentry and crash on an alien world only to be confronted by a series of bizarre implausible threats that seem to occur simply because the screenwriters were unable to craft an actual story. Will, separated from the others, by chance encounters an alien robot that by saves their lives and provides a deus ex machinaresolution to the pilot’s initial threats.

The scientific and logical failings of the episode are numerous and here are a few that bothered my friends and me the most.

It is very curious geology that leaves a lake at a mountain’s peak.

It takes a LOT of heat to change water’s phase state, either going from ice to liquid or from liquid to ice.

If the Jupiter 2’s reentry melted the ice, so much that ship ends up fully submerged, then there is simply no way the Robinson’s could have scrambled across its hull.

The speed with which the ice became water and the water became ice was simply far too fast. It is a sad commentary that a movie like Volcanopossessed a better understanding water’s heat capacity than Lost in Space.

Magnesium in it’s natural state will be combined with other elements, must likely as Magnesium Oxide and the amount they harvested would be far too little to melt the volume of ice required.

The travel times to reach a distant peak harvest the ‘pure’ magnesium tumble from the glacier’s peak to the tree line all stretched credibility for within 5 hours.

Fire gives off a lot of heat and poisonous gas. Someone suspended above a raging out of control fire is quite literally toast.

Even if we set aside these and other issues with liberal amount of hand waving we are still left with a script that has very little story. Story flows from character and the choice that the characters make but this script is almost purely events and characters reacting. The characters are not driving the story but rather are driven by it and very little of what they do emerge from their nature. Repeatedly during out watching felt that events occurred only because ‘the writer said so.’ Events did not flow naturally from cause and effect but rather simply just happened. The filmmakers tried to hide the weakness of the script by presenting the events in a fracture narrative, but the juxtaposition scenes and flashbacks did not enhance the experience and played to no greater theme or atmosphere.

Overall this was a disappointing premier and I have better shows to watch with my limited time.