I would pay good money to see that animated reboot if ever made. And I get why a LIS veteran, being one myself, would dislike this version. Buuut ...
In the Netflix reboot, Dr. Smith doesn't necessarily murder her twin sister to steal her ID. The sister is seen in the background awake, tied up, gagged, and very much alive as Dr. Smith leaves the house, leaving unanswered the question of whether she was left to die a long, slow, agonizing death or would be expected to be rescued at any time. As far as leaving us wondering about exactly how sociopathic this new Dr. Smith is, it was, I think, effective.
And If the murderous robot is a sticking point, (and I fully assume you remember that the original robot was originally under Dr. Smith's control with murderous intent) you might want to give Ep. 4:
The Robinsons Were Here a shot.
I’m through episode 7, and I’ve been mostly enjoying it. I have a few reservations, mostly about the writing, which has fueled a few eye-rolls. But it’s pushing enough of my LIS nostalgia buttons to keep me watching. I always most enjoyed the first half of the first season of the original series, before Dr. Smith had launched fully into camp mode. I enjoyed the camp-mode afterwards as well, but when it first launched, I was enamored of the
family surviving an exotic adventure against the elements quality that had first drawn me to the Swiss Family Robinson novel, which I read many times as a child.
So far this new show is chasing that line of family survival-focused adventure with some mixed success. The Robot integration is both wildly different in detail, and exactly the same in the effect of it’s being an enigmatic wild card of lethal potential, and whose initial loyalties are compromised and questioned. In both the simplistic naivety of the original, and in the direction that the jaded complexity of this remake seems to be heading, Will Robinson is the catalyst for the reaction that turns the murderous robot (“Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!”) into a beloved Robinson Family member. With the insight of hindsight, I think this new production is honing the Will, Dr. Smith and the Robot dynamic in new ways that I find intriguing ... so far.
I like new Penny, who has a sort of Angela Cartwright vibe only with more to do. I like the little nods to the original. I like the new Parker Posey Dr. Smith for several reasons I won’t take time for here, and in this new more naturalistic context, I find her performance already on the edge of relative camp, with loads of potential if that's where this is heading.
And maybe it is. There seems to have been some cryptic rumblings that if the series is renewed as expected, we should expect less geologic activity, and more wild activities, as in the original, however that might manifest. I’ll stay with it awhile longer.
TL;DR: I like the reboot more than
@Rich T
