Lost in Space: Season 1 Overview

Lost in Space Series 1 Overview
It's quite a ride is Lost In Space series 1. It starts off as a pretty serious sci-fi series with a strong B-movie feel, no doubt left over from the paranoia of America's 1950s UFO obsession, but it soon morphs into a slightly camp runaround adventure yarn, sprinkled with comedy and plenty of heart.
The serious start to the series was a surprise to me, but a pleasant one. I revelled in those early episodes where the Jupiter 2 stumbled its way across the galaxy before crashlanding really rather spectacularly on Priplanus, followed by a few adventures which see our heroes fighting Mother Nature and accustomising to the alien environment. There were fewer aliens in the early episodes, and the rate at which the regular characters developed and were fleshed out was erratic.
Smith, Will and the Robot benefit the most from character development, while the likes of Judy and John suffer from little or no investment from the script writers, and there's next to no effort to develop the character through performance alone from Marta Kristen.
Don and Penny develop at a slower pace, but in a really rather charming way, especially the latter, while Don's hot-headed, short-tempered persona suits the character, but could do with being fleshed out a little more to avoid becoming a Boy's Own hero stereotype.
By and large the special effects were on top form for the time, and despite some atrocious alien designs, there were also some real successes, notably the bubble creatures in The Derelict and the aliens in Invaders from the Fifth Dimension.
All in all, I have enjoyed series 1 immensely. It only fell short of being entertaining a couple of times - all I ever ask of any TV show is that it entertains me. There are a couple of duds, mainly because they are dull rather than bad TV, but most episodes are great fun, with some transcending the norm of enjoyable camp hokum and actually achieving greatness - Ghost in Space, Return from Outer Space and Follow the Leader.
My wish for series 2 would be to have those characters overlooked in series 1 fleshed out more, with more motivation afforded the whole Jupiter 2 crew, and perhaps a bit more imagination regarding storylines and the resolutions of them. We'll see...
Favourite episodes:- The Derelict, My Friend, Mr Nobody, Wish Upon a Star, The Raft, One of Our Dogs is Missing, Return from Outer Space, The Keeper (part 1), Ghost in Space, Follow the Leader.
Least favourite episodes:- Invaders from the Fifth Dimension, The Sky is Falling, The Keeper (part 2), The Sky Pirate, The Challenge, A Change of Space.