Land Of The Lost: The Classic Saturday Morning Show Offered Kids Mature, Smart Sci-Fi
Time Travel, Aliens, Lizard Sleestak - This Show Had It All
Land Of The Lost, the truly cool TV show, not the ill conceived Will Ferrell feature film, stands tall as one of the most literate, mature and well crafted science fiction programs around period.
Yes, period.
I suppose it’s a rather bold, even somewhat charged, controversial statement, but I stand by my declaration completely. That the show launched back in the day on the fabled 1970’s Saturday Morning broadcast TV lineup - a fun, yet crazy world of colorful kiddie cartoons, with adults stuffed into fat padded suits wobbling around playing your friend to the end buddy - makes it all the more uniquely special. Like the animated Thundarr The Barbarian, it stood out both intelligently and entertainingly from the mundane crowd.
Land Of The Lost offered children something more than merely simplistic action adventures with comic book Super Friends or frantic chases involving adorable, anthropomorphistic creatures with catchy names. This wasn’t flashy filler to pass a kid’s weekend off time. This one had heart, mind and soul - actually it came off as mind bending to mind blowing to say the least.
Creator, David Gerrold, earned his respected sci-fi status early, as writer of the legendary Star Trek comic entry, The Trouble With Tribbles. Though uncredited on Land Of The Lost, it’s Gerrold we thank for Rick, Will and Holly Robinson’s wild adventures in this strange lost land where sci-fi meets fantasy on a thrilling ride like no other.
These Robinsons Aren’t Swiss
Swiss Family Robinson, let’s meet your science fiction spawned American counterparts - Rick, Will and Holly Robinson. These three Americans are trapped after their tiny raft gets tossed ‘a thousand feet below’ into a land of roaming dinosaurs, hissing lizard guys and hairy, primitive primates called Pakuni.
And that’s a mere minor sampling of the less deadly co-inhabitants bedeviling our intrepid Robinson clan week after week.
Though no walk in the Jurassic park, it wasn’t all death and destruction found at every turn. There were allies, even friends to be found and cherished for their love and invaluable assistance. The most helpful and certainly enigmatic came to us in an entity called Enik. He’s a super evolved, from the far future Sleestak - the lizard men with enormous, ebony insectoid eyes who hissed at the Robinsons and scared the crap outta of my 7 year old trembling butt.
Written By Famed Sci-Fi & Star Trek Writers
Saturday Morning kiddie TV was never known for hiring world famous writers to craft story and scripts, but that’s just what Canadian siblings Sid & Marty Krofft did for their wild mash up for action, adventure, fantasy and sci-fi. The Krofft brothers are puppeteers and television producers known for their TV children programs including H.R. Pufnstuf.
They didn’t spend much money on any of their shows, this was Saturday Morning kiddie fare after all, and the budget for LOTL couldn’t be much different. What they made up for in production was in the stories and the writers who fleshed them to life.
So, who’s listed on the LOTL creative writing team? You’ll recognize many of the names, whose involvement in a mere kiddie show, may surprise you: Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, Norman Spinrad, along with Star Trek luminaries, such as D.C. Fontana, Walter Koenig and David Gerrold. These creatives concocted stories with the action required for a kid’s show, but always with smart, even intellectual underpinnings.
Here’s a dialogue exchange from the first season episode, Circle, between Will (Wesley Eure) and the eternally mysterious Sleestak, Enik.
Will: We thought you’d be long gone by now, Enik. I mean, haven’t you been able to open your time doorway?
Enik: Many times. But something very strange is going on. I cannot leave the staging area. It’s as if the law of conservation of temporal momentum has been reversed. I cannot go home, although there is considerable temporal pressure for me to do so.
Will: (puzzled) What?
Enik: I’m sorry you do not understand ultra dimensional matrices. It is actually quite simple. I cannot leave here, nothing can leave here, unless an object of equal mass and temporal energy enters.
Now, does that sound like just a kid’s show?
This exchange, when examined closely, comes off as sci-fi nonsensical - just as Star Trek deals in treknology jargon - but its sound and feel would give anyone food for thought. It’s got a genuine and intellectual feel. It’s really about inspiration, and the best kind of entertainment uplifts and inspires a participant on to more journeys, and perhaps even on to real science study. LOTL producers even took the time to hire a real life linquist to create the language for the primate people, the Pakuni, with little Chaka being the most friendly and talkative to the Robinsons.
If you’re a sci-fi fan, and you must be to be hanging out here, please, treat yourself to Land Of The Lost. Yes, it’s nearly 50 years old, and yes its budget, production and FX seem overly quaint by today’s sophisticated standards, though they’re done with great care and what feels like a definite labor of love. The sets, while simple, are convincing, and you can tell actors try their best to make an extraordinary premise and environment as realistic as their talents can muster. In the end, you’ll be caught up in ambitious concepts, plots and characters, and probably end up yearning to be just as lost in the land as I was way back when.