On 1/21/2011 2:35 PM, Doug Freyburger wrote:
> Charlie E. wrote:
>>
>> but they really just focused on the
>> three 'seminal' series - Trek, Lost in Space and Twilight Zone.
>
> Every list of three seminal series I've ever heard from a long time fan
> is Outer Limits, Twilight Zone and Star Trek in any order.  Until
> Babylon 5 came out. By then shows were poineers "on" television not
> poineers "of" television.
>
> Lost in Space is fun and campy but was it really any more important than
> Fireball XL-5, The Starlost or UFOs?
>

The Starlost in my mind would be very questionable on such a list. It 
was great in concept, but very little of it panned out. The studio execs 
got too much control, the creator abandoned it, the special effects guy 
failed to create the promised system and they had to fall back to crappy 
chroma-key effects, etc.

The whole story got fictionalized in an interesting book, actually, by 
Ben Bova (who was the science advisor), called "The Starcrossed".

There was an attempt to being back the original concept/pilot script as 
a feature movie with Sony, but it fell into Development Hell.

UFO was Gerry Anderson's first live action show, but it only survived 
for a single series when a strike interfered with production, and it 
eventually died. Space: 1999, which was born out of ideas for the second 
series of UFO, gained life on its own, dropping some of the more cheesy 
elements and better effects. Space: 1999 got far more play in the US, 
but I think Lost In Space was far ahead in terms of being a part of the 
culture.

-Brian
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