Land of the Lost: Season 03 (1976)

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A number of radical changes occur in Land of the Lost as the popular adventure-fantasy series enters its third and final season. For starters, an earthquake destroys the mountain-cave home of the Marshall family, who have been living in the strange, primitive planet of Altrusia ever since being sucked through a "time portal" while rafting down the Colorado River. The earthquake causes another one of those portals to suddenly open up, whereupon Rick Marshall (Spencer Milligan) vanishes right before the eyes of his children Will (Wesley Eure) and Holly (Kathleen Coleman), never to be seen again. The Marshall kids' loneliness is alleviated when, through a remarkable coincidence, their uncle Jack Marshall (Ron Harper) suddenly drops through still another time portal and lands at their feet! Rick Marshall is not the only defector during season three. Two of the three members of the Cenozoic era Paku tribe, a family of monkey-men whom the Marshalls have befriended, have also disappeared without a trace, leaving only Cha-Ka (Phillip Paley) to represent their species. No longer conversing in the mysterious language Pakuni, Cha-Ka now speaks English (thereby eliminating the series' need for its resident linguistics expert Dr. Victoria Fromkin, who had developed the Pakuni tongue during season one). Amazingly, the bestial Sleestak, seven-foot-tall descendants of the once-advanced Altrusian tribe, also forsake their usual grunts and "argghs" and begin conversing in English as well, notably the newly-appointed Sleestak leader, played by Jon Locke. Another new character, the false Altrusian god Malak, is played by Richard Kiel (later to gain fame as Jaws in the James Bond film series). Finally, although the Marshalls are never able to find the proper time portal to escape Altrusia and return to Earth, a dizzying number of denizens from other worlds and cultures are somehow able to come and go through those ubiquitous portals with impunity -- including a British repairman, a balloon ascensionist, a medusa, a Flying Dutchman-style sea captain, an abominable snowman, and even a Native American descendant of Nez Perce Chief Joseph! While this sort of gimmickry would play well on a series like Lost in Space, it tends to diminish the well-deserved lofty reputation of Land of the Lost during the series' final thirteen episodes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi