Land of the Lost: Season 02 (1975)

The most popular Saturday morning NBC series of the 1974-75 season, Land of the Lost accordingly became the first children's show effort by Sid and Marty Krofft to be renewed for a second season -- an honor not even afforded the classic H.R. Pufnstuf! The action still takes place on the primitive planet of Altrusia, where the Marshall family -- dad Rick (Spencer Milligan), son Will (Wesley Eure) and daughter Holly (Kathleen Coleman) -- have been resided ever since there were sucked through a "time portal" somewhere in the Colorado River. The 20th century Marshall clan share space on Altrusia with several other misplaced souls from a variety of time periods: The seven-foot-tall Sleestak, lizard-like descendants of the once-advanced Altrusian civilization; Enik (Walker Edmiston), super-intelligent antecedent of the Sleestak, who operates by his own very curious code of ethics; the Paku, a Cenozoic era family of monkey-like humans; and a vast array of Paleozoic era dinosaurs ("played" by puppets and stop-motion-animation models). A smattering of noteworthy changes occur in Land of the Lost during season two. The individual personalities of the three Pakuni are becoming more sharply defined, plus the role of Paku leader Ta is now played by Scutter McKay, replacing season one's Joe A. Giamalva. Also, a new recurring character is introduced in the form of Zarn (played by Van Snowden and voiced by Marvin Miller) a telekinetic alien made entirely of light energy. Finally, celebrated sci-fi/fantasy author David Gerrold is no longer the series' story editor, even though a number of Gerrold's genre colleagues are still contributing scripts, notably Theodore Sturgeon, Donald F. Glut, and Margaret Armen. Many fans of the series regard Land of the Lost's second season as its best, generally citing such superb episodes as "The Musician" (which suggests that much of what has occurred on the series was carefully pre-destined) and "The Pylon Express" (climaxed by an eye-popping journey through time and space for one of the principal characters). Certainly the series had lost none of its popularity with the public, as evidenced by the fact that NBC renewed the show for a third season (a rarity in Saturday-morning kidvid, in which budgetary considerations usually dictate a small number of episodes to be rerun ad infinitum). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi