Dick Tufield Movies

Season three of Lost in Space finds the Space Family Robinson and company escaping from the planet they had been marooned on throughout season two. Their vessel, "Jupiter II," is now able to hop from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy, with the addition of a hitherto unseen space pod in which the travelers are able to shuttle back and forth. Alas, they are no closer to returning to their own world than they had been in previous seasons. The closest the travelers come to Mother Earth is in the episode "A Visit to a Hostile Planet," in which the Jupiter II passes through a time warp and emerges in 1947, where it is promptly assumed to be an alien UFO! By now, the series' nominal stars -- Guy Williams as Professor John Robinson, June Lockhart as Maureen Robinson, Mark Goddard as pilot Don West -- had been all but relegated to the background by permanent "special guest star" Jonathan Harris in the role of shifty, cowardly space stowaway Dr. Zachary Smith. Most of the episodes deal with the interplay between Dr. Smith and young Will Robinson (Bill Mumy), who innocently refuses to see any bad in the old reprobate, and between Smith and the Jupiter II's talking robot, who trades one-liners and insults like an intergallactic vaudeville team. With all this going on, the two other female cast members, Marta Kristen and Angela Cartwright as Judy and Penny Robinson, barely get any screen time at all. As was the case in season two, the third and final season of Lost in Space boasts an impressive array of guest stars, all of whom enter into the spirit of things with ripe, Armour Star Ham performances. Worth noting this season are future Hill Street Blues stars Daniel J. Travanti as the punkish leader of an outer-space motorcyle gang in "Collision of the Planets"; and best of all, Stanley Adams as a disgruntled giant carrot in the unforgettable episode "The Great Vegetable Rebellion." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in black-and-white, the first season of Lost in Space took itself more seriously than subsequent seasons -- at least at the outset. Set in 1997, the series began as the Robinsons, a family of space travelers preparing for a five-year exploratory voyage to the Alpha Centauri star system in the "Jupiter II." Unfortunately, an enemy spy named Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris) intends to sabotage the mission and kill the family, with help of his malevolent robot. But when the Jupiter II blasts off, Dr. Smith is trapped inside the vehicle with his intended victims: Prof. John Robinson (Guy Williams); his wife, Maureen (June Lockhart); his children, Judy (Marta Kristen), Will (Bill Mumy), and Penny (Angela Cartwright), and ship's pilot Don West (Mark Goddard). Thanks to Smith's dirty work, the ship veers way off course to an unchartered planet where the Robinsons et. al. will spend the remainder of the season. It had been intended to kill off both Dr. Smith and the evil robot after the first five-episode story arc; instead, the robot "reforms" and becomes an unending fount of valuable information for the space castaways, periodically bursting forth with cries of "Warning! Warning!" and "Danger! Danger!" and dealing with matters beyond his ken by muttering metallically, "That does not compute." As for Smith, he evolves from snarling villain to cowardly buffoon, whom the others inexplicably tolerate, even though Smith's perfidy and duplicity causes nothing but trouble for them. The notion to "serialize" the episodes is dropped early on in favor of self-contained stories, though each episode ends with a cliff-hanging preview of the following week's installment. Unlike the next two seasons of Lost in Space, guest stars are kept at a minimum during season one. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Another of Disneyland's "Fantasyland" segments, this one-hour episode traces the history of cartoon animation from 1906 to the mid-1950s. The program begins with clips from J. Stuart Blackton's pioneering Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, then moves on to highlights from Winsor McKay's "interractive" 1914 cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur. Thereafter, the emphasis is on the output of the Disney studio, from the modest "Laugh-o-Grams" of the 1920s to such sophisticated animated features as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Lady and the Tramp. Conspicuous by its absence is the brilliant animation of Disney's chief rival Max Fleischer. "The Story of the Animated Drawing" was later distributed for classroom use as the educational short The History of Animation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide