Ya think?
I'm a
Lost in Space fan from way back. For those less familiar, the very first episodes in particular were rousing good adventure stories -- serious enough that Col. Smith was a foreign agent who attempted to kill the Robinsons -- and used the robot to do it.
The robot originally had no personality, being merely a scientific tool. Yet like Mr. Spock, they managed to derive some humor from it by having the robot taking colloquial expressions too literally. Tell the robot to "dry up", and he'd give you a humidity report.
The robot himself was designed by Bob Kinoshita, the same man who created the one for "Forbidden Planet". Bob May was the actor inside the robot, and as ucf notes, Dick Tufeld did the voice. He was even doing it in recent years. There's a company that builds full-sized, amazingly authentic replicas, with custom recordings of Dick Tufeld's voice included. They're only $25,000.
Anyway, you're right, the show was extremely high budget for its time, and even scientifically accurate to a degree before it became silly. It's said both that the producer wanted to compete with Batman's campy style, and that Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) pushed to turn his character into the bumbling, effeminate thing that it became.
Though I can remember even at age 11 being horrified at the direction the show turned, I've long ago reached rapprochement with it. I just turn off my brain and enjoy the sillier shows.
Thanks for indulging me.
I heard he fell down a well.
