Lost in Space, 1973

Here’s my short post for the day: a grumble: I hate DSL. It decided to go on holiday over the Labor Day weekend, and hasn’t really come back. Today was a fairly busy day, and I needed the damn thing to work. Of course, I got by, despite my connection failures.

My friend Ed posted a comment about yesterday’s Lost in Space posting, and he’s right: most of what I appreciate in the show now isn’t what I appreciated when I was 12 or so. I have vague memories of watching the show when it was on prime time, but it was cancelled when I was seven. Early in 1973, a San Antonio station started airing Star Trek reruns just after school (for any young readers I have, the original; that was all there was). Later that year—or it might have been the next summer—they replaced it with Lost in Space. Ostensibly I was incensed, but I watched it all the same. And I didn’t care a whit about things like cheap props or no redundancies aboard the Jupiter II.

At some point a girl I knew, Denise, called me and asked me to write a letter to the station protesting the change—she was calling everyone she knew, probably. I think part of the reason I was open to the idea was so I could sit there and listen to Denise describe what should be in the letter. But I duly wrote a letter and mailed it—a gasbag of a letter, at least two pages, comparing the superior Star Trek to the inferior Lost in Space. But I continued to watch LIS.

The station sent me a polite form letter explaining that they were just giving Star Trek a rest, and that it would be back in the fall. So I watched you-know-what for the rest of the summer.