Lost In Space “Three Little Birds”

Alright, here we go.  Final season for Netflix’s family-friendly sci-fi adventure show, a remake of a much campier show from the 60s.  Not always the best for weekly write-ups because, like a lot of Netflix shows, it probably works better as a binge watch, and I can’t seem to bring myself to binge much of anything.

Regardless, the second season ended with the kids and the adults separated after the alien robots showed up to attack, and they seemed to know Will.

I haven’t tuned into this show for a while, so it was nice to see the series more or less picking up where it left off…almost a year later, a necessary feature to explain Will Robinson’s growth spurt.  The youngsters, seemingly led by Judy, are on a planet that looks broken, the same one below the ship Judy’s biological father left on before he disappeared.  They had tried to get some information, but some meteors colliding in space forced them to leave early, and Judy herself almost got lost in the void, but she was caught by…Smith.  Yes, Dr. Smith isn’t dead.  She stowed away on the kids’ craft because of course she did.  At least even the youngest members of these survivors knows better than to trust this woman, something even Smith acknowledges makes it difficult for her to stay on top of things when she can’t even get Will to tell her stuff.

The Robot is also there, and he knows there’s some danger out there for Will.

As for the adults, they’ve spent most of the last year in hiding.  The robots don’t seem to be actively looking for them, but they will hit back hard if the humans try to take something the robots consider their own.  Oh, and the humans need one of the robots’ engines, so…yeah, this could get ugly, but what struck me here was how John and Maureen have completely opposite reactions to what’s been going on.  Both miss their kids, but John, a soldier, has seen too much and seems to be about ready to quit.  Maureen, meanwhile, can’t stop working, even doing manual labor with the grunts.

But this is Lost in Space.  The Robinsons prevail when they work and stay together, and right now, they all seem to be wandering off in different directions.  The kids need titanium ore to take off again, and the only source big enough before the colliding meteors make take-off impossible is atop a tall rock spire that isn’t strong enough to support the Robot’s weight.  That means Judy, Penny, and Will (along with Penny’s ex and current, so lots of awkward selections going on) need to climb up there and get some.  They need to leave soon, and it turns out they could have left much sooner but the Robot, under the impression Will wanted him to, was dumping excess ore and slowing everything down beforehand.  Will knows the other robots know his name, and that can’t be good.

So, Will plans to leave with the Robot as soon as the others are safe somewhere else to protect the family.  Judy is trying to find her missing father.  Penny is just drifting away from the others as she does her own thing.  John and Maureen are just not connecting the same way they used to.  Really, this is the Robinsons coming apart, the thing the series has emphasized is not a good thing, particularly true since Judy, Will, and Penny all had to work as a unit to get the titanium in the first place, something none of them could have done individually.  That was a nice moment, as the trio were about to plunge to their deaths after rock termites ate away the ledge they were sleeping on, that Judy had them join hands and use updrafts and glider wings to fly up to a safer location.  These are hopeful people who work well together, and they don’t get as much done when they’re apart.

I am sure they’ll remember that before all this is over.