Lost In Space “Final Transmission”

There’s a simple lesson to Lost in Space:  the Robinsons not only survive, but they thrive and win when they stick together.  That even applies to the, shall we say, adopted members.  Whenever one goes off on their own, it doesn’t work out until others show up to help.  It doesn’t matter what the reason for going off is.  The Robinsons can only win by working together.

Will, apparently, doesn’t know that.  Because, to save his family, he runs off on his own, even ordering the Robot to stay behind because God knows when you are going to negotiate with a killer machine that has been hunting Will, specifically, for quite some time, taking the one thing he knows that can maybe keep him alive is clearly a bad idea.

However, at least now I know why SAR wants Will.  Was I expecting the Robot to have a flashback?  Specifically, I was not expecting one showing the Robot and SAR having a conversation with subtitles that told me, well, SAR thinks Will somehow reprogrammed the Robot.  Will’s own conversation with SAR at the end of the episode suggests that SAR hates being some sort of slave, that the Robot is Will’s (he isn’t), and SAR does not understand how metaphor works.

Will’s plan was to tell SAR that SAR’s creators were all dead, so SAR doesn’t have to follow their programming anymore.  If machines were that easy to reprogram…oh wait, SAR lets it be known he was well aware of that because he killed his creators.

Uh-oh.

Factor in as well that Don’s revelation that he was scanned, plus John and Maureen watching old footage showing the robots scanned Grant Kelly in his cryopod, and that means the series’s central premise about the antagonists isn’t true.  The robots didn’t attack humanity for anything done to Scarecrow.  No, they knew about and went after the human race well before Scarecrow was captured and experimented on.  The robots…just want people dead.

These guys are serious dicks!

Then again…how exactly did Will reprogram the Robot?  Did he do it using the power of heart?  He has a winning smile?  The Robot is faulty?  SAR is faulty and the Robot is the one working correctly?  Some sort of curse from an ancient tomb?  What happened?

Well, it may not matter since Will’s brilliant plan to talk to SAR got him stabbed in the heart, and that scanning of Don means the robots know where Alpha Centauri is.  Looks like everyone is going where the party is.