The Robinson family consists of a married couple, John (Guy Williams) and Maureen (June Lockhart), and their three children: Judy (Marta Kristen); Penny (Angela Cartwright); and Will (Bill Mumy).

After disposing of a guard who catches him aboard the spacecraft, Smith reprograms the Jupiter 2's B-9 environmental control robot (Bob May, voiced by Dick Tufeld) to destroy critical systems on the spaceship eight hours after launch.

This, plus the robot's rampage, causes the ship to prematurely engage its hyperdrive, and the expedition becomes hopelessly lost in the infinite depths of outer space.

At the start of the second season (from this point on filmed in color), the repaired Jupiter 2 launches into space once more, to escape the destruction of Priplanus following a series of cataclysmic earthquakes.

They visit new worlds in several episodes, with both crash and controlled landings, as the family attempts to either return to Earth or else at least reach their original destination in the Alpha Centauri system.

Harris "began rewriting his lines and redefining his character", by playing Smith in an attention-getting, flamboyant style, and ad-libbing his scenes with ripe, colorful dialogue.

By the end of the first season, the character was established as a self-serving coward whose moral haughtiness and contrasting deceitfulness, along with his alliterative insults largely aimed at the Robot, were staple elements of each episode.

The plot of the pilot episode followed the mission of a ship called the Gemini 12, which was to take a single family on a 98-year journey to an Earth-like planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri.

The Gemini 12 was pushed off course due to an encounter with an asteroid, and the story centered on the adventures of the Robinson family, depicting them as a happy crew without internal conflicts.

The first half of season 1 dealt with the Robinson party trekking around the rocky terrain and stormy inland oceans of Priplanus in the Chariot to avoid extreme temperatures.

With the reputation of being "the most insipid and bizarre episode in television history", Kristen recalled that Goddard complained that "seven years of Stanislavski method acting had led to his talking to a carrot.

For the third season, each episode's conclusion was immediately followed by a vocal "teaser" from the Robot (Dick Tufeld), advising viewers to "Stay tuned for scenes from next week's exciting adventure!".

After cancellation, the show was successful in reruns and in syndication for many years, appearing on the USA Network (in the mid-to-late 1980s) and on FX, Syfy, ALN, MeTV and Hulu.

In early 1968, after the final third-season episode "Junkyard in Space" completed filming, the cast and crew were informally led to believe the series had been renewed for a fourth season.

[23] Irwin Allen admitted that the Season 3 ratings showed an increasing percentage of children among the total viewers, meaning a drop in the "quality audience" that advertisers preferred.

[24] Guy Williams had grown embittered with his role on the show as it became increasingly "campy" in Seasons 2 and 3 while centering squarely on the antics of Harris's Dr. Smith character.

[25] In 1995, Kevin Burns produced a documentary showcasing the career of Irwin Allen, hosted by Bill Mumy and June Lockhart in a recreation of the Jupiter 2 exterior set.

Mumy and Lockhart utilize the "Celestial Department Store Ordering Machine" as a temporal conduit to show information and clips on Allen's history.

Entrances and exits to the ship were via the main airlock on the upper level, or via the landing struts from the lower deck, and, according to one season 2 episode, a back door.

[citation needed] Their environmental control Robot B-9 ran air and soil tests, and was able to discharge strong electrostatic charges from his claws, detect threats with his scanner and could produce a defensive smoke screen.

The original pilot and much of Season One reused Bernard Herrmann's eerie score from the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Part of the reason for the show's obsolescence was that the first season of Lost in Space was in black-and-white, while a majority of American households at the time had a color television receiver.

[24] The OTT video streaming platform Hulu (of which 70% of its service is owned by the Lost in Space distributor The Walt Disney Company) has consistently carried the show over the years.

Notes: In 1978, Bill Mumy, Brian Grier & Paul Gordon wrote a spec script for a made for television reunion movie called Lost in Space: The Epilogue.

Something fans of the original always wanted to see happen was finally realized when Don knocks out an annoyingly complaining Smith at the end of the film, saying, "That felt good!"

On October 10, 2014, it was announced that Legendary TV was developing a new reboot of Lost in Space for Netflix with Dracula Untold screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless attached to write.

Aeolis 14 Umbra were furious with Smith for not having succeeded in his mission to prevent the Jupiter 2, built with technology from a crashed ship of their race, from reaching the star system they had claimed as their own.

[54] In 1967, a novel based on the series, with significant changes to the personalities of the characters and the design of the ship, was published by Pyramid Books, and written by Dave Van Arnam and Ted White (as "Ron Archer").

Hanna-Barbera Productions contributed animated work based on such television series as Gidget, Yogi Bear, Tabitha, Oliver Twist, The Banana Splits, and Lost in Space.

Dr. Smith (voiced by Jonathan Harris) was the only character from the original program to appear in the special, along with the Robot (who was named Robon and employed in flight control rather than a support activity).