John occasionally mentioned that he wrote for the TV show Lost in Space, but was vague about the details. I was curious, though; it sounded interesting. Although John was a science fiction fan as a teenager, he wrote very little in the genre, and I wondered what he would do with it. I eventually discovered that he did indeed write a seven-page plot outline, but that it was rejected. Here, then, is the first part; I’ll post the second part later this week, so you can enjoy the pleasures of serialization.
I think the problem with the plot is there are too many special effects for a one hour episode. The original show they would reuse stock special effects of the ship as often as possible to cut costs since they had a very limited budget per episode. It would be easier for Dr. Smith to argue with the Robot or Major West each episode!
Comment by Mike Nemeth — November 26, 2012 @ 9:39 pm
That’s possible. On the other hand, John might have been writing around stock footage that he knew was available — the meteor shower, for example. At any rate, I haven’t found correspondence about it, so I don’t know why it was rejected…
Comment by Doug — November 26, 2012 @ 9:53 pm