Updated: May 10, 2024

Today 57 years ago, September 15, 1965, 'Lost In Space' Premiered. The Show Ran For Three seasons, with 83 episodes airing between September 15, 1965, and March 6, 1968. The first television season was filmed in black and white, with the second and third seasons filmed in color. In 1972 a pilot for a cartoon version was made. Two documentaries were released in the 1990s. In 1998, a Lost in Space movie, based on the television series, was released. In 2003 a pilot for a new live action reboot of the series was produced and in late 2014 plans for the development of a brand new series were announced.

In the unaired original pilot, the ship, named Gemini 12 in this early version without Smith or the Robot, was going slow enough that the crew wondered if they were on Mars, while in the first aired episode, just seconds of hyper-drive caused them to be lost, unknown light-years from Earth. The possible distance and location varied between episodes and authors. As an example, Penny asks Will if they could be on Mars in one of the early episodes. The ability of the Jupiter-2 to quickly cover vast distances allowed the ship to pass through an entire galaxy overnight in one later episode although this was more likely the writers' confusion about what solar systems and galaxies actually are. There were two versions of the pilot, a complete version with the credits at the very beginning and a 2nd shorter version minus John's and Don's initial encounter with "One-Eye the Cyclops" and with the credits appearing between Alpha Control's statement that the Gemini 12 was hopelessly Lost in Space and the crash landing sequence.

Though the original television series concept centered on the Robinson family, many later story lines focused primarily on Dr. Zachary Smith, played by Jonathan Harris. Smith, along with the Robot, was absent from the pilot as the addition of their characters was decided once the series had been commissioned for production. Originally written as an utterly evil but careless saboteur, Smith gradually becomes the troublesome, self-centered, incompetent foil who provides the comic relief for the show and causes most of the episodic conflict and misadventures. In the unaired pilot, what causes the group to become Lost in Space is a chance encounter with a meteor storm, but in the first aired episode, it is Smith's sabotage and unplanned presence on the ship that sets the ship off course into the meteor field. Smith is thus the key to the story.