Lost in Space

Lost in Space is an American science fiction television series created and produced by Irwin Allen.^[The series follows the adventures of a pioneering family of space colonists who struggle to survive in a strange and often hostile universe after their ship is sabotaged and thrown off course. The show ran for three seasons, with 83 episodes airing between 1965 and 1968. The first season was filmed in black and white, with the second and third seasons filmed in color.
Although the original concept (depicted in the unaired 1965 pilot episode) centered on the Robinson family, many later storylines focused primarily on Dr. Zachary Smith, played by Jonathan Harris. Smith and the Robot were both absent from the unaired pilot, as the addition of their characters was only decided upon once the series had been commissioned for production.
Originally written as an utterly evil (if careless) saboteur, Smith gradually became the troublesome, self-centered, incompetent character who provided the comic relief for the show and caused much of the conflict and misadventures. In the unaired pilot, what caused the group to become lost in space was a chance encounter with a meteor storm, but in the first aired episode it was Smith's unplanned presence on the ship that sent it off course into the meteor field, and his sabotage which caused the Robot to accelerate the ship into hyperdrive. Smith is thus the key to the story.
 

Plot

In October 1997, 32 years in the future from the perspective of viewers in 1965, the United States is about to launch one of history's great adventures: man's colonization of deep space. The Jupiter 2 (called Gemini 12 in the unaired pilot episode), a futuristic saucer-shaped spacecraft which owed its design to the Fifties sci-fi movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, stands on its launch pad undergoing final preparations. Its mission is to take a single family on a five-and-a-half-year journey (altered from 98 years in the unaired pilot) to a planet orbiting the nearest star, Alpha Centauri (the pilot show had referred to the planet itself as Alpha Centauri), which space probes have revealed possesses ideal conditions for human life.
The Robinson family, supposedly selected from two million volunteers for this mission, consisted of Professor John Robinson, played by Guy Williams, his wife, Maureen, played by June Lockhart, their children, Judy (Marta Kristen), Penny (Angela Cartwright), and Will (Billy Mumy). They are accompanied by their pilot, U.S. Space Corps Major Donald West (Mark Goddard), who is trained to fly the ship when the time comes for the eventual landing. Initially the Robinsons and Major West will be in freezing tubes for the voyage, with the tubes opening when the spacecraft approached its destination. Unless there is a problem with the ship's navigation or guidance system during the voyage, Major West was only to take the controls during the final approach and landing on the destination planet, while the Robinsons were to strap themselves into contour couches on the lower deck for the landing.
Other nations are racing to colonize space, and they would stop at nothing, not even sabotage, to thwart the United States's effort. It turns out that Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), Alpha Control's doctor, and later supposedly a psychologist and environmental control expert, is moonlighting as a secret agent for one of those competing nations. After disposing of a guard who catches him on board the spacecraft, Smith reprograms the Jupiter 2's B-9 environmental control robot, voiced by Dick Tufeld, to destroy critical systems on the spaceship eight hours after launch. Smith, however, unintentionally becomes trapped aboard at launch and his extra weight throws the Jupiter 2 off course, causing it to encounter a meteor storm. This, plus the robot's rampage which causes the ship to prematurely engage its hyperdrive, causes the expedition to become hopelessly lost in the infinite depths of outer space.
The Robinsons are regularly placed in danger by Smith, whose selfish actions and laziness endanger the family frequently. After the first half of the first season, Smith's role assumes less sinister overtones, although he continues to display many character flaws. In "The Time Merchant" Smith shows he actually does care about the Robinsons, when he travels back in time to the day of the Jupiter 2 launch, with the hope of changing his own fate by not boarding the ship, so allowing the Robinsons to start the mission as originally planned. However, he learns that without his weight altering the ship's course, the Jupiter 2 will be destroyed by an uncharted asteroid. So he sacrifices his chance to stay on his beloved Earth, electing to re-board the ship, thus saving the lives of the family and continuing his role amongst them as the reluctant stowaway.
The fate of the Robinsons, Don West and Dr. Smith is never resolved, as the series unexpected cancellation left the Jupiter 2 and her crew literally on the junk-pile at the end of season three.