I ran across a marathon of this show on the Sci-Fi Channel today, obviously a tie-in for the new Will Ferrell movie. I was 9 years old in 1974, and my goal on Saturday mornings was to watch kids' shows from breakfast to lunchtime with as few gaps or interruptions as possible. There weren't a lot of options, so I tended to gobble up anything that was on. As I sat through three episodes this morning, all the bad memories came flooding back.
This was it--the breaking point! This was the show that was so consistently, irredeemably stupid and boring that I began to think maybe there were ways of spending my time that were preferable to watching TV at any cost. The concept was cool, but there was never a payoff where it mattered--on the screen. Each episode was five minutes of plot stretched over a half hour, filled in with running/hiding from dinosaurs, yammering dialog about trite sibling rivalry, and the repetitive gibberish of the annoying little missing link named Cha-Ka.
I turned to the Internet after I could stand no more, wanting to find out if the refugees ever made it home or if some of the arcane motifs were ever explained and/or explored in depth. The answers were no and no, respectively. To my greater disappointment, though, I found that most of the commentary on the Web was singing the praises of this cheap tripe, calling it deep, groundbreaking, well-written, yadda yadda yadda. Don't be fooled! It's garbage.
Advocates point to the list of respected sci-fi writers who contributed scripts. Who cares? Again, the quality (if it was there in the scripts at all) didn't make it to the screen. That's all that matters. I don't care if Shakespeare wrote it, junk is junk.
These fans also excuse the laughably awful special effects as being pretty good for the time the show was made. Really? This was 1974, for Pete's sake. Star Trek had premiered seven years earlier. Other shows like Space: 1999 and UFO were mesmerizing my young imagination. But, say the fans, this was a Saturday morning kids' show. They couldn't get a decent budget, they did the best they could! Baloney. Look at Dr. Who, for example. Super low budget and plenty of cheese, but variety and inventiveness made it come alive in spite of its limitations. Land of the Lost had no variety and very limited inventiveness.
I think the lack of quality can be better explained by the names on the show. As I said, this series was the awakening of my critical judgment as a consumer of entertainment. Before Land of the Lost, I got excited whenever a show was promoted as a product of Sid and Marty Krofft. They were great! How did I know that? The TV told me so, so it must be true. As I began to realize that Land of the Lost was garbage, I looked more closely at their other shows and saw that they were all utter mindless dreck. The Kroffts were ripping me off, turning out goof-ball cheese in vast quantities for a quick buck.
Let me give another example of how they skated by on creating big expectations without ever fulfilling them: the opening credit sequence for H.R. Puff'n'Stuff was one of the coolest things I ever saw. A little boy like me! A magic boat that takes him to a strange land, a wild storm, a talking flute! WOW! The show itself? A bunch of dumb gags and low-rent physical comedy done by guys in retarded Muppet ripoff costumes. I kept tuning in wanting to see the story in the credits, but never getting it.
The Sleestak looked very cool; their costumes were the only thing that really worked, except maybe sometimes the look of the pylons and the gems. Their hissing and their bug-eyes were genuinely scary, at first. But then I caught on to the fact that they never really seemed to accomplish anything. Ho-hum--it's the Sleestak again! Thanks, I guess, Sid and Marty, for helping me to realize that not everything on TV was great by virtue of simply being there. Now I hope some people can begin to realize that not all nostalgia is good nostalgia, either. Sometimes the passage of time turns coal into a diamond. In this case it reveals it for the manure it always was.
This was it--the breaking point! This was the show that was so consistently, irredeemably stupid and boring that I began to think maybe there were ways of spending my time that were preferable to watching TV at any cost. The concept was cool, but there was never a payoff where it mattered--on the screen. Each episode was five minutes of plot stretched over a half hour, filled in with running/hiding from dinosaurs, yammering dialog about trite sibling rivalry, and the repetitive gibberish of the annoying little missing link named Cha-Ka.
I turned to the Internet after I could stand no more, wanting to find out if the refugees ever made it home or if some of the arcane motifs were ever explained and/or explored in depth. The answers were no and no, respectively. To my greater disappointment, though, I found that most of the commentary on the Web was singing the praises of this cheap tripe, calling it deep, groundbreaking, well-written, yadda yadda yadda. Don't be fooled! It's garbage.
Advocates point to the list of respected sci-fi writers who contributed scripts. Who cares? Again, the quality (if it was there in the scripts at all) didn't make it to the screen. That's all that matters. I don't care if Shakespeare wrote it, junk is junk.
These fans also excuse the laughably awful special effects as being pretty good for the time the show was made. Really? This was 1974, for Pete's sake. Star Trek had premiered seven years earlier. Other shows like Space: 1999 and UFO were mesmerizing my young imagination. But, say the fans, this was a Saturday morning kids' show. They couldn't get a decent budget, they did the best they could! Baloney. Look at Dr. Who, for example. Super low budget and plenty of cheese, but variety and inventiveness made it come alive in spite of its limitations. Land of the Lost had no variety and very limited inventiveness.
I think the lack of quality can be better explained by the names on the show. As I said, this series was the awakening of my critical judgment as a consumer of entertainment. Before Land of the Lost, I got excited whenever a show was promoted as a product of Sid and Marty Krofft. They were great! How did I know that? The TV told me so, so it must be true. As I began to realize that Land of the Lost was garbage, I looked more closely at their other shows and saw that they were all utter mindless dreck. The Kroffts were ripping me off, turning out goof-ball cheese in vast quantities for a quick buck.
Let me give another example of how they skated by on creating big expectations without ever fulfilling them: the opening credit sequence for H.R. Puff'n'Stuff was one of the coolest things I ever saw. A little boy like me! A magic boat that takes him to a strange land, a wild storm, a talking flute! WOW! The show itself? A bunch of dumb gags and low-rent physical comedy done by guys in retarded Muppet ripoff costumes. I kept tuning in wanting to see the story in the credits, but never getting it.
The Sleestak looked very cool; their costumes were the only thing that really worked, except maybe sometimes the look of the pylons and the gems. Their hissing and their bug-eyes were genuinely scary, at first. But then I caught on to the fact that they never really seemed to accomplish anything. Ho-hum--it's the Sleestak again! Thanks, I guess, Sid and Marty, for helping me to realize that not everything on TV was great by virtue of simply being there. Now I hope some people can begin to realize that not all nostalgia is good nostalgia, either. Sometimes the passage of time turns coal into a diamond. In this case it reveals it for the manure it always was.