Netflix launched its newest and surprisingly family-friendly adventure series Lost In Space last week and it's as bingeable a watch as you'd imagine. A blockbuster-sized television adaptation that drastically outpaces the actual blockbuster film of the same name from two decades ago, this new iteration of the Robinson family's wayward adventures in outer space brings plenty of changes to familiar characters, restructuring not only their family dynamic, but also certain aspects of the original series' conceit. In season 1 the Robinsons aren't lonely castaways tossed into the unforgiving void of space; they're part of a significant colonization effort of Alpha Centauri. The addition of more castaways ” temporary though their situation may or may not be ” beyond the Robinsons, (not) Dr. Smith, and the intrepid Don West makes a huge difference for Lost In Space in its first season. It suggests a reinvention of the series that goes beyond cosmetic and casting changes, or turning the franchise's famed robot into a deadly alien construct rather than a helpful automaton with a vocabulary on par with Marvel's intergalactic talking tree. That reinvention, then, helped the series overcome reboot fatigue (it's about as real as superhero and sequel fatigue) while still working to deliver the kind of story a title like Lost In Space implies.

Easier and more rewarding to binge than most of Netflix's Marvel offerings, or even the service's other expensive sci-fi series released this year, Altered Carbon, Lost In Space season 1 delivered a fun first season, by streaming standards or otherwise. Some of the episodes were hit or miss. That was largely due to how much screen time was devoted to watching a giant humanoid machine toss a baseball with a semi-neglected 11-year-old, but it also had to do with the series' inconsistent episode lengths and overreliance on stretching dramatic tension well past the breaking point. Nevertheless, it made for an entertaining if not must-watch series that's a welcome addition to Netflix's massive catalog.

Let's take a look at what worked and what didn't in Lost In Space season 1.

Ignacio Serricchio in Lost In Space Season 1

What Worked:

The Family-Friendly Tone

Despite ads that leaned heavily on exploding space ships and unsettling robotic warnings of danger, Lost In Space went all-in on its TV-PG rating. Avoiding the tedious pitfalls of the typical gritty reboot may have been the series' biggest accomplishment, but it did so without undermining the universality of its story. Co-creators Mark Sazama and Burk Sharpless took a balanced approach to a tale of survival by mixing sometimes-harrowing and perilous adventure with a sense of wide-eyed wonder. Granted, a lot of (perhaps too much) of that wonder in the first episode came from the robot and its heater hands, but the pleasure is in watching Lost In Space and director Neil Marshall reach for that Spielbergian awe, even it if doesn't necessarily attain it.

The moment nevertheless sets the tone for the remaining nine episodes of season 1, which remain surprisingly consistent. Even when Parker Posey's fake Dr. Smith is flushing some poor guy out of an airlock, his actual death isn't shown on screen. And although the swaggering Don West initially reads like an HR nightmare in the making, he turns out to be a surprisingly stand-up guy, as long as you can look past his interstellar hooch smuggling. Even then, Don's innate goodness supersedes his love of the almighty and ill-gotten dollar. The show wastes no time in demonstrating as much: His first significant moment onscreen is spent saving a chicken, a severely injured woman, and Dr. Smith. Don may present himself as an unscrupulous opportunist, but in Lost In Space that just means more opportunities to prove himself as a hero.

Though it flirts with a descent into corniness at times, the show's family-friendly tone is one of its primary attributes, not a hurdle it must overcome. Mostly that has to do with the spirit of adventure and, unsurprisingly, child-like wonder and uncertainty with regard to the family's new environs and mechanized companion. Had the tone gone a degree more in either a grittier or campier direction, it might not have worked. Instead, like the colony headed for Alpha Centauri, Lost In Space found a tone that was just right for the story.

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The Show's Episodic Structure

Lost In Space is a Netflix series through and through. It's incredibly expensive looking, has phenomenal production values, and it's about as bingeable as shows on the streaming service get. But unlike so many of its counterparts, Lost In Space doesn't really suffer as much from the dreaded streaming drift ” that sagging feeling in the middle of the season when it feels like everyone, viewer and those involved in brining the show to life, would much rather jump forward to the end.

One of the reasons the series doesn't sag as much around episode 5 or 6 is because it's written less like a 10-hour movie and more like, you know, an actual season of television. Lost In Space is the rare Netflix show that would work great if doled out on a more traditional schedule (i.e., on a weekly basis). The episodes still transition from one to the other almost seamlessly, but that doesn't prevent them from also feeling like distinct chapters.

As such, mid-season episodes like, say, Transmission' and Eulogy' still contribute to the overarching plot of the season, but they also deliver solid individual installments. The result, then, is a season of television that serves up a bingeable feast, as well as easily digestible single servings.

The Robinson Family

Lost In Space Cast Netflix

This may seem obvious, but if the Robinsons didn't work, as either a believable family or as individuals, the characters of Lost In Space would have deserved to stay that way. Instead the castaways, led by Molly Parker and Toby Stephens, delivered flawed characters and a fractured family whose immediate concerns extended beyond their crash landing on an alien planet. While martial strife isn't exactly new territory for a television series to venture into, it does encourage some investment in Maureen and John, as their life-or-death circumstances force them to re-establish a connection with each other for the sake of their kids.

But what makes the Robinsons worth watching, though, isn't just their characterizations ” whether Judy is an 18-year-old genius or Penny can make some blatant snack food product placement seem somehow less gross ” but rather the ability of the show to put its characters in a place where their choices have an impact on a greater level than just the plot. Some of those choices are good, a lot of them are bad (mostly in a good way), but they all have consequences that follow them throughout the season.

It adds to a layer of texture to a series that is otherwise very (maybe overly) plot driven. One such example is Judy's literal dive into action in the premiere. Her choice underlined the contentious relationship she had with her father, as well as her tenacious œmy way or the highway personality, and her subsequent near-death experience also wound up shaping her season 1 arc. The same is mostly true for her fellow Robinsons as well, as Penny, Will, Maureen, and John were shaped by the decisions they made over the course of the first season. Sure, some decisions, like Will helping Dr. Smith out of the closet she'd been locked in and John flying a suicide mission, were more for the benefit of the plot than the character, but Lost In Space still managed to make the Family Robinson the rightful stars of the show.

Molly Parker and Toby Stephens in Lost In Space Season 1

What Didn't Work:

Problem Hopping Can Be A Storytelling Crutch

Roughly 10 hours is a lot of time to fill with any television series, let alone a big-budget sci-fi extravaganza. And to their credit, the writers of Lost In Space aimed to fill every moment with some sense of external conflict for their characters to (sometimes literally) wrestle with. The first episode laid the groundwork for the series by putting characters into some form of danger seemingly every minute. Judy was trapped in a frozen lake. Penny had to perform a hasty operation on her mother's injured leg. John risked getting smacked by Maureen for some questionable parenting decisions, and Will tried to wait out a raging inferno in a tree with an angry, bifurcated killer robot.

For the most part, the series delivered a new take on a familiar situation in nearly every episode. The second episode saw Maureen, John, and Will in the path of a deadly storm, while episode 3, Infestation,' brought some uninvited guests to the ship, in the form of fuel-eating eels that kept John busy while the rest of the family went about doing maintenance on the vessel.

While keeping the characters busy, jumping from one problem to the next also worked to prevent the season from drifting into an unintended lull, but it also at times felt like a storytelling crutch, inasmuch as the onslaught of problems also kept certain ideas, themes, and even characters from being more meaningfully explored over the course of the season. Though it seems connected to the idea of the series' episodic format, this has more do with content than structure. It's kind of a toss up as to whether this approach worked or not, as it certainly kept Lost In Space from ever becoming boring, but it also left plenty of potentially fascinating examinations on the table.

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Drawing Out the Dramatic Tension

Mina Sundwall in Lost In Space Season 1

This feels like a byproduct of the show's reliance on problem hopping, as it wasn't enough for Lost In Space to wrangle a new complication for the characters to face every few minutes, but it did so by drawing out the tension to an almost absurd degree. Again, the groundwork was laid in the first episode when Will and the robot watched as a fire quickly spread through the forest around them. Will's decision to save the robot winds up saving his life and it's treated like an appropriately triumphant moment, but the scene ” and many others throughout the season ” plays out longer than it needs to, reducing the sense of triumph as the scene nearly becomes exasperating.

That scenario plays out again and again over the course of the first season. One example that's memorable for all the wrong reasons happens around the middle part of the season when a pair of giant lizards start tearing Will's robot apart because he's set to Good Mode. Will has to run out of the ship, down a hill, and hide among a pile of boxes, before he can deliver an Alexa voice command to make the robot œbad again, thereby reducing the local wildlife population by two. The scene runs for what feels like an eternity, playing on the audience's emotions ” or presumed emotions ” over the robot, which the show treats like a magical beast in peril. It's a manipulative move on the show's part as Lost In Space also seems to be operating under the assumption the audience has never seen similar situations play out before, and therefore it exploits the dramatic tension for all it's worth. The thing is, screaming at your television (or computer screen) does not make for an ideal viewing experience.

Thankfully, this is the sort of thing that can be fixed in the editing room, which is probably something Lost In Space should look into anyway, as too often the episodes come up short in terms of justifying their runtimes.

Season 1 As Prologue

Molly Parker Toby Stephens in Lost In Space Season 1

Season 1 essentially winds up acting as a prologue to a more expansive story that's set to unfold in season 2 and beyond. In the case of Lost In Space, it's a prelude to the Robinsons actually becoming, well, lost in space. There something to this method as it allows the audience to become invested in the characters and their circumstances before things really start to get dicey, and it's not too far off from how the original series (and movie) played out as well. Nevertheless, season 1 sometimes felt more like a proof of concept than anything else.

By focusing on keeping characters busy solving problems, Lost In Space avoided (inadvertently, perhaps) digging into a much more substantial storyline, one that would have likely explored the alien ship that crash landed on Earth and was passed off as the œChristmas Star. It may also have further investigated the colonization's efforts to steal proprietary alien tech to facilitate their exodus to Alpha Centauri ” which essentially makes the attack on the Resolute tantamount to an extra-terrestrial cease and desist order. Sure, all of this can be explored in season 2 or later, but it asks the question: If that's the story, why wait?

It raises another question, too: Is Lost In Space about anything? The answer seems obvious, in that it's right there in the title. But the question is searching for something more than just an idea of what the plot is. Season 1 put an emphasis on the idea of second chances. It was applicable on an individual basis with each of the Robinsons, Don, Dr. Smith, and even humanity itself, but is Lost In Space aiming to be about something more than that? Perhaps we'll find out as the series moves on and evolves, but establishing a more concrete identity in season 1 would have gone a long way in making this otherwise fun and family friendly reboot feel much more essential.

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Lost In Space season 1 is currently streaming on Netflix.