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L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

4 Comments

  1. SpaceSquid
    June 3, 2013 @ 2:28 am

    I think one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Lost in Space can't be extracted from its time is how far from its basic template the '90s film felt compelled to run. I actually quite like some of what that film tried to do (its concept not being as flawed as its execution), but had the characters been given new names its not even clear to me that people would have linked this spider-alien time-paradox yarn to its ostensible source material. It's a much easier job linking the original Star Trek to "Encounter at Farpoint".

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  2. Josh Marsfelder
    June 3, 2013 @ 6:43 am

    This is a really good point: Had the 1990s Lost in Space movie been its own sci-fi film and not an attempt at a reimagining, it probably would have been much more successful and much better received. In that sense it reminds me a little of the Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich Godzilla movie, which incidentally also came out the same year.

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  3. SpaceSquid
    June 5, 2013 @ 1:44 am

    I am loving the hypothetical press conference where Devlin and Emmerich insist their new film can't be a rip-off of Godzilla because their giant mutated city-smashing bipedal lizard is, like, a hermaphrodite and stuff.

    Reply

  4. Josh Marsfelder
    June 5, 2013 @ 7:13 am

    If they were smarter they could've likened it to Varan or Manda instead. "See? Not every giant monster has to be Godzilla…"

    Reply

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