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I've been watching the new Lost in Space on Netflix and enjoying it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Space_(2018_TV_series)

But I'm struck how out of date their technology seems in a show made this year. Some quick examples:

One plot point has a teenager trying to save the parents in their Chariot explorer vehicle, but she doesn't have her licence. Wouldn't it be self driving? OK they're on a new planet with no GPS system or maps, but it seems someone should have mentioned that. 'I can't save them because I don't know how to drive' seems so... 10 years ago. And granted the Chariot does at one point start mapping a course so I guess it was covered, but she still had to drive it.

Another has a crew member assuming a new identity. The ship doesn't have facial recognition and fingerprint checking? It's less secure than my phone? Sure the deception is uncovered, but only after the ship left. Again it seems very 10 years ago...

And what were the parents doing going out and walking somewhere like cavemen? Where's the ship's drone compliment? Surely if you're flying people trillions of miles you'll throw in a few drones so they can check the terrain without sticking their heads out.

Yeah there are more plot gaps if you want to be picky, it is a TV show after all. But these 3 struck me because 10 years ago I'd have never thought of them as issues but today self-driving, facial recognition and drones just seem a part of the future every science fiction writer should take into account.

I'm a grown up, I won't let it spoil my enjoyment, but there you go.

I'm about halfway through so more comments to come.

I enjoyed it a lot and tried to ignore all the gaping plots holes because of that. Bit like Shanara,

It reminds me a lot of the late 90s when cell phones became a thing. Suddenly a lot of plots had to account for phones in order to work so we got a lot of scenes of people announcing there was no signal or no battery and moving on like cells didn't exist.

Now anything in the present, to say nothing of the future has to account for so many other things from facial recognition, to drones, to cell phone hacking, to DNA tests...

Writers must feel overwhelmed.

Well, as to drivers licenses. Operating machinery is operating machinery. I wouldn't want any of that automated.

As to facial recognition or biometrics. People were being chosen from all over down to the minute it seemed. Unless they had everyone constantly submitting all that information to a public database long before it would be difficult to have all that information available.

As to drones, the individual life ships were not made for scouting. The primary vessel they all attached to was. I wouldn't be surprised if the main ship had drones, but that ship got fethed up pretty fast.

I gave up about 2/3's in, death by a thousand plot holes, and everybody was just so miserable all the time I started having nu-BSG flasbacks

 Lance845 wrote:
Well, as to drivers licenses. Operating machinery is operating machinery. I wouldn't want any of that automated.

As to facial recognition or biometrics. People were being chosen from all over down to the minute it seemed. Unless they had everyone constantly submitting all that information to a public database long before it would be difficult to have all that information available.

As to drones, the individual life ships were not made for scouting. The primary vessel they all attached to was. I wouldn't be surprised if the main ship had drones, but that ship got fethed up pretty fast.

Yeah, I actually see a lot of this stuff as current fads that won't last, or are easily hacked and therefor a security problem.

I haven't seen it and probably won't bother even if it comes to UK TV, although I loved the original series in the late 60s.

To be fair, it was conceived as a children's show, and also I don't think supposed technical accuracy should trump dramatic writing.

I quite enjoyed the show myself, it had some good acting, fun plot, and really great CGI.

It did a good job of making me watch "just one more episode" I think I stayed up till 4am one night until I felt I could save a cliffhanger to the next day

I enjoyed it for what it was. Not spectacular, but fairly good.

I too enjoyed it. The alien robot morphing into a form that coincidentally didn't require the extensive CGI of it's first appearance was genious, and well executed to look cool.

Finished it and it was not bad at all.

Yeah the tech bits bugged me, and the whole 'the colony ship can't find us' thing was a bit contrived. In fact really contrived. To the point that I was sure they'd get there and find everyone was dead and the messages were coming from the aliens.

They really could have done more to lampshade it. 'The geological problems and volcanoes make it impossible to spot us from orbit", "the black hole makes radio useless" etc.

The other issue was trying to generate tension by threatening the main characters. Look, we all know the Robinsons, West and Smith are safe. This isn't Game of Thrones. If you want to worry me go threaten the Watanabes or something.

And even for a 10 episode show it felt padded. Did we need the whole 'we got fuel, we lost it" episode? Was the 'steal dino poo' plot better?

But still, not bad at all. The character interactions were the best part and I liked the family dynamics. I'll be back for season 2.

I thought the show was alright. The best characters were John Robinson (who was generally always right, even when the show tried to make him look wrong), Penny Robinson and Don West.

I though it was an overall good show, but some of the writing is pretty bad - like how the family single handedly kills most of the colony and they repeatedly make terrible decisions, yet they're still the good guys. Despite this they strut around making decisions for everyone else and when they're banned from doing so - they just do it sneakily.

Sometimes their sneaking works out, but the show doesn't seem to be self-aware enough that the protagonists are making terrible decisions that get other people killed and the deaths are written off as if they assume the audience will be on board. "those people who died weren't main characters, so its ok!"

I accepted it as a family show meant to be safe for kids and adults with fond ememories of LiS. The robot seems impossible to make sense of tho.

The smith character was the best thing, an interesting reboot of a generally worthless, annoying and unbearable character. She's infinitely more interesting and even sympathetic than the original. And that's no hate at John Harris.

Adults withstand memories of the orig8nal are in their 70s now...

I always wonder about the logic of some of these reboots...

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Adults withstand memories of the orig8nal are in their 70s now...

I always wonder about the logic of some of these reboots...

IF they watched the original series, yes, maybe. However you seem to be ignoring syndication, which has kept the show o the air more or less continuously since it's first run, so people in the 70's, 80's and so on could watch it.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


I always wonder about the logic of some of these reboots...

I think part of it is that its a lot easier to push through a "new" show if it something that has been made before where you're basically copying the same formula. From the marketing point of view why copycat another show if you already own the rights to it, just remake it. Much like how the new Battlestar Galactica was clearly a very different story to the original. To my eye they wanted to make something different, but using the same rough formula, so the only way to market it and get the backing is to slave it to an old franchise .


I think another aspect is that those who were inspired by earlier shows are now in positions of power enough to push through their own visions, for better or worse.





As for the plot holes, I think some are ok if you consider that automation doesn't have to be universally accepted. We are only now touching on the idea of automated drones and cars and it might well be that in the future society is ok with those things, but in limited form. Also sometimes high automation just builds in more potential areas for failure. Sometimes simpler technology is imperative in survival and long distance travel situations because there is less to go wrong and also more potential to repair things.