Lost in Space: Hunter’s Moon (1967) – Review

If you spend enough time “lost in space” as the Robinson family were – three full seasons – it’s not surprising that they’d run into one of the oldest story tropes in fiction and that would be adaptations of Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” In this third-season episode of Lost in Space, the patriarch of the Robinson clan finds himself being stalked by an alien hunter.

The episode opens with your standard Lost in Space crisis, in this instance, it has to do with Jupiter 2 having to land on a nearby planet to initiate repairs or risk their life support failing, but there is a small wrinkle to this plan as the Earthlike planet is “Girdled by some sinister and unquestionable fatal contamination” or at least that is what Doctor Smith (Jonathon Harris) believes, of course, stalwart hero John Robinson (Guy Williams) won’t let the threat of death stand in the way of keeping his family safe, so he and the Robot (Bob May) take the Jupiter 2’s Space Pod out to make sure the planet is safe for them to land. As expected, things aren’t all that safe and while the planet isn’t surrounded by “fatal contamination” it is protected by a high energy force field that causes the Space Pod to go out of control and results in a forced landing. Soon our two “heroes” learn that dangerous force fields are the least of their worries.

Professor Robinson in Caged Heat.

The always-at-the-ready John Robinson easily dispatches a rampaging beast – he’s an outer space quickdraw – but seconds later a blue-skinned alien named Megazor (Vincent Beck) shows up and the danger levels move back up to critical. Turns out that John and the Robot have trespassed on this dude’s private hunting grounds and the two are taken prisoner for interfering in his sport and the alien destroys John’s ability to warn his family of the dangers this planet holds. Sadly, this leads to one of the more disheartening tropes of the series, that of Doctor Smith’s abject cowardice almost getting everyone killed. When the Jupiter 2 is unable to communicate with John, the Robinsons decide to land on the alien planet to search for him, needless to say, Smith doesn’t want to risk his life and he holds a vote on whether or not to leave John for dead. Of course, the vote doesn’t go his way and he tries to take control of the ship but all he manages to do is to send it flying out of control and crash-landing on the perilous planet.

Question: At what point would you decide that “enough is enough” and toss Doctor Smith out of an airlock?

Meanwhile, John learns that Megazor is from a race that chooses its rulers by how good they are at hunting, having to rack up 500 points during his field test and John’s killing of the beast cost him 350 points. It’s at this point we clearly know that we are in The Most Dangerous Game territory, but when an impartial robotic judge, who tabulates scores and monitors for infractions, notifies our hero that humans are only worth one point things get a little tense. But when John uses cunning to defeat an invisible monster – you can just imagine how much Irwin Allen saves using invisible opponents – Megazor changes his mind and decides that the professor could make for an interesting game after all.

“Hey John, Star Trek wants their menagerie back.”

Stray Observations:

• In the episode “The Challenge” young Will Robinson had to deal with a young Kurt Russell, playing an alien who had decided that fighting a Robinson is the best way to prove you are a badass.
• Irwin Allen was big on recycling as the alien creatures that we see caged by Megazor are ones that the Robinsons had faced in previous episodes.
• An impartial robot that sits in judgment over an alien race has certain The Day the Earth Stood Still conations.
• The planet that John Robinson lands on turns out to be an alien game preserve and this concept is quite similar to that of the 2010 film Predators, starring Adrien Brody and Topher Grace.
• Major Don West sends Will and Doctor Smith out to look for John, while he stays aboard the crashed Jupiter 2, but as this is a very likely hostile planet I have to wonder “Does he want these two dead?”

I was rooting for the rock monster.

As adaptations of “The Most Dangerous Game,” this episode is pretty weak sauce, unlike the 1932 version there is no real “horror” to this adaptation as it was made for “family entertainment” and thus there was no chance of there being a trophy room for human heads or implied rape – though I’d pay to see Doctor Smith being raped by a rock monster – but while it fails at being a good adaptation of the source material it does have some interesting elements. We learn that Megazor is from a race of beings that consider emotions like empathy and love to be defects, having been synthesized in incubators and so not raised by love parents, this leads to a little debate between Will Robinson (Billy Mumy) and Megazor, with one rather fun exchange before the alien runs off to hunt Will’s dad.

Will Robinson: “Well, if you’re gonna be such a great ruler, you should try and understand others. Even your enemies.”
Megazor: “I do understand my enemies. They all want to kill me.”

This third-season entry has a couple of nice ideas but Doctor Smith is more annoying than usual and Will’s constant running off on his own, despite orders from his parents, has at this point become rather tiresome and lame. The caged menagerie of alien creatures was also a bit of a letdown – they never leave their cage and the only really interesting monster in this episode was the rock monster that I’d like to assume inspired the makers of Galaxy Quest – and the final hunt between John and Megazor was less than gripping and they way John won was a complete camera cheat – he creates a dummy out of his protective suit to lure Megazor into an ambush but he was never out of Megazor’s sight so this was impossible – and we never even got a decent payoff on “human deficiencies” aspect and how Will had possibly affected the alien ruler with his compassion.

“Can I borrow this to shoot Doctor Smith?”

Directed by Don Richardson, Hunter’s Moon is typical of the third season’s continued descent into silliness and the “Most Dangerous Game” trope wasn’t even properly utilized, and once again most of the crew of the Jupiter 2 are left standing around without much to – Maureen (June Lockhart) and Judy Robinson (Marta Kristen) spend most of their time off camera “setting up a perimeter” while Don West (Mark Goddard) tries to fix their battered spacecraft – and while this is episode is more John Robinson centric then many others of this season, the stuff with Will and Doctor Smith is tedious and unfunny. Overall, this is one of those episodes you can feel free to skip.