Sunday, January 2, 2011

Rein-toon-ation: Lost in Space (1973)

From the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie series comes this back-door pilot for an animated revival of Lost In Space. Unfortunately, as you'll see in a moment, there's a reason why this pilot ultimately failed. Co-produced by 20th Century Fox, which produced the original series, and Hanna-Barbera, and uploaded to YouTube:



Jonathan Harris, who had done some voice work for Hanna-Barbera previously (Three Musketeers), is the lone holdover from the original series. Don Messick provided the narration. They gave the robot a name, "Robon", but didn't have enough money to hire on veteran announcer Dick Tufeld (who was the voice of the robot in the original series) for this project. Messick also voices Robon. Other voice talent includes ex-Mouseketeer Sherry Alberoni (Josie & the Pussycats, Super Friends), Michael Bell (Speed Buggy), & Vincent Van Patten (later of Apple's Way). Also, Ralph James (later the voice of Orson on Mork & Mindy) can be heard. Fred Freiberger was credited with the script, from what I understand. I didn't see this when it first aired, so I cannot give a fair rating.

It would be 21 years before Fox & H-B would team again, this time on the feature film, "The Pagemaster".

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