No episode of "The Lost World" deserves a 10 rating but this one fully deserves a top 8.
A stranger who claims to be looking for the lost Challenger Expedition shows up on their doorstep one sunny day. Is he? Yes, but not for the reasons they think. He claims he can lead them off the Plateau. Can he? Well, he got up there, didn't he?
Once again, the stranded castaways refuse to heed Veronica's advice. She's only had that same address all her life. But they're Europeans. They know best. Don't they have the League of Nations and everything?
From the first we thought these castaways need a Gilligan. Someone who, with the best of intentions, manages to sabotage every effort they make toward escape. But we finally realize all the "Europeans" are Gilligans, in their own way. Which for the mostly Colonialized Aussie cast probably has the same resonance as it would for us US Americans, who were also a Colonial people under the thumb of empire.
A Trekkie pal once confided to me Star Trek was fun in a way Star Trek: the Next Generation wasn't. "Next" had to many realistic blinking lights. Star Trek the first was fun in a way fun was when he was a kid saying, "This stick is a gun because I say it is."
In the same way, in this episode these castaways go somewhere by running across the screen one way and ducking behind some rocks. Then, to get out again, they come up from the rocks and run across the screen the other way! Marvelous! That's why we love this program. It's the way people like me, in their late 30s when it started, used to play.
The bad: the new neighbors abuse Veronica a bit, which isn't nice. And she gives up too quick. There's a blazing gun battle between the good guys and the bad but though they're usually all crack shots nobody gets so much as winged.
This is an episode that has everything but Tribune; it's one of my favorites. The villain of the piece is smarmily charming, the castaways act like idiots, Veronica is vindicated. Some people might find this episode and the whole series cheesy; but as Hamlet didn't quite say, Nothing is either cheesy or not but thinking makes it so.
Great fun.
A stranger who claims to be looking for the lost Challenger Expedition shows up on their doorstep one sunny day. Is he? Yes, but not for the reasons they think. He claims he can lead them off the Plateau. Can he? Well, he got up there, didn't he?
Once again, the stranded castaways refuse to heed Veronica's advice. She's only had that same address all her life. But they're Europeans. They know best. Don't they have the League of Nations and everything?
From the first we thought these castaways need a Gilligan. Someone who, with the best of intentions, manages to sabotage every effort they make toward escape. But we finally realize all the "Europeans" are Gilligans, in their own way. Which for the mostly Colonialized Aussie cast probably has the same resonance as it would for us US Americans, who were also a Colonial people under the thumb of empire.
A Trekkie pal once confided to me Star Trek was fun in a way Star Trek: the Next Generation wasn't. "Next" had to many realistic blinking lights. Star Trek the first was fun in a way fun was when he was a kid saying, "This stick is a gun because I say it is."
In the same way, in this episode these castaways go somewhere by running across the screen one way and ducking behind some rocks. Then, to get out again, they come up from the rocks and run across the screen the other way! Marvelous! That's why we love this program. It's the way people like me, in their late 30s when it started, used to play.
The bad: the new neighbors abuse Veronica a bit, which isn't nice. And she gives up too quick. There's a blazing gun battle between the good guys and the bad but though they're usually all crack shots nobody gets so much as winged.
This is an episode that has everything but Tribune; it's one of my favorites. The villain of the piece is smarmily charming, the castaways act like idiots, Veronica is vindicated. Some people might find this episode and the whole series cheesy; but as Hamlet didn't quite say, Nothing is either cheesy or not but thinking makes it so.
Great fun.
