lost in space eps 1 & 2
15 Apr 2018 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneA transcription of the impromptu livetweet I produced documenting our complaints about episodes 1-2 of the new Lost in Space (Toby Stephens' next project after Black Sails, which explains why we kept watching) last night.
It was not good. Especially not the direction. Or the dialogue. Or the plot. (The actors are all fine.)
We've started watching the new Lost in Space and the actors are all good, including, as Toby noted, the extraordinarily competent child actors, BUT the directing (and the script) are terrible.
Everything is mistimed and miscued, and that includes the plot, which for some reason thought they needed like 5 simultaneous emergencies that aren't even competently interwoven. There's just too much peril.
I've got peril fatigue. There are 2/5 mains in literal time-limit mortal peril, a child trying to simultaneously save both and the 2 dudes both lost and alone. I can't care about this many perils at one time, guys. It's becoming boring!
Now the tiny boy genius is crying in the forest outside of what I can only assume is Vancouver. Everyone else still on Hoth.
Oh, now it's like Party of Five dialogue. And why is the set for their house so bad? I can't put my finger on what's wrong with it, but...
The two characters who should be trying to dig Judy out of the ice before her oxygen runs out have now forgotten that she's there and are just having bonding moments sitting next to the ice where she's trapped and it's intercut with flashbacks. While she's still in the ice.
Now we're back to Vancouver. No idea where Toby Stephens is all this time, btw. Probably hiking alone back to the ice emergency but we haven't seen him. Didn't even see him leave. Judy's still in the ice. Will decides to set out in a random direction! Into the woods!
Because wandering away from the last place your future rescuers saw you is obviously the best way to get rescued when lost on an alien planet. Fortunately Will has already managed to stumble across a forest fire, and decides to get a closer look, as you do.
Will is now climbing a sequoia with the aid of some fake branches that have been like glued onto it. Oh, we're back at the ice pond. Mom and Penny are angry that Toby left Will but they haven't done antyhing about the hole in the ice this whole time.
Oh, and of course, while he's IN the process of breaking through the ice, Mom is trying to PARENT Him (he's her partner, remember!) with a Teachable Moment over his shoulder. "Why do you think THAT might be?" she snipes.
She looks remarkably rosy-cheeked for a recent survivor of emergency field surgery performed by her child. Outdoors. On a glacier.
Flashback to their marital problems. We haven't found out through the beginning of the episode but they're actually in the middle of a marital separation or something? That makes what, six emergencies?
At least this CGI butterfly flower was competently done.
Emergency #7: forest fire spreading towards the tree where Will is trapped by a hostile robot. Emergency #8: It starts raining, and the liquid water is making the ice colder somehow while putting out the magnesium torches.
Oh and I forgot to count the fact that in flashback we ALSO learned that the Mom falsified safety competence test results to get Will's space travel clearance and lied about it to the rest of the family.
We're befriending robots with Will for an awfully long time for an audience who still doesn't know the status of Judy's oxygen tank given teh ice/rain problem... the director has forgotten about the mom's emergency field surgery completely.
The robot arrived in time to save Judy, but meanwhile, the family all forgot Judy was suffocating even though her glove is sticking out of the hole in the ice piteously the whole time they're just staring at the robot blankly.
Also the robot got a chance to say "Danger, Will Robinson". {This is the only thing it will say in 2 episodes.}
Parker Posey just showed up and name-dropped Dr Zachary Smith, so we can all hope that episode 2 is going to ahve EVEN MORE emergencies to go around.
Ep 2 is well underway, but nothing has really happened. Dr Parker Posey Smith and the mechanic she crashed with, Don, haven't even moved from their crash site below the treeline, they've adopted a random chicken, Toby's poking at their crashed pod/ship. No developments of any kind @ 12 min.
Sibling hostility and immaturity for the children is overblown. Penny's eyerolling and shirking her mom-assigned filter-cleaning and making fun of Will's "creepy robot". The glaciers are making rumbling noises, which doesn't seem good.
But the parents don't have time to pay attention to children saying "I think you should come look at this", they're too busy aggravating their marital problems with passive-aggressive arguments!
Toby's trying to 3d print an illicit gun but the safety lock wouldn't let him. He's in the military which might be hy the mom decided they had to separate.
Toby and the mom have take a hike with Will and the robot, and Dr Smith & Don & chicken are hiking around too, but they keep intercutting between these 2 threades & the girls on the ship doing nothing but bad dialogue and character development that rings false.
Parents/robot/Will are hearing noises from the robot's ship on their hike away from their ship that they left in the care of their 2 teen daughters, who immediately got in a fight, and Penny disobeyed their instructions and slammed on the gas & broke out of the ice.
Penny's now climbing into the ATV in the hold and is opening the doors to fuck off by herself after the hikers because Judy, traumatized by her suffocation last night, was PTSD-crying and didn't want to go.
Mom suddenly decided they should try to learn all they can about Robot and asked it to lead them to the site of the forest fire, over Toby's objections. They hike off after it without a thought to the teenagers in their ship in the glacier.
Penny has overcome her brief 2nd thoughts and, after getting no parent response on the walkie talkie, slammed on the gas again.
These children are all less upset and less anxious to take their predicament seriously and help their parents than the children in my family were about, say, taking a wrong turn on a nature trail, or preparing for the funeral of a great aunt.
Why would these parents just set off exploring randomly without even starting to set up camp? They haven't even looked for where to camp. They left in the middle of getting their ship running! And they left their ship and their ATV with their CLEARLY irresponsible teens!
Is it possible for parents to have children this completely unreliable about following important instructions and NOT KNOW THAT? I mean don't parents notice this about their own children?
The parents are now casually beachcombing in the wreckage of the robot's ALIEN TECHNOLOGY!!! spaceship. Mom's taking this chance to continue to snipe and sneer at the dad... are they even out of earshot of the kid? How long is this strife going to stay a secret?
Uhoh... the robot's hd had rebooted in the forest fire but it's now remembering Bad Things and its face went red, which might mean that it's becoming evil again. Evil robot(s) sabotage caused their colony ship to evacuate...
The parents obviously didn't know that, but it honestly wouldn't make their behavior a GREAT deal less plausible.
So Robot had a flashback and went red, and somehow Will saw (mind-melded?) the flashback and then panicked and ran away from the ship and his parents didn't even notice. The robot chased him, but they didn't. Guess they're still in the wreckage. Looking at star charts, having forgotten all three children...
Will initiates the world's most fucked-up game of Simon Says and when the robot proves itself willing to walk over a cliff if he says so, he changes his mind and they make up. Very emotonal moment.
Dr Smith bonded with Don; they found an unconscious survivor and he's carrying her as well as the chicken. Dr Smith leaves them in a rock outcropping in the edge of a blizzard with a flare gun, says she's going "to find help". They don't even know that there are other survivors.
Hailstorm reaches the parents and Will, who find another outcropping for shelter. Their radios finally cut in and they hear Penny driving down the glacier to them in the ATV without permission. Fortuitously as it turns out. She'll swing by.
According to @waxjism, Space Divorce Family Robinson here are even less competent than the cast of the Prometheus in Alien Whatsitsface.
Maybe the real Dr Smith, whose jacket Parker Posey stole, was the one who built the robots? Parker Posey recognized Robot and freaked, but Will says he's not dangerous. DUN DUN. OR IS HE?
The troubling suspicion now on my mind is that we're meant to read Penny's piloting the ship out of its outcropping at risk of crushing against orders, and commandeering of the ATV to drive after her parents, as bravely ~getting shit done~ and not as terrible decisions?
It was not good. Especially not the direction. Or the dialogue. Or the plot. (The actors are all fine.)
We've started watching the new Lost in Space and the actors are all good, including, as Toby noted, the extraordinarily competent child actors, BUT the directing (and the script) are terrible.
Everything is mistimed and miscued, and that includes the plot, which for some reason thought they needed like 5 simultaneous emergencies that aren't even competently interwoven. There's just too much peril.
I've got peril fatigue. There are 2/5 mains in literal time-limit mortal peril, a child trying to simultaneously save both and the 2 dudes both lost and alone. I can't care about this many perils at one time, guys. It's becoming boring!
Now the tiny boy genius is crying in the forest outside of what I can only assume is Vancouver. Everyone else still on Hoth.
Oh, now it's like Party of Five dialogue. And why is the set for their house so bad? I can't put my finger on what's wrong with it, but...
The two characters who should be trying to dig Judy out of the ice before her oxygen runs out have now forgotten that she's there and are just having bonding moments sitting next to the ice where she's trapped and it's intercut with flashbacks. While she's still in the ice.
Now we're back to Vancouver. No idea where Toby Stephens is all this time, btw. Probably hiking alone back to the ice emergency but we haven't seen him. Didn't even see him leave. Judy's still in the ice. Will decides to set out in a random direction! Into the woods!
Because wandering away from the last place your future rescuers saw you is obviously the best way to get rescued when lost on an alien planet. Fortunately Will has already managed to stumble across a forest fire, and decides to get a closer look, as you do.
Will is now climbing a sequoia with the aid of some fake branches that have been like glued onto it. Oh, we're back at the ice pond. Mom and Penny are angry that Toby left Will but they haven't done antyhing about the hole in the ice this whole time.
Oh, and of course, while he's IN the process of breaking through the ice, Mom is trying to PARENT Him (he's her partner, remember!) with a Teachable Moment over his shoulder. "Why do you think THAT might be?" she snipes.
She looks remarkably rosy-cheeked for a recent survivor of emergency field surgery performed by her child. Outdoors. On a glacier.
Flashback to their marital problems. We haven't found out through the beginning of the episode but they're actually in the middle of a marital separation or something? That makes what, six emergencies?
At least this CGI butterfly flower was competently done.
Emergency #7: forest fire spreading towards the tree where Will is trapped by a hostile robot. Emergency #8: It starts raining, and the liquid water is making the ice colder somehow while putting out the magnesium torches.
Oh and I forgot to count the fact that in flashback we ALSO learned that the Mom falsified safety competence test results to get Will's space travel clearance and lied about it to the rest of the family.
We're befriending robots with Will for an awfully long time for an audience who still doesn't know the status of Judy's oxygen tank given teh ice/rain problem... the director has forgotten about the mom's emergency field surgery completely.
The robot arrived in time to save Judy, but meanwhile, the family all forgot Judy was suffocating even though her glove is sticking out of the hole in the ice piteously the whole time they're just staring at the robot blankly.
Also the robot got a chance to say "Danger, Will Robinson". {This is the only thing it will say in 2 episodes.}
Parker Posey just showed up and name-dropped Dr Zachary Smith, so we can all hope that episode 2 is going to ahve EVEN MORE emergencies to go around.
Ep 2 is well underway, but nothing has really happened. Dr Parker Posey Smith and the mechanic she crashed with, Don, haven't even moved from their crash site below the treeline, they've adopted a random chicken, Toby's poking at their crashed pod/ship. No developments of any kind @ 12 min.
Sibling hostility and immaturity for the children is overblown. Penny's eyerolling and shirking her mom-assigned filter-cleaning and making fun of Will's "creepy robot". The glaciers are making rumbling noises, which doesn't seem good.
But the parents don't have time to pay attention to children saying "I think you should come look at this", they're too busy aggravating their marital problems with passive-aggressive arguments!
Toby's trying to 3d print an illicit gun but the safety lock wouldn't let him. He's in the military which might be hy the mom decided they had to separate.
Toby and the mom have take a hike with Will and the robot, and Dr Smith & Don & chicken are hiking around too, but they keep intercutting between these 2 threades & the girls on the ship doing nothing but bad dialogue and character development that rings false.
Parents/robot/Will are hearing noises from the robot's ship on their hike away from their ship that they left in the care of their 2 teen daughters, who immediately got in a fight, and Penny disobeyed their instructions and slammed on the gas & broke out of the ice.
Penny's now climbing into the ATV in the hold and is opening the doors to fuck off by herself after the hikers because Judy, traumatized by her suffocation last night, was PTSD-crying and didn't want to go.
Mom suddenly decided they should try to learn all they can about Robot and asked it to lead them to the site of the forest fire, over Toby's objections. They hike off after it without a thought to the teenagers in their ship in the glacier.
Penny has overcome her brief 2nd thoughts and, after getting no parent response on the walkie talkie, slammed on the gas again.
These children are all less upset and less anxious to take their predicament seriously and help their parents than the children in my family were about, say, taking a wrong turn on a nature trail, or preparing for the funeral of a great aunt.
Why would these parents just set off exploring randomly without even starting to set up camp? They haven't even looked for where to camp. They left in the middle of getting their ship running! And they left their ship and their ATV with their CLEARLY irresponsible teens!
Is it possible for parents to have children this completely unreliable about following important instructions and NOT KNOW THAT? I mean don't parents notice this about their own children?
The parents are now casually beachcombing in the wreckage of the robot's ALIEN TECHNOLOGY!!! spaceship. Mom's taking this chance to continue to snipe and sneer at the dad... are they even out of earshot of the kid? How long is this strife going to stay a secret?
Uhoh... the robot's hd had rebooted in the forest fire but it's now remembering Bad Things and its face went red, which might mean that it's becoming evil again. Evil robot(s) sabotage caused their colony ship to evacuate...
The parents obviously didn't know that, but it honestly wouldn't make their behavior a GREAT deal less plausible.
So Robot had a flashback and went red, and somehow Will saw (mind-melded?) the flashback and then panicked and ran away from the ship and his parents didn't even notice. The robot chased him, but they didn't. Guess they're still in the wreckage. Looking at star charts, having forgotten all three children...
Will initiates the world's most fucked-up game of Simon Says and when the robot proves itself willing to walk over a cliff if he says so, he changes his mind and they make up. Very emotonal moment.
Dr Smith bonded with Don; they found an unconscious survivor and he's carrying her as well as the chicken. Dr Smith leaves them in a rock outcropping in the edge of a blizzard with a flare gun, says she's going "to find help". They don't even know that there are other survivors.
Hailstorm reaches the parents and Will, who find another outcropping for shelter. Their radios finally cut in and they hear Penny driving down the glacier to them in the ATV without permission. Fortuitously as it turns out. She'll swing by.
According to @waxjism, Space Divorce Family Robinson here are even less competent than the cast of the Prometheus in Alien Whatsitsface.
Maybe the real Dr Smith, whose jacket Parker Posey stole, was the one who built the robots? Parker Posey recognized Robot and freaked, but Will says he's not dangerous. DUN DUN. OR IS HE?
The troubling suspicion now on my mind is that we're meant to read Penny's piloting the ship out of its outcropping at risk of crushing against orders, and commandeering of the ATV to drive after her parents, as bravely ~getting shit done~ and not as terrible decisions?
(no subject)
Date: 15 Apr 2018 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Apr 2018 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Apr 2018 09:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18 Apr 2018 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18 Apr 2018 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16 Apr 2018 11:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Apr 2018 04:41 pm (UTC)It's plausible that my narrative also makes it sound worse than it is because I just found it so irritating, like, because it shouldn't have been difficult to do better so I'm kind of insulted that they didn't...