User Reviews

After four consecutive strong episodes (Season Two/ Season Three), Kidnapped in Space is a drop-off.

After hearing a need for a doctor with promise of riches, greedy Dr. Smith somehow (inadvertently) pilots the Space Pod (with The Robot on-board) into a giant alien space ship.

Once inside the alien ship, the silver looking aliens attempt to force Dr. Smith to operate on their leader/ computer.

Some positives:

The alien ship is a colorized version of the ship from Season One's "The Derelict" looks very impressive. And the ability to travel back in time and some of the action sequences with Prof Robinson and Major West are very good. In addition, some of giant gadgets, primarily the leader/ computer are visually impressive.

The negatives:

The story is marred by stupidity involving Dr. Smith and The Robot as "doctors". For example. The idiotic "doctor" statements from The Robot negate what could have been a much better episode if done right. Also, now Dr. Smith is not a "real" doctor, when we know from the earliest episode, that he was in fact a doctor.

What can I say about this episode but the first thing I noticed was the lead android, a male, had the orange terry-cloth head device, like hair on his head, and the two main females we see (how could anyone miss them? Above or below?) one has a raven-haired combination bouffant, tied in pigtails hair do, while the other one, who has no dialogue has the same hairstyle, but is BLONDE! Star Trek, Doctor Who, they don't compare to this attempt to look futuristic and updated. I guess the one good thing for the performers is this is one they could deny if they had to, cuz no one would recognize them unless they told it was them.

The episode does trip into Will saving the day, but this emerged in numerous episodes. Apparently Maureen, Judy and Penny slept thru this entire adventure.

Not a bad episode and worth noting for the accidentally younged version of Dr. Smith (the uncredited child does his part remarkably well) and yes, we see the spaceship from the first season again, but like Bewitched, this was a time when reruns were not known to be, so who would notice? But it will always stand out to me for those ridiculous hairdos.

A trademark of every Irwin Allen show is the silver-skinned alien. He or she may pop up solo or in groups as they do in this LiS installment from season three.

Male and female ones enlist the aid of Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) to "operate" on their mechanical leader.

Highlights of this episode include the first appearance of the Space pod, the over-the-top hairdos of the female aliens, and Dr. Smith discovering a "fountain of youth," of sorts.

Turning Smith young is a novel idea that is marred by the decision to have the nine-year-old actor playing the youthful Smith "speak" with Harris' voice.

It probably sounded "cute" on paper but it comes across laughably in execution.

In deep space, Dr Smith responds to a call for help on the ship's radio, however all is not what it seems when silver aliens demand Smith's help or he dies.

Irwin Allen was really pushing his luck by using exactly the same giant alien spacecraft again. In this episode, it is meant to be a never seen before craft, I wonder how many viewers swallowed this? Oh well, if Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea can use the same whale footage almost once a season (four times in total) I guess LIS can do this? As dumb as it might sound, these strange quirks are partly what make Irwin TV what it is. It all has a special identity.

With Kidnapped In Space, LIS was still in that improving-the-series-with-action-and-energy tone that played so well in the year three opener, Condemned Of Space. For this reason, I like the episode a lot but am bothered by two really stupid and childish moments in act three and act four. Firstly, Smith behaves like a clown when in the prison escape scene. Secondly, Smith transforming into a child actor with an adult voice is painfully bad to watch. But the rest of the hour is fine...

This was the first of several year three episodes with silver skinned aliens and followers of the just axed (in 1967) Time Tunnel will suspect the aliens have just jumped ship from one Irwin series to another. All Irwin aliens are silver. The general look of the aliens standing around blinking light hardware or walking inside the Jupiter 2 late at night or doing battle around the full-scale space pod, is pleasing to the eye and the female alien will be pleasing to some male eyes for another reason. The hour will be seen as childish compared to The Time Tunnel but fun all the same.

Don't forget to hang around for Dick Tufeld's high energy "Next Week On Lost In Space" advert at the end. These ads always deserve a mention as they were better narrated and edited than the "Next Week On Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" adverts.

"Kidnapped in Space", like many episodes in the Lost in Space catalogue, is an uneven pleasure. I really dug the giant sets representative of a giant space probe housing a cybernetic *brain* ("the greatest, most powerful brain in the universe") and its android "collective", needing someone to repair the machine before it "dies". The idea that a machine is "sick" and must be "treated" in "surgery" is handled in a jokey manner, with Androids #764 & #1220 (Grant Sullivan and Carol Williams) among others, insisting Dr. Smith to operate, putting surgical gloves and operating gown, with a surgical hat, on him prior to the "big operation". This all starts when Will and Robot, at Smith's urging, answer a distress call from the space probe offering monetary reward for medical assistance. Smith, never one to turn down the possibility of riches, gets in the space pod quietly when the others are asleep, is startled by the Robot who accidentally backs him into the take-off controls, the two heading for the space probe. The space probe is the exact ship seen in the first episode of Lost in Space, just more laziness out of the prop dept. The way the probe opens its "mouth", a magnetic ray pulling the Jupiter 2 into it is also ripped right from the first episode, except this time in color instead of B&W. The androids (for some reason, called aliens) are as usual covered in silver paint, costumed in a uniform right out of a Buck Rogers serial. Of course, the main reason the androids want their leader to be salvaged is to rule the universe. Robot knows this and will not operate…that is until the androids secretly board the Jupiter (after taking John and West hostage, as well as, imprisoning Smith when his services are realized to be useless), using a device that determines what member of the Robinson party is the closest to Robot, that being Will. Lots of action in this one, as John and Major West find themselves in a showdown with the androids who have unique weapons including little clock bombs that explode (one actually attaches to John's chest in a cool moment) and clock devices that actually turn time back when focused on an individual (John's life is actually saved because of this and Dr. Smith gets so carried away at the possibility of time control he accidentally turns himself back into a child (speaking in Harris' voice, for petesake!)). Robot must have telepathic abilities because his sensors seem to know malicious intent and foresee danger from those the Robinsons have yet met. Robot's ego, known to inflame in past episodes when he gets involved with machines, is once again appeased when lending his expertise (two cybernetic medical years in college) to the cybernetic brain.

Aside from a lot of dr. Smith's antics I don't know how people can say this is a boring episode there's a lot of excitement going on with a bomb being thrown at each other John getting laser shot and the bending of time and I thought this was a pretty interesting show I mean nothing perfect no matter who you talk to you going to find someone that loved it or hated it bottom line is sit back and enjoy looking back at this all on Blu-ray it looks great and I give this a 9 there will be people that will argue that that no way in heck but I give it that. I would say out of 84 episodes including the Lost pilot 49 are very well done of course there were some that weren't the greatest that's because the writers I think played around with it wouldn't writers like Barney Slater I like his writing because he kept the seriousness and most of his episodes the comedic parts and the family bonding watch a lot of this episodes some including Follow the Leader from season 1 prisoners of space season 2 wreck of the robot even if you go back a little bit The Deadly games are gamma 6 wasn't too bad so enjoy you pusillanimous pipsqueaks.

They keep saying they are going to other Galaxies but that would be Impossible and Absurd! If they are going to Alpha Centauri which is only 4.5 light years from Earth, they're in the Same Milky Way Galaxy! They have no need to go to Another Galaxy! If they landed on a planet they would be further than Alpha Centauri because its the closest Star System to ours.... Any planets they encounter wouldn't be as close to their original destination! If they were going to another Galaxy they would be long dead before ever reaching it because of the distance, time & lack of supplies to sustain them! They would not even make it across our own Galaxy!