Netflix’s’ ‘Lost in Space’ reboot is worth blasting off with

Say you wanted to remake the 1960s sci-fi series “Lost in Space” for a 2018 premium streaming network, a show that went off the air 50 years ago, a show whose own vision of the future only extended to 1997.

There are things you would have to include. “Lost in Space” is not “Lost in Space” without the Robinsons, the robot and Dr. Smith; you might get away with losing hotshot pilot Don West, but someone would complain. You would need a spaceship called the Jupiter II (do not ask what happened to the Jupiter I), circular in design. Like the Swiss Family Robinson whose name they pointedly share, they would need to be lost — not upon the seas but … in space. At some point the robot is going to have to say, “Danger, Will Robinson.”

And there are things you would have to do differently.

Netflix has taken this challenge, with its new “Lost in Space,” developed by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (the “Power Rangers” movie) from Irwin Allen's original series.

It's not without problems, mostly with pacing and length and a certain repetitiousness that creeps in when your story lasts 10 hours. But its solutions to building and modernizing characters who in the original were brightly painted cutouts are generally sound, while some basic alterations to the premise help ensure that the new series is not the cosmic “Gilligan's Island” the 1960s series became.

The Robinsons are no longer the first family in space, but part of a massive colonization drive, spurred by environmental catastrophe on Earth. They are attached to the Resolute, a sort of space-going aircraft carrier able to make the Alpha Centauri run in more or less no time; the Jupiter II is the flying saucer meant to carry them to the surface.

But some things happen and they, and several other families, wind up stranded on an uncharted, unsettled planet that — as in the original — threatens in various ways to kill them.

The women's parts have been strengthened. In the original, June Lockhart's Maureen, though nominally a biochemist and not without maternal spine, actually served milk and cookies. Now Maureen (Molly Parker), a scientific polymath, is the effective head of the family, to which John (Toby Stephens), a former Navy SEAL often away, is trying to return, even as his wife files for divorce. Older daughter Judy (Taylor Russell), little more than a blond mannequin in the original, is a medical doctor (and the product of Maureen's first marriage, and biracial). Penny (Mina Sundwall) is still the dreamy middle child, but also a sulky teenager.

I think this reboot is worth sticking with, though I can see that some viewers may find their patience tried, by the clockwork arrival of disaster as much as by the behavior of the characters. The Robinsons, as recast here, can be mopey and sad and sniping, with a tendency to withhold information from one another.

It's always a little weird when characters bring their personal resentments into life-anddeath situations, but I suppose people do, and anyway, it gives them somewhere to go over the course of the season. They get there, if you can wait. The robot, too.