I’m referring to the new series, the Netflix one. I’ve never really watched the old one but I’ve seen enough clips to know: “Danger Will Robinson”. There are several reasons why I stopped watching even though I’m starving for non-pessimistic future space science fiction.
The first one is that I don’t enjoy seeing people make obvious bad decisions. When it was the kids making bad decisions it was annoying but it made sense, they are kids after all. But when it’s adults, I can’t stand it. These are supposed to be a selection of the most intelligent and capable adults on earth, and yet, they constantly make bad decisions.
Some spoilers ahead. Stop reading here if you don’t want to be exposed to them.
For example, Maureen Robinson decided to go do an experiment with a high altitude balloon, on her own, without telling anybody, on a planet of unknown levels danger. She should have taken a few people with her and notified other people where she was going to be. This is what we do on earth when we go hiking or some other wilderness adventure. At the very least her ex-husband would have jumped into the opportunity as he’s hungry for her acceptance but also being a former military man, he’s a good asset. This almost cost her life in a very stupid way.
Ignacio Serricchio, the mechanic, not notifying everybody what happened with Dr. Smith. Judy Robinson not notifying everybody what happened with Dr. Smith. See a pattern? There’s a lot of information hoarding. When you are in a life-or-death situation in such a small community of survivals, you don’t hoard information. You share it so that if they are part of a bigger puzzle, someone can put it together.
I had to stop watching when Maureen Robinson discovered their impending doom and didn’t immediately tell everybody. I don’t know if she’ll tell them afterwards but just considering not doing was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I sort of understand keeping doom-predicting information from the general population of Earth, to avoid panic, specially if the average person can’t do anything about it. This is not the case. They are a elite, they are a small community of highly capable people that should know if they are doomed to work their asses off to solve the problem, using resources that maybe they would have been saving for the future otherwise. A future that doesn’t exist.
Oh… and electricity, physics, astrophysics and medicine are all horribly wrong. Not a little wrong, not a little exaggerated: horribly wrong.
