I grew up with the original "Lost in Space" series that aired between 1965 and 1968, and like most 8-12 year old boys I easily identified with the Will Robinson character, played by child star Billy Mummy. And like most boys of that generation, I desperately wanted to be Will. The reboot takes a lot of liberties and doesn't hold together as well, but once again the stand out character is Will Robinson, this time played by the very talented 12 year old Maxwell Jenkins. I still identify with the Will Robinson character, and I'd still like to be that kid, but now I kinda dig his mom too.

The Robinson family has been updated for modern era with a military dad who has been away on too many long deployments, and a strong mom who is recognized as one of the top aerospace engineers of her time. Of course that breeds parental conflict and the kids worry about divorce, but the challenges of being 'lost in space' force them to work as a team, which ultimately brings the parents back together. The buffoonery of the original Dr. Smith character has been dropped in favor of a purely evil woman who has secretly stowed away and is masquerading under the name Dr. Smith. The robot character, which was originally a helpful tag-a-long friend to Will is now big and vicious, and alternates between friendly and monstrously evil with the jarring abruptness of an old-school WWE wrestler shifting from babyface to heel.

Each of the ten episodes has multiple storylines that either conclude or cliff hang at the end of the hour, so character development is rushed to build the micro-stories, but it feels random and forced which hurts the season-long narrative. Lost in Space might have worked as a traditional television series, but the rushed storylines and haphazard character development fail in the Netflix environment where multiple episodes are consumed binge style.

I suppose I enjoyed the show enough to watch all ten episodes, but there are too many points where a viewer gets pulled in multiple directions to satisfy minor plot points at the expense of the grand narrative, which drags my overall rating of the series reboot to just below mediocre.

Oh, and the one thing I can't understand about Lost in Space and other fictional space-centric programs, is why the imagined typography of the future is so damn boring. It seems that in every futuristic film or TV series the designers ban the serif. I simply can't imagine a more wretched life than living in a world sans serif. Typography matters, damn it.