episode #6 - Welcome Stranger

episode #6 / Air Date: 10/20/65
written by Peter Packer; Directed by Alvin Ganzer

This episode contained the first real guest star - Warren Oates, who plays a sort of spaceman cowboy named Hapgood. He's also from Earth, as unlikely as that seems, having left our planet in 1982 (15 years before the Robinsons) in his little ship, on his way to Saturn (why Saturn i.e. why would he want to land there?). He missed Saturn (huh?) and has been wandering the spaceways ever since - yee-haw! The group mistook his ship for a missile at the start of the episode.

Oates actually contributes a good, naturalistic performance here; the best scene is when John Robinson requests Hapgood to take his two youngest kids (Will & Penny) with him, back to Earth; Hapgood gets angry with John and even lectures him about outer space, mostly because he's asking Hapgood to take over responsibility for two children; in a sense, Hapgood has a good point - he may be right. Don, of course, sides with John and there's then a fist fight.

The episode kind of ambles along for the most part and, even with the nice dramatic scene here-&-there, is pretty slow. A brief threat pops up when some spores on Hapgood's ship grow into large plant-like creatures - one of these almost swallows Penny.
NOTE: The character of Hapgood anticipates later astronaut-cowboys in films like Cowboy in Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) BoG's Score: 6 out of 10
Epilogue Tag: the men set up some kind of drilling site and Penny wanders in just as an explosive is about to go off; John leaps for her just as it explodes... freeze frame!