episode #62 - Kidnapped in Space

episode #62 / Air Date: 9/20/67 (episode # 3 of 3rd season)
written by Robert Hamner; Directed by Don Richardson

Still traveling in outer space, Smith and the Robot take the escape pod (a new addition to the show) in response to a distress signal. They come upon a huge ship whose inhabitants, a silver-skinned people, demand that Smith operate on their leader (it is "Dr. Smith" after all ). The Robinsons follow in the Jupiter 2 (John states that it's the biggest ship he's ever seen; however, it's the same ship from the early 1st season episode The Derelict). The leader of the aliens turns out to be a big fancy clock - when it stops, they stop; when it winds down, they will all wind down.

The action kicks in when John & Don get into a fight with the aliens; the aliens throw these magnetic clock-bombs which stick to anything. In the meantime, it's the Robot which seems able to repair the leader, but it refuses because it knows that conquest is the goal of the aliens. The aliens figure that the one way to get it to do their bidding is to threaten Will. The aliens are also able to control the movement of time in select areas; they can, for example, cause a person to go backwards in time for a minute or so, as they do Maureen. "Time is not something to be measured. It is merely something to be used."

A truly mind-bending concept is included when the selective time warping is used on John; he was, apparently, deceased before this. Then, Smith uses it on himself, with the usual debacle resulting - we get to see Smith as a little kid (which was kind of creepy - hearing old Smith's voice coming from a 9-year old). This wasn't too bad in pace and far-out ideas, though the astronomy/science was as bad as ever: the aliens are said to be in the "Xenian galaxy" which John finds on his electronic maps, suggesting that the Jupiter 2 swings from galaxy to galaxy easily. BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10