All these shows were staples of syndication in the 70s and early 80s and were run and rerun countless times which is how most of the devotees originally found them (you can see someone is watching Time Tunnel or Land of the Giants in the background of a scene in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm). I think I probably saw a few episodes of all the Allen shows during their original network broadcasts, then watched all the episodes in syndication. I think there was a time when you could watch episodes of all four series every day but usually Voyage and LIS would be in syndication and Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants would appear and disappear because they had fewer episodes to "strip" (i.e. run daily Monday thru Friday).
"The second season aired in the same time slot as Batman, and it has been suggested that the camp tone was adopted to compete with Batman. There was a growing emphasis on Smith, Will and the Robot at the expense of the other characters. Smith's change in character was not appreciated by the other actors. According to Billy Mumy, Mark Goddard and Guy Williams disliked the shift from serious science fiction.[4]"- from Wikipedia
As to the debate over LIS ever being considered "serious science fiction" even from the start, it sure took a turn into insanity with season two.
TWO examples To Wit-
1) An Interstellar Hotel manager that appears in an elevator space ship with a Seran-wrap force field
LIS takes the turn to camp in EPISODE 5 when Warren Oates shows up as a space cowboy. Much of the first season would be looked at quite differently if it had simply been shot in color instead of black and white--the black and white look gives the show a "serious" feel that the stories don't always generate themselves, although there were definitely more attempts at a serious tone in season one than in the latter seasons.
By the way, is the post directly above by CindyLover a document released as part of the freedom of information act with a little editing? Just wondering what the mark out is for out of general curiosity. I know I've seen it here before.
It's used to hide spoilers (you never know). Write the word spoiler inside [ ] before something, /spoiler inside [ ] after it and there you go.
