THE GREAT GADFLY:

Planet Earth Is Blue And There's Nothing I Can Do

"What made 'Lost In Space' so great, aside from its inventive use of papier mache and whatever props happened to be lying around the studio, was its uncomfortable pairing of the American nuclear family with a glaring homosexual. Dr. Smith was the most outrageously campy, effete and immoral character seen on screen before or since, and yet the family Robinson doggedly insisted that deep down there was something essentially good and worthy in him. Through sheer upstaging, Dr. Smith became the de facto star of the show, and his relationship with young Will Robinson, the pre-pubescent boy, its disturbing emotional centre. Dr. Smith's heterosexual opposite, Major Don West, was, in contrast, utterly reliable and loyal, but somehow bland and boring compared to the always entertaining doctor, whose alliterative barbs invariably reduced the Major to silent, flustered macho posturing."
-Bruce LaBruce