"Land of the Giants" (1968) TV series 1968-1970

Creator:

Irwin Allen

Seasons:

1 | 2

Release Date:

22 September 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Mini-people - playthings in a world of giant tormentors!

Plot:

A space flight crashes on earth, but it is not the same earth the ship was from. They have arrived to a land of giants.

Plot Keywords:

Giant | Repair | Giant Hand | Caged Human | Giant Animal

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Gary Conway	...	Capt. Steve Burton (51 episodes, 1968-1970)
Don Matheson	...	Mark Wilson (51 episodes, 1968-1970)
Stefan Arngrim	...	Barry Lockridge (51 episodes, 1968-1970)
Don Marshall	...	Dan Erickson (51 episodes, 1968-1970)
Deanna Lund	...	Valerie Scott (51 episodes, 1968-1970)
Heather Young	...	Betty Hamilton (51 episodes, 1968-1970)
Kurt Kasznar	...	Alexander B. Fitzhugh (51 episodes, 1968-1970)

Runtime:

Argentina:60 min | USA:60 min (51 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:Atp

Filming Locations:

20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

20th Century Fox Television

Trivia:

The cabin chairs used in the Spindrift are the same design as those used in the cabin of the spaceship seen in the original "Planet of the Apes" (1968), also in production at 20th Century-Fox in the summer of 1967.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the first episode, the Spindrift departed from New York on its flight to London. In later episodes, the departing city is changed to Los Angeles.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Boom! Hollywood's Greatest Disaster Movies (2000) (V)

An INtelligent Worthwhile Show

Clearly someone knew what they were doing with this thing, but when it messes up, it really messes up.

But I think the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

Problems consist of the attempt to get Lost In Space's success with Jonathan Harris and Billy Mumy with Kurt Kaznar and Stefan Arngrim. That was a miss. Arngrim looks unhappy the entire time he was on this show. And Kaznar was too hammy.

It seems at one time the realization was that Deanna Lund was more appealing visually, so there would be attempts to make a trio of troublemakers, but that seemed to be the wrong direction as well. I think Valerie could have done it but with one of the other characters, acting wise. She just wasn't clicking with Kaznar or Arngrim.

The second glitch seems to be was it earth or not Earth, if not Earth then why did so much of it look like Earth. This led to much confusion as well.

Problem 3 was unavoidable. Our flight attendant Betty became pregnant in real life. By the time she returned to the show and was able to go with the plots rather than being hindered by her pregnancy, it seems it was too late and the show was tanking.

Betty actually worked better with Kaznar than Valerie did.

The truly amazing thing about seeing this show for the first time just a few years ago is that none of the main cast went on to do anything, so they were all brand new for me.

Oh, there are recognizable guest stars like Jack Albertson, Jesse White, John Carradine, Susan Howard, Bruce Dern and Yvonne Craig, but none of the regulars ever did anything else.

Stefan Arngrim's sister, Allison, went on to portray Nellie Oleson on Little House and she had much more life than her older brother did here.

The saving grace for this show is plots. Some of these plots here are worthy of the original Star Trek. Off the top of my head, standouts are the clone episode with much greater comprehension of how to do twin portayals and the final episode with Dern and Craig is phenomenal to watch.

These shows are hardly an insult to the intelligence.

It seems Land of the Giants aired in the UK and outside of America more than it did within the states after it had been cancelled, as I never saw this show before or even heard of it.

It is deep, that's for sure. Pity there couldn't have been a conclusion episode where the passengers and crew returned to 1983 (!) but the final episode is an intriguing finale in and of itself.