Land of the Giants began as a pure “try to stay alive” series, but it veered into a contrasting formula about midway through Season 1, transforming into a fantasy variation of The Fugitive (where’s the one-armed Giant?). If LOTG is rebooted as a movie trilogy, perhaps the first film could focus on survival; the second film on intrigue; and the third on escape.
Whatever the format, Our Heroes are going to need a foe, specifically an Inspector Kobick type. In terms of casting, the same aspects for a nefarious Fitzhugh would also apply for Kobick as well.
INSPECTOR DOBBS KOBICK
Aged 40-41 years old
If you wanted someone who has agent pedigree, two actresses come immediately to mind:
GILLIAN ANDERSON
Aged 52
Famous for playing FBI Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files. She has played odd and eccentric characters like Miss Havisham in a BBC adaptation of Great Expectations, and Blanche DuBois in a stage performance of A Streetcar Named Desire.
JODIE FOSTER
Aged 58
Jodie won an Oscar playing FBI Agent Clarice Starling in the film The Silence of the Lambs.
THE most important question of all is (of course) who will play Chipper? Chipper was a male terrier of unknown breed. But who says you have to go with the same critter? You could go hip, like borrowing a naked mole rat from Ron Stoppable or something…
The Giant entomologist must make an appearance. Played in the series by the late actor Don Watters, his signature black hair, beard, and glasses often comes to mind when LOTG is mentioned.
If you’re wacky enough to reboot the Pied Piper episode, get Gary Oldman. Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) from Lost In Space played the original Piper, but has sadly passed on. So, get Gary, who played Dr. Smith in the LIS movie, to play the Piper in the Giants reboot. Thankfully, there wasn’t the equivalent of LIS’s “The Great Vegetable War” episode in Giants.
PLOT AND OTHER THOUGHTS:
I don’t think the Spindrift will need a redesign. Adding details to the physical and CG models would be expected, of course. Also, I’ve seen the Spindrift described as a “spaceship”, but it’s more accurately described as a “rocket transport”, “supersonic transport” or “sub-orbital transport”.
(Purely for size/ratio comparisons, of course…
)If he hasn’t officially retired from music composing, get John Williams to work on the reboot again -– at least the theme. I personally preferred his 2nd season theme over 1st season, though it would be fun to see a new reanimated sequence in the credits. If John isn’t available, try for Bruce Broughton, who composed the excellent soundtrack for the Lost in Space movie.
A plea to the studios: please keep the size ratios consistent! The early plot details had the characters very small (1-2 inches). The scale was about 3-4 inches in the pilot episode. Finally, it seemed to settle at about 6 inches for the rest of the series. The initial size made interaction between the Earthlings and the Giants difficult, especially communication. One episode had a Giant putting the girls in a jar hooked up to a listening device so he could talk to them. The writers realized how much this restricted the kinds of stories they could tell and, without explanation, changed the Giants to be coherent. The entire series, when you got down to it, had erratic writing throughout, whether it was the Giant society, customs, technology, etc.
In this post 9/11 world, it would be difficult for Fitzhugh to bring a gun aboard the Spindrift. Perhaps it could be a case of sabotage for some reason, like Dr. Smith from Lost in Space.
According to Deanna Lund, had the show gone onto a third season, it would have explored a romance between Valerie and Mark because their actors were getting married. So, Karen Gillan x Natalie Portman? Natalie has experience from Black Swan. Karen is personally bisexual.
They must break out the skating outfits for a “Collector’s Item” remake, as well as “The Marionettes” puppet costumes. They are iconic to the SW fan.
(The following pages depend heavily on tvtropes.org and Wikipedia)
There are two main questions for the setting:
1) Do you keep the 1960s technology/near future timeline or do you update it to present day? (2050 maybe?) There’s nothing like those go-go fashions and dialing the big rotary office phone.
2) Is the Giant world a real planet in our nearby interstellar neighborhood, or is it located in a parallel alternate universe? The popular theory is that the Earthlings were transported to an alternate universe, which would help explain why those pesky laws of physics prohibiting Giant animals/humans from existing don’t apply.
Whether in our universe or not, no name was ever established for the Giants’s planet, but the denizens knew of Earth, Venus, and Mars, mentioning them by name. Exactly where the planet was located was also never made clear. In one episode, Steve Burton claimed to have seen Earth through a set of infrared goggles created by the Giants, suggesting that the two worlds were close enough to see one from the other. Murray Leinster, the author of several LOTG novels, suggested that the planet was near the star Tau Ceti, which is a common locale of science-fiction stories. Murray labored hard in his books to come up with science laws to explain the LOTG universe. The only proven way by which Earthlings could get to the Giants's planet was high-altitude flight, passing through what one Giant called a "dimension lock".
The planet, what we would call a “Super-Earth”, had at least four zones. One continent was dominated by an authoritarian government which tolerated full freedoms within a capitalist system, but it didn't abide any effort to influence political change. At least one overseas land had a despotic ruler. There was a hidden advanced underground civilization which apparently held free elections. Finally, Air Traffic Control told those who ventured out to sea that they should turn back, that nothing beyond that sea had been explored nor was there current contact. The area was generally referred to as the Graveyard of Fools -- whether this was an official government stance or the truth was not known.
The great majority of the series took place in the repressive land. Culturally, this society closely resembled the United States of 1968, but could be technologically unbalanced in some episodes. There was advanced equipment like androids, cloning, cybernetics, force fields, magnetic stunners, and teleporters. At the same time, other areas of tech were more primitive or nonexistent (no microelectronics, no hearing aids, no manned space flight). This culture had a police force, private hospitals, prisons, a State Governor, senators, radio and television services, a zoo, jazz clubs, even a racetrack. The Giants spoke English, used dollars as currency, drove American cars, attended Vaudeville-style theatres, and even played chess (remake that episode, too).
In the first season, the Giants had alien names. For example, a Giant criminal named Logar posed as an Earthling by the name "Joe", and his cohorts laughed at how weird "Joe" sounded. However, in the second season, many Giants had average English-sounding names, while others still had alien names (often in the same episode). One episode featured a Giant "Irishman" who mistook the Earthlings for Leprechauns.
Beneath this American façade, however, was an iron fist, with the Special Investigations Department (S.I.D.) serving as a KGB-type secret police. "Good citizens" were expected to report suspicious activities. The S.I.D. offered a reward for the capture of the Earthlings (whom the Giants called “The Little People”), which citizens and bounty hunters tried to claim throughout the series. Despite the repression, there were several underground resistance movements at work that either helped other dissenters (such as the Earth people) or were actively working to unseat the ruling party.
IN SHORT (giggle)...
Well, that's it. Just think, if nothing happens on the reboot front in a few years, we get to recast all over again.
Anyway, if there are any more casting suggestions, send them in. What I would really like to see are pictures of the actresses made up wearing the old costumes.
