Second Season Episodes - The Ghost Planet (episode 32)

Hoping to land on Earth, Smith causes the Jupiter 2 to land on an alien planet run by cyborgs. Dr. Smith and Will stand watch as the Jupiter 2 soars through space.Suddenly, a spatial body.

Suddenly, a spatial bodylooms up which Smith believes to be Earth. A voice on the radio identifies itself as the Space Controller and orders them to land on the planet. Against Will's and the Robot's better judgment, Smith adjusts their headings, and the Jupiter 2 plunges into the planet's blistering radiation field. When John sends the Robot out to make an environmental check, an alien blasts it with a crippling ray. The next morning, the voice tries to convince the Robinsons to disembark.

John refuses until the aliens identify themselves, but Smith, believing the President of the United States is waiting for them, exits. Inside, a female-voiced automaton explains that Smith can have luxury and power if he will follow their instructions, the first of which is to retrieve all of the weapons on the ship. Smith takes Don and the Robot -whom the aliens have repaired -back to the Jupiter 2 and explains that an official welcoming party is in preparation. Suddenly, a strange ray machine blasts a negative force field at the ship to keep it from taking off. A summit voice interrogates the Robot, who pledges his allegiance to the cybernetic society.

Acting under the summi t voice's orders, the Robot takes Will and Smith to an assembly line of cybernetic parts to perform menial tasks. Then the Robot is ordered to conduct the remaining Jupiter 2 voyagers to an assembly room. The Robot intercepts John and Don and sends them back to the Jupiter 2. As the Robot returns to the alien complex, an alarm is sounded to search out and destroy him. But he leads Will and Smith back towards the Jupiter 2. As cyborgs rally to apprehend the mechanical hero, he turns and blasts a shattering ray at the negative force field source until a grenade fells him. Will and Smith push the injured Robot into the ship, as Don battles the cyborgs and John blasts off, leaving the Ghost Planet behind. 

Ray says: 

* One of my favorite episodes. Lots of action here especially near the end of the episode. Bob May does a wonderful job as the Robot especially in the scene where he has to save Will and Smith from aliens. The Robot is towed in reverse fending off these aliens and saves the day. Definately a wonderful climax to a great episode.

* Bob May' voice is clearly heard as he sings " Santa Lucia" in the begining of the episode. 

* Blooper- after the Robot saves Will and Smith from the Cyborg aliens he is hit by a bomb thrown by one of the cyborgs. You can here Bob May's voice rumbling some lines that were never edited out and added back in with Dick Tufeld's voice.

A Review by Robert Herzog

It's been forty years since this episode aired.

Back we are aboard the schitzo Jupiter 2... let me see if I can keep up with what's happened to the ship's fuel supply so far in season two: 

the fully-fueled Jupiter leaves Priplanus 

Dr. Smith accidentally dumps the reserve fuel cells into space, leaving the ship with almost no rocket fuel 

the Jupiter 2 docks at fuel barge F-12 and tops off the ol' gas tank (we think) 

the Jupiter crew has to make a course change in order to rescue the sleep (space) walking Dr. Smith, leaving the ship with no available fuel to make a course change to land on Earth (I guess they didn't top off the tank) 

Well, somewhere after the end of "Wild Adventure" the Robinson's must have found more fuel, because now we have Dr. Smith making an unauthorized course change (what else is new?) that leads to a landing on... 

... "The Ghost Planet". 

"Ghost" is a decent season two episode, in this guy's opinion, though it comes with one of the sillier episode titles. Just who or what are the ghosts that the title refers to? The word "ghost" is never used in the story, nor are ghosts ever suggested or even inferred. (People point to season one's "The Oasis" as a bad episode title, but at least we DO see an oasis in the story, even if it's only for about 60 seconds.) 

While I think "The Ghost Planet" is okay, I do blame it for a couple of irritants that make themselves known in season 3: 

1.) the hyper atomic missiles 

2.) the yellow landing circle 

Both of these season 3 LIS staples first appear in "Ghost Planet" and were well-suited for the episode. The missile scenes in "Ghost Planet" and "Forbidden World" were very exciting. Unfortunately, these same missiles appear about every 10 minutes or so during parts of season 3. Heck, by "Junkyard in Space", EVEN THE JUPITER 2 HAS THEM! Talk about reusing footage over and over. 

But wait... the hyper atomic missiles have nothing on the yellow landing circle. In season 3, just about every non-crash-landing takes place courtesy of that landing circle. In some episodes, the Jupiter 2 takes off from, and lands in, the yellow circle several times! I realize that season 3 was the budget-cut season, but couldn't they cut corners somewhere else and give us some fresh J2 landing/launch footage? (A couple of very late season 3 episodes come complete with new incidental music, like "Junkyard", "Great Vegetable Rebellion", and "Space Beauty"... couldn't the show's producers have just said "forget paying for one or more composers to give us new music for what look to be bad episodes; instead, let's spend the money we'll save on new special effects footage! Oh well.) 

Anyway, I can't hold overuse of season two stock footage in season 3 episodes against "Ghost Planet", right? 

The idea of a planet being run by machines is a good one; a little background wouldn't have hurt, though. How did it come to exist? There must have been a living, breathing alien civilization on the planet and one point. Or, did the machines migrate on their own from elsewhere? Still, the concept was interesting. Men serving machines. Could be us in amillion years! Other than Officer 03 (the female-sounding robot) and the Summit brain guy with the strong voice, the only other "robots" (or whatever they were) that we see are the strange, domed-faced, knee-lacking fellows who sound like aluminum cans when they are hit. A few more robots or cyborgs or whatever would have been nice. 

As I mentioned last week, the early season two Smith has become rather obnoxious. He touches things that he has no business touching, causing calamity every which way, and seemed to be very fond of adjusting the astrogator. Additionally in "Ghost Planet", I don't understand why he kept trying to convince the Robinson's that the planet they had landed on was Earth, once he knew that it wasn't. To get his hands on some of the "treasure" that he was shown? What good is the promise of treasure once you become pretty sure that your hosts are "bad guys"? Even Smith had to know that his chances of actually leaving with the treasure in hand were remote. Giving away all the Jupiter's weapons was just dumb, even for Smith. (How many times have I said that in the past couple of weeks?)

Further, every other sentence out of Smith's mouth seems to be a lie so far this season... the Smith we left behind at the end of season one was actually cooperative on occasion, and was certainly a lot more intelligent than the dude we have to this point in season two. 
Sigh. 

All together, "Ghost Planet" is kinda creepy and interesting, in spots. Some of it, though, is kind of slow. Not enough to bring the score down too much. I also like how it was the Robot who ultimately saves the day. Smith is a bit too annoying, though, and that does bring the score down for me. At least somewhat. The exciting departure at the end of the episode and the cool cliffhanger help save the episode from dropping too far. When the dust cleared... 

... I decided to give "Ghost Planet" a 6.5. 

So far, a "7" and a couple of 6.5's for season two, I think. 

The forecast for the rest of the season indeed looks bright. After all, what can go wrong? 

With many thanks to Robert for his great review.

Filming