BACKSTORY: Irwin Allen (June 12, 1916 – November 2, 1991) was an American television and film director and producer nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. He was also notable for creating a number of television series. "Lost in Space" is a science fiction TV series, filmed by 20th Century Fox Television, and broadcast on CBS. The show ran for three seasons, with 83 episodes airing between Sept. 15, 1965—March 6, 1968. The first TV season was filmed in black and white, but the remainder were filmed in color. Though the TV series concept centered on the Robinson family, many story lines focused primarily on Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris) who is a medical doctor, originally an utterly evil would-be killer who became a sympathetic anti-hero by the end of the first season, providing comic relief to the TV show (and causing most of the episodic conflict). Smith was not in the unaired pilot and neither was the robot. A meteor storm (which should have smashed the ship to pieces) in the unaired pilot put them off course. In the first aired episode, Smith's unplanned for extra 200 lbs of weight put them off course so that they encountered the meteors. In the un-aired version, they were going at such a relatively slow speed that they wondered if they were on Mars. In the pilot, just seconds of hyper-drive and they were lost, unknown light years from Earth. "The Time Tunnel" is a 1966–1967 U.S. color science fiction TV series, written around a theme of time travel adventure. The show was creator-producer Irwin Allen's third science fiction television series, released by 20th Century Fox and broadcast on ABC. The show ran for one season of 30 episodes.
