Land of the Lost

Land of the Lost is a children's adventure television series created (though uncredited) by David Gerrold and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, who co-developed the series with Allan Foshko. It is a live-action show mixed with stop-motion animated dinosaurs, originally aired on Saturday mornings from 1974 to 1976, on the NBC television network. CBS used it as a summer replacement series from 22 June – 28 December 1985 and 20 June – 5 September 1987. It has since become a 1970s American cult classic. Krofft Productions remade the series in 1991, and adapted it into a feature film in 2009. Overview Land of the Lost details the adventures of the Marshall family (father Rick and his children Will and Holly), who are trapped in an alternate universe or time warp inhabited by dinosaurs, a primate-type people called Pakuni, and aggressive humanoid/lizard creatures (described as similar to insects) called Sleestak. The series opens with a theme song accompanied by a banjo-like instrument and a synthesizer. The episode storylines focus on the family's efforts to survive and find a way back to their own world, but the exploration of the exotic inhabitants of the Land of the Lost is also an ongoing part of the story. An article on renewed studio interest in feature-film versions of Land of the Lost and H.R. Pufnstuf commented that "decision-makers in Hollywood, and some big-name stars, have personal recollections of plopping down on the family-room wall-to-wall shag sometime between 1969 and 1974 to tune in to multiple reruns of the Kroffts' Saturday morning live-action hits," and quoting Marty Krofft as saying that the head of Universal Studios, Ronald Meyer, and leaders at Sony Pictures all had been fans of Krofft programs. A number of well-respected writers in the science-fiction field contributed scripts to the series (mostly in the first and second seasons), including Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, and Norman Spinrad, and a number of people involved with Star Trek, such as D.C. Fontana, Walter Koenig, and David Gerrold. Gerrold, Niven, and Fontana also contributed commentaries to the DVD of the first season.