I used to watch this as a very young boy but I didn't remember much outside of the fact that there was dinosaurs and 3 humans and some lizards. I started watching it again 42 years later, quite by accident and realized, despite the pour production value, which can be distracting for a modern viewer, the stories are actually pretty clever for their time.The show follows a family of 3, widowed Rick and his two children Will and Holly into a pocket universe containing alien creatures with a surprising H.G. Wells-esque lore, advance technology that maintains the weather, pre-Neanderthal like hominids, and dinosaurs. Visitors of all varieties come and go, but the Marshall's can't seem to catch a break. A few episodes are written by Star Trek veterans like Walter Koenig and DC Fontana. Koenig's "The Stranger" is a good example of some of the quality story telling. It could be great retold with modern effects, provided the writers don't try to dumb it down with overly ambiguous plot arcs, e.g. LOST.

One of the reasons I'm not trashing this show is not because it was a personal boyhood favorite, but because it actually was inventive and had a slightly higher degree of production values injected into it verse all of the other Kroft offerings that aired at around the same time.The video effects are still apparent, and the stop motion for the time was on par (if not a bit ahead) of other offerings. It still wasn't quite Ray Harrihausen standards, but the stop motion dinosaurs placed against a very lush and rich Jurassic background offered something unique for kids to look at.In this program we don't just have a view of Earth's past, but an alternate Earth with both dinosaurs and more than one moon, as well as an intelligent race of beings who may or may not be descended from the Dinosaurs themselves. The sets, both live scale and miniatures, are fully realized, and the acting isn't half bad either. It's no wonder that this children's series lasted so long in a day and age when children's venues were pretty iffy business in terms of quality.Consider all of the other Kroft production offerings that relied on very primitive video effects, laugh tracks, and a lot of "show" to attract a children's audience. Land of the Lost beat them all out because it was a solid production with a lot of imagination. It did suffer some primitive video effects (notably the raft segment in the opening sequence), and was predominantly over lit like a lot of other video offerings at the time, but the settings and stories helped carry the show for more than one season, which is a lot considering who produced it and the other shows they produced for children.Land of the Lost was a window on what could be done for children if the show was smart on a children's level and didn't rely on the old cutesy character clichés. Japan was ahead of the US and UK by leaps and bounds, and it wouldn't be until the late 1980s that Hollywood producers started to smarten up and revisit the Land of the Lost formula in terms of production values for children's television.Some of the short comings of the Land of the Lost were that the more scientific aspects of a prehistoric world weren't touched on too much, and they could have been to maybe give an educational zinger to the children in paleontology. Regardless, the show held its own, and outlasted everyone else. And, on top of that, was recycled in syndication and aired in other time slots long after its cancellation. A thing no other Kroft production had done.Land of the Lost is sort of like the classic "Star Trek" of kids Saturday Morning fare. Unique, inventive, a true science fiction adventure series with decent acting and over all production value. That, and even though there was the usual wisdom coming in act four, the lesson of the day so to speak, it wasn't preachy. Tyhpically the adult character of Marshal pointed out the shortcomings of what they experienced and then moved on.In this way it was very different from the saccharine "After School Specials" that aired on ABC, with just over the top preachy mental hygiene themes that had me rolling my eyes. And yet kids (mostly girls, or so I recall) watched it because it had slightly higher production values than the Saturday Morning offerings. And yet even here the "After School Specials" were not widely recirculated by the network, and yet Land of the Lost was. Apples and oranges in terms of genre, but it shows that even being shot on video and with the use of some primitive video graphics mixed in with more sophisticated film based graphics and special effects for an adventure series.

After I saw the extremely awesome Land of the Lost movie for a 2nd time, I wanted to see the series that it was based on. I was new to the series, and I thought it was pretty good! They have good plots, cheesy special effects, and much more. On a routine expedition, Marshall, Will, and Holly meet the greatest earthquake ever known. They are transported to the Land of the Lost, and try to find their way back home. Throughout the season they must deal with a T-Rex named Grumpy, befriend a Pakuni named Cha-Ka, escape the Sleestak, seek Enik's help, and meet a friendly dinosaur named Dopey. During the 2nd season the Marshalls are still trying to get home, and throughout the season they must deal with Sleestak, the Zarn, help Cha-Ka steal a dinosaur egg, survive powerful storms, and deal with blackouts. During the third season, Rick Marshall is transported back to Earth due to an earthquake, the same time his brother Jack comes looking for them. The earthquake causes new creatures to awaken. All the Pakuni, except Cha-Ka are gone. Cha-Ka speaks English. Their home in the Land of the Lost is destroyed, and they are forced to find a new place to live. During the course of this season Will turns invisible, the Sleestak tamper with the sunlight, they meet Medusa, go aboard the Flying Dutchman, stop an Abominable Snowman, Cha-Ka turns evil, and much more! I highly recommend LAND OF THE LOST: THE COMPLETE SERIES!!! p.s. When Ifind out about the ticket to see the Land of the Lost movie, I used it, and saw it for a 3rd time on June 23rd! I took my mom, but she didn't like it as much as I did. I got two free LAND OF THE LOST posters. I wanted the one with Rick, Holly, and Will in the raft, with Grumpy behind them, and the people of the theatre also gave the one with Will Ferrell running and Grumpy is busting out of the poster! I already put them up in my room.

Well thought out background story continued throughout the series. The Altruisans built a "pocket" universe to live in. Safe from everything, they controlled what entered and left. What happened?They had time travel, dimensional travel... Manipulated great energies and forces by use of the pylons which were controlled by the position of color coded crystals... but yet they vanished... Only to leave the remains of their once great race, the Sleestax.The Marshall family "fell" into this pocket universe. Each episode they deal with daily survival, food, water, and monsters... and discovering how this world works to find a way home. They were also a family dealing with the usual joys, tears and fears families deal with. It was a good balance between the science of the "Land of the Lost" and human stories.While Enik, the last Altruisan, unable to remember (or never having known) seeks ways to discover what happened to his people. The character of Enik was only in a few episodes but it did set the tone for a mystery of a "lost race" and were some of the best episodes.It was sad to seen this show end, it was one of the few highlights of Saturday morning TV. If this show had been given a bigger budget and an hour time slot it could have been a prime time sci-fi series.