Land of the Giants

Recently,I got a chance to see some of the episodes on a local cable channel,and this was my favorite Irwin Allen series of them all. Several people including the dog,have crash-landed on earth,but its not the same planet that their ship was from. The special effects here are unforgettable which involved the characters to find themselves in some odd situation after another (especially in one episode where they are in a little girl's room where they take refuge in a doll house,only to be stalked by a giant cat!) Basically everything went just right with this series which didn't last long when it ran on ABC from 1968-1970,but it was a classic worth seeing.

Scientists may not approve ( I don't think it was aimed at them anyway! ) but in the U.K. in 1969 'Land Of The Giants' was a smash hit. At school on Monday mornings, the number one talking point in the playground was the latest episode of 'Land'. I would try to steer the conversation towards the ongoing saga of 'Dr.Who' in 'The War Games', but it was no use. 'Land' had Britain's children ensnared in its grip. It was kind of like 'Planet Of The Apes' in that it too featured a group of humans who, after passing through a 'space warp', find themselves marooned on a strange world where evolution has taken a different turn. As you'd expect from an Irwin Allen series, characterisation was barely in evidence, but the show boasted some amazing S.F.X. sequences, intriguing story lines such as 'Ghost Town', and the excellent Kevin Hagen as the sinister Inspector Kobick of the S.I.D. As was the case with a lot of U.S. sci-fi shows, the novelty soon wore off - 'Land' was cancelled after two seasons.

Having just read all the comments I had an idea of why this show made such a strong impression on so many.

It seems many of the people that were fans were kids when this first aired (I was six, probably became truly imprinted on my neural circuits in early syndication). I believe this show connected so much with its audience because as young children we all felt in some way that we were living in a Land of the Giants and so we identified very much with all the characters.

Anyway, sorry for the cheesy pop psychiatry, but that's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

Now if I can only figure out why I loved so many other 60's/70's TV sci-fi (Star Trek, Lost In Space, UFO, Space 1999, etc)

In 1968, when Land of the Giants first aired, I was a 9 year old kid back home in the Philippines. I do not remember much of the episodes by story, only bits and pieces of it. Like the giant gun the little guys used to shoot the giant that was after them. The ax they used made of a match stick and half a razor blade. Air ducts to escape and of course, my personal favorite... the Spindrift! I was most fascinated by the realistic props that were created than the plot of the whole thing. I focused on the small items that we normally see around the house and outside our backyards, transformed into colossal objects that can hardly be moved 5 feet without the help of your friends and a serious workout.

The Spindrift is the reason I became a model maker. I do not know how many times I've made the Spindrift out of cardboard. This was because, in my country at the time, there were no merchandising of any kind for any TV series or movie. And now, thanks to the internet, I just purchased a model of the Spindrift and the entire 51 episodes of the series (as I type this comment out, I'm still waiting for my order to get here). This time I can focus more on the storyline. Of course the impact will not be as great considering there have been tons of Sci-fi movies with way more advanced FX since then like Star Wars. But the memories live on and to me, Land of the Giants will always be the best Sci-fi TV series ever made! I don't care what other people say!

If there was a happy-ending episode to conclude the series, it may have been like this: The seven people on the Spindrift didn't travel through time or distant space but were shrunk like the movie "Fantastic Voyage" and landed on Earth in an English speaking place at the present time. That's a similar concept as the movie "Planet of the Apes". That's why we see the same cultures, fashions and technology as Earth of the late '60s. Some familiar products and objects appear but are just twelve times in larger scale except the audio level. The Captain insists he saw Earth in "On a Clear Night You Can See Earth" but it was his wishful thinking or mental distortion.