Forgotten Television: Land of the Giants

In 1983 (when aired 15 years into the future), a suborbital spacecraft called the Spindrift making the flight from Los Angeles to London hits some turbulence.  The ship being just beyond the Earth’s boundary with space is dragged through a “dimension lock” taking them to a planet very similar to Earth, but with everything being twelve times larger, including all of its inhabitants.  On board the Spindrift was its crew, Captain Steve Burton (Gary Conway); Captain Dan Erickson (Don Marshall), co-pilot of the Spindrift; and Betty Hamilton (Heather Young) the flight attendant.  The passengers consisted of Mark Wilson (Don Matheson), a multimillionaire engineer; Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund) a wealthy heiress; Barry Lockridge (Stefan Arngrim) a recently orphaned boy who was traveling to London with his dog Chipper to live with cousins; and Commander Alexander Fitzhugh (Kurt Kasznar) a cowardly military man who robbed a bank and was escaping to London with his $1 million dollars.  The ship originally lands within a city, but soon takes off trying to escape a “Giant” who had discovered it.  Without enough power to escape the atmosphere, the ship crash lands in a wooded area outside the city.  Captain Burton explains the situation to the passengers, who are in disbelief and while the crew attempts to recharge the ship, Fitzhugh and Barry sneak out of the ship in an attempt to make it to London, only to learn that the Captain was telling the truth.  Burton goes looking for the missing pair and is followed by Valerie Scott, and they both are captured by a pair of scientist “Giants”. Fitzhugh and Barry are chased back to the ship by a cat which attacks the Spindrift, eventually leaving.  The remaining characters then mount a rescue operation to retrieve the Captain and Valerie.  The episodes of the series are similar in plot, the Earthlings get captured and must find a way to escape, there are good “Giants” and bad “Giants” that are either foes or allies along the way.  The “Giants” are aware of Earth and its “Little People” and our heroes were not the first to arrive on this world, but this society does not have the technology yet to get to our Earth, which also means that repairing the Spindrift and getting back home will be a more difficult task.

Land of the Giants is an hour-long television series that ran for two seasons on ABC beginning on September 22, 1968 and running to March 22, 1970.  The show was created by Irwin Allen and was the fourth and final of his television series.  The others being Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, and Lost in Space. The series was originally intended to be a midseason replacement and so twelve episodes were ordered and produced in the fall of 1967 but was updated to a full season show and premiered in September of 1968. At the time of airing, the show was the most expensive show to date with each episode costing a whopping $250,000. The actors all had to be physically fit as the stunts involved, like climbing curbs and phone cords, required a certain amount of strength and agility.  Elements of Irwin’s other show, Lost in Space were also used in this one.  Specifically, the relationship between Fitzhugh, the cowardly selfish man and Barry, the good hearted boy who teaches the older man life lessons.  Fitzhugh also got the same billing in the title sequence as Jonathan Harris in Lost in Space, being listed last and billed as a ”Special Guest Star” even though he was a series regular.  The main title music and much of the original scoring was done by John Williams who had worked on Allen’s other projects, but he was actually the third person contracted to do the theme song.  Alexander Courage composed the music for the unaired pilot and Joseph Mullendore composed a second theme that was not used. Both composers would return to score internal music for a few episodes of the series. Like with the other Irwin Allen productions the show appeared in other media as well, several novels were written, several short stories penned by Deanna Lund who played Valerie, a five issue comic book series, several model kits, lunch boxes, and of course the standard View-Master reels. This is also the only one of the Irwin Allen television productions that has not been remade or had an attempt at being remade.

The only Irwin Allen show I actually remember watching as a kid was Lost in Space.  I do remember seeing Land of the Giants and Time Tunnel but did not watch them regularly and I am not sure why.  In watching the first episode of the series in preparation for this article, I found it to be a really well-done show especially for the time period it was in.  Where some of the special effects were obviously fake, many of the scenes featuring “Giants” and “Little People” were very well done and looked extremely real for that period’s technology. I also found the characters engaging and interesting and while the majority of the passengers are all wealthy there is a variety of backgrounds within the characters and their histories give a bit more depth to their characters. The culture of the world that the series takes place in is also fascinating, although you don’t get much of that in the pilot.  It is very much like Earth’s America of the 1960s but has an authoritarian government and a department specializing in thwarting dissident movements seeking to overthrow the current regime.  The show was extremely episodic, like all the rest of the shows of that time period, and it could have benefited on having a unifying story arch that ran through the season or the series connecting the episodes. Overall, this was a fun and well done series and if you haven’t seen it and enjoy Irwin Allen shows, you should definitely take a look.