WHY I LIKE LAND OF THE GIANTS over the other three Irwin series (and Star Trek)

 someone on another group did a poll about which Irwin series we liked best and why: here's my answer. I'm sure i left something out.


I love all of Irwin's shows but not equally. LAND OF THE GIANTS didn't really have one bad story. Some were quirky, some were real world stories, some were "save the kids" stories, some were pure sci fi, and this eclectic feel, combining soft elements of mystery, action adventure, and horror with sci fi and fantasy is one of the reasons. The other is that actors and characters are the most relatable. The LOST IN SPACE family were elite intellectuals (who usually acted like morons though) and while sort of relatable (more so than VOYAGE and TIME TUNNEL's standard military/scientists), the GIANTS people were from more middle class backgrounds maybe or felt like people we could meet in real life and who talked and acted like real people. I also don't like the military aspects of TIME TUNNEL, VOYAGE and STAR TREK as much as the more working class civilian types. Also: Fitzhugh is as different from Mark as Mark is from Betty as Betty is from Dan as Dan is from Barry, so there's that. The characters on VOYAGE as pretty much all just sub military men, really with some variation but not much. TIME TUNNEL's characters are really just cardboard cut outs. I also identified more with Barry at the time of the original airing of GIANTS. LOST IN SPACE also focused, after a short time, on only three characters. GIANTS never let Fitzhugh take over or get as silly or annoying as Dr. Smith. The women on GIANTS also played a huge role while there were fewer and fewer women as VOYAGE moved on and almost none in TIME TUNNEL that were involved in the action (and Ann does not count as she's mostly behind a computer all the time). The women on LOST IN SPACE were treated as imbeciles who made mistakes all the time, even worse ones than Dr. Smith. The women on GIANTS were much more involved and while flawed, like all of the seven, they were much less thought of as the weaker sex, though Val might have said so in a script by a LOST IN SPACE writer. So, with the variable story ideas (could you see the kids in the well or the SHELL GAME story being done on VOYAGE or TIME TUNNEL? or even LOST IN SPACE?), the relatable real world characters and likable actors, the imagination on display and FAR less stock footage than all three of the other shows, I like LAND OF THE GIANTS best.

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