Dr Smith vs The Robot

[AdamSmith]

[MsAnn]

lOVE THIS!!!

Oh yes, Dr. Smith and the Robot were very entertaining also...

[RA1]

An early encounter with a character that was "totally" incorrigible. Any relationship?

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

An early encounter with a character that was "totally" incorrigible. Any relationship?

You finds your role models where you can.

[AdamSmith]

...Midway through the first season, due to Harris' popularity on the show, he began to rewrite the dialogue. Allen approved his changes and gave him carte blanche as a writer. Harris subsequently stole the show, mainly via a seemingly never-ended series of alliterative insults directed toward the Robot, which soon worked their way into popular culture. When the show was renewed for its third and final season, it remained focused on Harris' character, Dr. Smith. While the series was still solidly placed in the middle of the ratings pack, the writers appeared to run out of fresh ideas, and the show was unexpectedly canceled in 1968, after 83 episodes...

...Bill Mumy said about Harris' guest role that in his first episode, "It was actually implied that this villainous character that sabotaged the mission and ended up with us, was going to be killed off after a while." Mumy added, "Jonathan played him as written, which was this really dark, straight-ahead villain." Mumy also said of Harris' work on Space, "And we'd start working on a scene together, and he'd have a line, and then in the script I'd have my reply, and he'd say, 'No, no, no, dear boy. No, no, no. Before you say that, The Robot will say this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and then, you'll deliver your line.'" Bill also said of Harris' portrayal, "He truly, truly singlehandedly created the character of Dr. Zachary Smith that we know — this man, we love-to-hate, coward who would cower behind the little boy, 'Oh, the pain! Save me, William!' That's all him!" About the show's cancellation, Mumy said, "I don't know what happened. All I know is that we were all told we're coming back. Then, you know we got a call that we weren't."

...Harris reprised his role as Dr. Smith in the one-hour TV special Lost in Space Forever in 1998. However, unlike his costars in the original series (June Lockhart, Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen and Angela Cartwright) he refused to make a cameo appearance in the motion picture version of Lost in Space earlier that year. He announced, "I've never played a bit part in my life and I'm not going to start now!" (Bill Mumy also did not appear in the feature film.) Gary Oldman played the part of Dr. Smith in the film, but as a more genuinely menacing and less likeable character than Harris' on TV. An episode of The Simpsons has a cameo of "Dr. Smith" along with The Robot; multiple episodes of Freakazoid had a character of a cowardly "Professor Jones"; in both "Professor Jones" utters his catchphrase "Oh, the pain!" In case there was any question about the parody, numerous characters would ask him, "Weren't you on a TV show with a robot?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Harris

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]