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slowdog294 In reply to ??? [2011-02-23 04:56:30 +0000 UTC]

I love the monikers Dr Smith gave to the B9 robot. Here are a few fav's:

"Come along, you bubble headed booby..."

"Be still, you blathering blatterskite!"

"You garrolous gargoyle!"

"You tin plated ninney!"

"...my mechanical friend..."

Gotta love B9...!

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CapnDeek373 In reply to slowdog294 [2011-02-24 00:08:12 +0000 UTC]

Wasn't it Carl Sagan who said: "Billions and billions of Zachary Smith's robot insults"?

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slowdog294 In reply to CapnDeek373 [2011-02-24 05:59:20 +0000 UTC]

I believe it was, indeed, Sir.

Here is more from the Doctor and the Robot...

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! WILL ROBINSON! DOCTOR SMITH! , DOCTOR SMITH!

WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT, YOU TINTINNABULATION TIN CAN!? YOU TRAITOROUS ELECTRONIC JUNK PILE!?

DANGER DOCTOR SMITH, DANGER! I CANNOT SEE ANY STARS OUT TONIGHT DOCTOR SMITH. WARNING WARNING!

WHAT PATHETIC POMPOSITY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? YOU ARE AN OBSOLETE PIECE OF SCRAP METAL! WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU, YOU PUSILLANIMOUS TYRANT, QUIVERING QUINTESSENCE OF FEAR! WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT STARS YOU MONSTROUS METAL MISGUIDED MORON?

(Major West comes up behind Dr. Smith and whacks him on the head. Now Dr. Smith begins to see stars!)

And for those of your fans tuning in, here is a little bit about Lost In Space...

Danger Will Robinson!

We've all heard that famous line from the Lost in Space TV show that ran from 1965-1968.

The first show aired September 15, 1965 with the plot set in the "future" of 1997. In that first episode, the Robinson Family takes off in 1997 on the Jupiter 2 spacecraft for a journey to Alpha Centauri.

But before liftoff, an enemy government spy Dr. Zachary Smith planned to destroy the spacecraft. His plan backfired and and he became trapped on board. He also accidentally destroyed the Jupiter 2's guidance system and they all become Lost in Space.

One of the crew was an environmental control robot model B9, called Robot, who was almost a pet to the young Will Robinson played by actor Billy Mumy.

According to the show, the robot's mission was to

Preserve the Robinson family

Monitor Planetary environment

Give sufficient WARNING!!! if danger is imminent

It was created by Robert Kinoshita who also created Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet".

Remember the insuling terms Dr. Smith called the Robot? These "Smithisms" included:

Blundering Bag of Bolts

Computerized Clump

Hopeless Heap of Tainted Tin

Tin-Plated Tyrant

and dozens more.

Here is a little about Doctor Smith and the fellow who played him on Lost in Space.

As the arch-villain Dr Zachary Smith in the 1960s American futuristic television series Lost in Space, Jonathan Harris followed the Robinson family and their robot around a low-budget cosmos for three years. "We're doomed!" was his familiar cry, and Dr Smith soon became the viewers' favourite character in the cult programme that continues to be shown around the world.

Dr Smith began by trying to sabotage plans to make space pioneers of an astrophysicist, John Robinson, his biochemist wife, Maureen, and their children, Judy, Penny and Will. The year was 1997 and, as a result of Earth's overpopulation, the family were chosen to rest in suspended animation for 98 years aboard the spaceship Jupiter 2 until they reached their projected destination, a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system.

An evil foreign government agent (Dr Smith) ended up trapped on the craft and set it on course for a crash-landing. In their subsequent adventures around the galaxy, the Robinsons had to contend with perils such as giant cyclamen plants, space dogs, carrot monsters and galactic showmen.

A master of alliteration, Dr Smith would hurl insults such as "cantankerous clump" and "sanctimonious scatterbrain" at the Robinsons' robot; and these became known to viewers as "Smithisms".

Dr Smith's affected voice and pedantic, professorial nature often gave the impression that Harris was English. In fact, he was born Jonathan Charasuchin in the Bronx area of New York in 1914 to Russian-Jewish immigrants. "I had a 'deeze-and-doze' accent,'" he said later. "To correct that, I watched literally hundreds of old British movies, thus giving me a more British way of speaking."

Although he gained a degree in pharmacology from Fordham University, in the Bronx, and worked for a time as a pharmacist, Harris had always enjoyed opera and Yiddish theatre. After changing his name to Harris, he decided to pursue his acting ambitions in 1939 by joining the Millpond Playhouse company in Roslyn, Long Island.

He made his Broadway début as a Polish RAF officer in Heart of a City (1942). Later, he appeared on Broadway opposite Paul Muni and Marlon Brando in A Flag is Born (1946).

Harris made his television début in His Name is Jason (in the Chevrolet Tele-Theater anthology drama series, 1949) and followed it with a string of character roles. He appeared in several films, starting with Botany Bay (starring Alan Ladd and James Mason, 1953) – lying to the director, who had insisted on an all-English cast – but made his name on the small screen.

He played Bradford Webster, assistant to the businessman- adventurer Harry Lime (Michael Rennie) in all 90 episodes of The Third Man (1959-65), an Anglo-American television production based on the Graham Greene story. He also took the role of the exasperated hotel manager, Mr Phillips, in The Bill Dana Show (1963-65), about a Mexican immigrant who works as a bellhop at Park Central Hotel.

Then came Lost in Space (1965-68), a sci-fi spoof on the Swiss Family Robinson story from the producer Irwin Allen. It was the height of the telefantasy era and Harris relished taking the character of Dr Zachary Smith and turning what he saw as a colourless villain into a greedy, selfish coward.

Although he subsequently created a distinctive intergalactic Pied Piper in an episode of Allen's series Land of the Giants (1970) and played Commander Isaac Gampu in Space Academy (1977-79), another science-fiction series, set in 3732, Harris spent the last 20 years of his life almost exclusively doing voice-overs. In Battlestar Galactica he was Lucifer, one of the Cylon robots, (1978-79). His vocal talents were heard in animated films such as A Bug's Life (as Manny, the preying-mantis magician, 1998) and Toy Story 2 (as the elderly doll repairman, 1999).

Harris turned down a cameo role in the 1998 film version of Lost in Space, in which Gary Oldman played Zachary Smith, but appeared in the television documentary tribute Lost in Space Forever (1998) and continued to attend Lost in Space fan conventions until just before his death in Los Angeles on November 3rd of 2002.

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