On rewatching a TV episode after over 30 years
Apr 23, 2013 · 2 minute read · CommentsTVLost in Space
Over 30 years ago, when I was in elementary school in the 1970s, I watched the TV series “Lost in Space”. It was very silly, but did engage my imagination.
Nightmares
One episode haunted me for weeks and gave me nightmares, such that I remembered some scenes very clearly: it was the one in which I first encountered the term “antimatter”. For decades, once in a while I wondered whether I would ever get to see that episode again. I was particularly curious about whether my memories were accurate.
Today
It turns out that now, it is probably possible to find any TV episode or even commercial that one saw in one’s childhood.
Today, on a whim, I searched for the “Lost in Space” episode, and not only quickly identified it, but also watched it online for free!
It was “The Anti-Matter Man”, and I watched it on Hulu. Of course, it was not really “free”, because I had to suffer through some ads.
My memories turned out to be quite accurate, although of course not complete. “Evil” John Robinson was convincingly violent and evil, with the beatings and the cage. The landscape was stark and barren. The misty bridge between two worlds was as creepy as I remembered it.
The episode was really quite a dark one, perhaps too dark for me at the time.
Needless to say, as one who eventually obtained a physics degree, I have to say that the whole scenario is complete nonsense.
Future
The temptation can be high to relive the past by rewatching old TV shows, the way I used to listen to old music recordings for sentimental reasons. I’ve almost completely resisted this temptation in the past several years, but sometimes it is illuminating to compare one’s memories with reality, and also reflect on the changes in taste or maturity.