Chapter 2
Will Robinson tried to fight back tears as the mouthless humanoids that abducted him insisted that he perform their demanded calculations. But Will just couldn't concentrate at the thought that he was about to be separated from his family, likely to never see them again.
Will thought: My only hope is to follow the plan that Dr. Smith and I came up with just before the aliens took me aboard their ship . . . .
"I order you to concentrate," demanded one of the aliens with an air of authority undercut with raw desperation as sparks began coming off the alien ship's control console. "What is that on your cheek? Whatever it is, it is causing our computer phase cells to burn out! I order you to stop that!"
"Computer vector cycles are short-circuiting! You must stop it!" said the other alien with a heightened tone of worry, quickly adding with hollow reassurance, "When you have helped us get back to our planet, we will see that you are returned to this miserable place."
"So there is no need for wasted emotion!" added the first humanoid.
Before Will could reply, the sparking of the console was drowned out by the strange pulsating sound of tortured mechanisms that got louder by the second. Unconsciously, Will thought it sounded a bit like someone was scraping a door key on the strings of an old piano. But whatever it was, the two aliens that abducted him were now visibly shaken – and not just by the sound, but by an object that seemed to be forming in the control room of the alien ship, and from the look of it, it was very large.
Frantically waving its hands over the touchless controls on the ship's instrument panel, one of the humanoids said, "It-it's coming right through our fifth-dimensional shielding as if it weren't activated!"
Good thing this ship's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, thought Will, who still couldn't conceive how that was possible. But the two aliens were terrified as the object solidified, taking the form of a big, blue box with a pulsating light on top. Once the object had taken its firm shape, the mechanical sounds abruptly stopped, filling the control room of the aliens' ship with a deafening silence.
Will got a good look at the object, and blinked. The object looked like it was some kind of telephone booth from Earth made out of wood painted a dark blue. Even more surprising to Will was that he could read the writing on the blue box that said, "Police Public Call Box." What did THAT mean . . . ?
For a brief moment, Will thought that his mom and dad must called some kind of "Intergalactic Police" to rescue him from the aliens attempting to abduct him. But that made even less sense than a ship that was bigger inside than out.
If Will was curious, the two humanoid aliens were unabashedly panicking. After a few moments, one of the aliens said, "It . . . it can't possibly be . . . . I thought the Time Lords of Gallifrey were extinct . . . !"
As if on cue, the doors of the blue box opened, and four human-looking people came out: an old man, a younger man, a young woman, and a teenage girl.
The older man, who Will noticed was dressed in a costume that made him look like someone from Disney's "Mary Poppins" movie, confronted the two humanoids and said with confident authority, "Stranded, then, are we, boys? Tell me, what appears to be the problem, here?"
One of the humanoid aliens said, "He IS a Gallifreyan Time Lord!" The other merely nodded.
"Well, there'll be no need for extraneous formalities here, boys," said the old man in Edwardian dress. "This is an errand of assistance, after all. Addressing me as, "The Doctor," will be sufficiently respectful.
"Now, I gather from what I have seen thus far that your ship is incapable of travel due to a damaged computer module, or some such glitch? No fear. I fully intend to assist you getting back to your home planet safely, even as it is also my intention to see that young William Robinson is safely reunited with his family . . . .
"Now if one of you fine chaps would be so good as to show me the damaged module, I'll see what I can do to assist you as my granddaughter Susan and her teachers help William down off of that ridiculous platform."
As the two aliens nervously led the mysterious Doctor to the appropriate access panel, the young girl and the other two adults came over to where Will was standing on the platform under the neural direct access terminal.
Before Will could say anything, the girl said, "Hello. My name is Susan Foreman. These are my teachers Mr. Ian Chesterton, and Miss Barbara Wright.
"Please don't be afraid of us, Will. You'll be back with your mum and dad in no time. My grandfather will see to that!
"Mr. Chesterton? Could you help Will down from his perch? It does make him look rather silly standing there like some kind of mannequin at a department store!" When Ian complied, Susan said, "There. That's much better, isn't it, Will?"
Will thanked the man and then turned to thank the girl. Whoever Susan Foreman was, Will could tell that she was friendly, unlike the two aliens who abducted him for his brain.
Susan was older than Will's sister Penny, but younger than their older sister Judy, and she spoke with a pretty British Accent that was more natural than the one Penny sometimes affected for fun; especially when she was re-reading "that book" (for the umpteenth time) about a British boy who finds out that he's really a Wizard, that came out a few months before they left Earth for Alpha Centauri.
But what really stood out to Will was that Susan's clothing was so out-of-date that it almost looked like an actors' costume, rather than what someone would wear on a daily basis. He had seen Judy in similar outfits when her Musical Comedy Troupe put on a stage performance of "Hairspray" a few years before their family was chosen for the Jupiter 2 mission by Alpha Control.
In addition to Susan's clothing, Will noticed that the man and woman were also dressed in outdated clothing that you might see people wearing in old movies and TV shows, and that they, too, spoke with British Accents.
Will's fears subsided as his curiosity rose. "Who are you . . . ?"
"We're the people who are going to help you get back safely with your family," said Susan gently. "We're space travelers too, of a sort. And when we saw you were in trouble, we came as soon as our TARDIS would permit. Though had we prior knowledge, we could have come even sooner."
A dozen questions popped into Will's mind, but before he could ask any of them, Susan's grandfather firmly said, "No spoilers for the boy, young lady!
"Now, why don't the lot of you come over here to see what we've got?"
Will was reluctant to approach the intimidating humanoids who abducted him, even with Susan and her obviously formidable grandfather, plus the other two adults, nearby. But Susan gave Will a reassuring nod, and the boy followed her to a panel in the wall of the alien ship's control room. When they got there, Susan's grandfather said, "I believe what I'm looking for should be hereabouts . . . .
"Right, open the panel, boys, and let's have us a look." The humanoids looked at each other and then back at The Doctor, who said, "One of you two does know how to open the access panel, don't you?
"Surely one of you does . . . ?
"No? Well, it's a good job I decided to bring this along then, isn't it? I almost left it on my nightstand, as I've been wont to do as of late . . . ." The Doctor took an object out of his pocket, and pointed it at the panel. The object then made a trilling sound that promptly caused the panel to open.
"I rarely carry this around, anymore," admitted The Doctor. "Maybe I should reconsider keeping it with me at all times from now on. There are situations when there is nothing like having a good old Sonic Screwdriver handy!
"Now, let's see what we've got, then . . . ? Oh, Susan? What do you make of this . . . ?"
Susan looked inside the open panel at her grandfather's direction, and said, "It looks like a dematerialision circuit, grandfather."
"Right you are, Susan! A basic one, but still . . . ." said The Doctor cheerfully before leaning closer to Susan and Will, and adding conspiratorially, "And in this hulk, I half expected to find a flux-capacitor . . . ."
One of the humanoid aliens spoke, "There is no need to be patronizing, much less disparaging of our people's technology, which is far superior to the technology of Will's Earth, Doctor. Of course we know of dematerialisation circuitry, and have known of it for millennia! We are not primitive beings like this Earth boy!"
"Which is why you felt you had entitled license to abduct William to make use of his brain as a replacement for your burned-out computer," said The Doctor coolly. "Do tell - if you truly believe humans to be so 'inferior' and 'primitive' - then why would you want a human brain to replace your damaged computer in the first place?
"Why didn't one of you lot – with your 'vastly superior minds,' and all - simply take the place of the burned out computer on the pedestal of your ship's neural direct access terminal, yourselves, and leave William and his family alone . . . ?"
After a moment of silence, The Doctor answered his own question. "Humph! Maybe it's because neither of your 'vastly superior minds' actually knows HOW to, "compute the proper trajectory," in your oversized heads. Could THAT be the REAL reason?
"Or do you just enjoy tormenting beings you consider 'inferior' to yourselves . . . ?"
"Such menial tasks are beneath us Luminaries," said one of the humanoids summoning up the last dollop of pride and superiority.
Susan smirked, her fists on her hips, arms akimbo, "In other words: You really don't know how."
"Regardless," said the other humanoid. "The Doctor promised to repair our ship so that we may safely return home."
"I said nothing of the sort," said The Doctor. "What I said was that I'd help you get safely home. Surely you didn't think that I would repair this piece of tat with state-of-the-art Gallifreyan space-time technology?"
"Then . . . how?" said the first humanoid.
The Doctor smiled thinly. "Why, it looks like we'll be giving you two fine young gentlemen a tow back to your home planet after you've shut down your power so we may secure your ship properly aboard."
Reluctantly, the humanoids complied. Then, The Doctor said, "Right. Now, I want everyone into the TARDIS. We're going to have to exchange our ships' positions." He then turned to Will and added, "And then we can get you back with your family, Will Robinson!"
Once everyone was inside the control room of the TARDIS, Will Robinson couldn't help but think that the two 'superior' humanoid beings that grandiloquently referred to themselves as "Luminaries" looked a little silly. Though they first appeared to be Lovecraftian, disembodied heads in the darkness of their own ship; in the well-lit TARDIS control room, they looked a bit pathetic in their flowing, black robes and curly-toed shoes. Will allowed himself a thin smile at their predicament.
As The Doctor and Susan began working on the controls of the TARDIS central control console (that Will thought looked similar to the astrogator in the middle of the Jupiter 2's flight deck,) The Doctor casually said, "You probably don't know this, William, but one of your own people discovered the flux-capacitor over a decade ago that permitted him to construct a very basic time machine out of a car."
Susan said, "So that was how a boy from 1985 ended up singing a song from 1958 in 1955."
"Yes, it was, Susan. After a few more incidents, I had a brief word with the inventor, and convinced him that it would be in everyone's interest if he ceased and desisted plying time and space. He listened to me, at least for a little while. I still keep an eye on him, from time to time." Though mostly, thought The Doctor, I leave that menial and unenviable task to Sapphire and Steel . . . .
"There! That's got it! Clear the side over there on the deck, and prepare for juxtaposition maneuver!"
The noise that Will heard when The Doctor's TARDIS first appeared in the alien ship began building to a crescendo as the humanoid's ship began taking shape inside the TARDIS control room, finally solidifying into something much less intimidating than when Will first saw it. Then, it had glowed, turned and hummed with an otherworldly aura. Here, in The Doctor's ship, it appeared dull and motionless.
When the maneuver was complete, The Doctor, Susan, Ian, Barbara, Will, and the ship's owners gathered around the silent craft that really did look more like a piece of Modern Art sculpture than a spacecraft.
On the outside, the Robinsons watched as the otherworldly craft from the Fifth Dimension seemed to turn off, began to fade, and was promptly replaced by a big, blue box, stunning everyone into confused silence. Professor Robinson was the first to speak. "Now, what on Earth just happened . . . ?"
"No," said Maureen Robinson, who was just as perplexed by what they saw, "not on Earth . . . ."
Inside the TARDIS, The Doctor examined the Luminaries' ship from several angles, made an approving sound, and said, "Well, I'll give you 'Luminaries' this; you DO have taste when it comes to space-time craft coachwork. That really is a good job! Did you do it yourselves, or have it professionally crafted?"
Tentatively, one of the humanoids said, "We, uh . . . ."
". . . spent all your scrimped credits on the exterior of your ship at the expense of basic, routine maintenance, causing you both to be in this predicament!" finished The Doctor. "And your 'brilliant solution' was to kidnap a child!
"The moment we land safely on your world, I intend to hand you directly over to your elders, and have a VERY serious talk with them; you mark my words on that!"
"P-please, Doctor," stammered one of the 'Luminaries.' If you just leave us in orbit when we arrive at our home world, we can arrange our own way safely down to the surface . . . ."
As The Doctor continued to give the two Luminaries' a thorough dressing-down, Will and Susan bonded over their shared love of Top 40 Music. Will told Susan that one of the 'perks' of being confined to the Alpha Control Campus for the last six months prior to their launch date was the entertainment provided.
"A whole lot of famous singers and singing groups came to give us special command performance concerts, and we got to see some really great acts!
"We met Toni Braxton, Jewel, Gwen Stefani, Sarah McLachlan, Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton, and Rick Astley. But Penny went absolutely crazy when the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC performed!"
"I've heard them all!" said Susan. Or at least, she thought she did. Sometimes you could get confused traveling through time as well as space with so much to remember . . . .
As Will and Susan discussed Earth singers and musicians of the late 1990's, The Doctor was telling the 'Luminaries,' "That's my final offer: If I take you boys home, I WILL speak with your elders about what you have done immediately upon our arrival!"
One of the 'Luminaries' said, "Then if we chose not to accompany you . . . you will leave us here . . . ?"
". . . so you may then torment the Robinsons some more?" added The Doctor. "Don't be absurd!
"Your ship is already powered-down, and in any event, incapable of flight. I'll not leave juveniles, no matter how misbehaved, stranded. You're still coming with us.
"However, if you really don't want to be let-off on your home world, I suppose we could let you off elsewhere so you may try and arrange a ride back home on your own."
"That would be . . . acceptable," said the 'Luminary' with a touch of relief.
"Splendid!" said The Doctor. "Let's see, then . . . .
"We could let you off at the home world of the Vorlons, or if you prefer, we could drop you off in orbit of Yautja Prime, or perhaps a side-trip to Fluidic Space. I'm sure that the Undine would be MOST anxious to assist you two fine, upstanding boys . . . ."
After a few moments of stunned silence on the part of the 'Luminaries,' The Doctor said, "Right! Then it's settled! It's a ride back to your own planet with us, and a nice little conversation with your elders!
"So, let's be off, forthwith!" The Doctor then turned to Susan, and said, "We'd best let your friend out, now. His family must be as worried as they are puzzled."
But Susan and Will were still enthusiastically talking about the performers he had seen before leaving Earth.
"The last singer to give us a private concert at Alpha Control before we launched was Taylor Dayne," said Will wistfully. "But I didn't get to see or hear her concert. Mom said Taylor's music wasn't 'appropriate' for a boy my age."
Susan said consolingly, "Well, I'm sure you didn't miss out on too much, Will. Most boys your age can only take so many songs about troubled relationships and breakups before they'd get bored senseless."
The Doctor sighed wearily. "Wrong Taylor, Susan . . . .
"Will? It's time to say goodbye, now." The Doctor then activated a control on the console, and the door to the TARDIS opened. "Do give my regards to your family."
From the open door, Will could see the disabled Robot off to one side, and his family cautiously coming from behind the boulders once they saw him standing, unharmed, in the doorway of the big, blue box. And after saying his goodbyes to everyone, Will Robinson stepped out of the TARDIS to return to his family, who called out in joy as they ran up to him.
Before anyone could say anything, Will heard the key-scraping-on-piano-strings noise from behind him, and turned just in time for everyone to see the TARDIS vanish into space and time. Then, after a beat, the Robinson Family's joyful reunion began.
"Will! Will! Oh, my Will," said Maureen Robinson.
"You're alright! Will! Ha, ha!" said Professor John Robinson.
"Ahhhhh, William . . . !" said Dr. Zachery Smith.
"Hey, Dr. Smith!" said Will smiling broadly. "I don't know if our plan would have worked. But I had some unexpected help, and got out OK."
"Will, what happened?" said John.
"There were these guys, and they had big heads with no mouths!"
"No mouths?" said Maureen.
"And they tried to take my brain!"
"Your brain?!" said John incredulously. "What did they want with your brain?"
"It was something about replacing a burned-out computer. But then, The Doctor and his granddaughter Susan came to my rescue!"
"The Doctor . . . ?" said Dr. Smith, raising an eyebrow. "Interesting . . . . Doctor . . . who, William . . . ?"
"Well, that's what he called himself, anyway, Dr. Smith. But he said he was a "Time Lord" from a planet called, "Gallifrey . . . ."
As the Robinson family walked back to their Chariot, bombarding Will with questions, Dr. Smith felt cold, blessed relief that the boy's undoubtedly fantastic tale would distract the others from asking him too many potentially embarrassing (to say nothing of incriminating) questions about how, exactly, Will ended up being taken captive by the invaders from the fifth dimension in the first place . . . .
After The Doctor returned the 'Luminaries' to their home world; their grateful elders promised to "deal with" the matter with the utmost seriousness. The Doctor nodded, satisfied that it would be a very long time before either of those two young delinquents even thought about stepping out of line again, if ever.
It had been a long day, and Susan Foreman retired for the evening to her berth in the TARDIS. After changing for bed, she noticed her 'radio' on her pillow accompanied with a small note that had two words upon it in her grandfather's handwriting: "Lesson Learned."
Smiling, Susan turned on her 'radio,' and immediately heard Petula Clark singing:
"When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go . . . Downtown . . . ."
Susan would listen to many more songs that she hadn't heard in for what seemed like eons before finally drifting off to sleep.
And in another place and time, Susan suspected that Will Robinson was likely doing the same.
The End
Author's Afterthoughts: I saw the 1965 "Lost in Space" S1 E8 "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension" when it was first aired a few days before my sixth birthday. Even as an adult, it remains a very powerful story that stuck with me for almost 60 years, largely due to the very 'alien' nature of the titular Invaders; not just for their mannerisms and appearance, but also for their very unique spacecraft, that had a truly unearthly appearance that was matched only by its fantastic capabilities.
At the time, most fictional aliens flew the ubiquitous "Flying Saucer" that had become a popular SF trope since the 1940's. (Even Earth people got in on the Flying Saucer shtick in the movie "Forbidden Planet," and of course, the Jupiter 2 on "Lost in Space.") But these Invaders from the Fifth Dimension had a truly alien looking craft with no visible means of propulsion, or any obvious way of entry.
Oh, and their ship was "bigger on the inside than it was on the outside;" a concept that six-year-old me found VERY unique. It was one of the reasons why the original "Lost in Space" was, and still is, one of my all-time favorite shows.
But unknown to my six-year-old self at the time, "across the pond," there was another Science Fiction TV family show titled, "Doctor Who." The titular Doctor may have looked like any typical man, but he and his teenage granddaughter Susan were actually exiles from the planet Gallifrey. The Doctor was an enigmatic being known as a Time Lord, and he plied the multiverse in a vessel known as the TARDIS for its "Time and Relative Dimensions in Space" capabilities.
The TARDIS was also "bigger on the inside than it was on the outside." And when I first heard about "Doctor Who" in my early teens, my mind naturally defaulted to that one particular episode of "Lost in Space."
The similarities between the LiS IFTFD's ship and the TARDIS were striking, and given that "Doctor Who" came out a full two years before "Lost in Space," it made me wonder if there was any "Whovian" 'influence' – intended or not - involved. (On the other hand, it could simply be another "Dennis the Menace" coincidence that really could and did happen in a world before the Internet.)
In any case, the scariest thing about this episode wasn't so much how the invaders looked, but the way they acted towards the Robinsons in general and Will in particular. Their cliché "superior being act" was so over-the-top, (even by the standards of such Science Fiction tropes at the time,) that they got on my last reserve-nerve.
I was glad that Will was able to escape from them. But I would have liked even more to have seen these so-called "Luminaries," (though they were only referred to as such in the credits, but not the episode's dialogue,) getting their well-deserved comeuppance for their atrocious behavior.
And decades later, it occurred to me that the First Doctor, as portrayed by William Hartnell, would be just the crotchety, curmudgeonly – but no less grandfatherly - Time Lord to do it.
Another thing that was fun with this project was having an actual "future" to work with in a story about time travel. Since the First Season of "Doctor Who" came out in 1963, and the First Season of the original "Lost in Space" came out in 1965 - but was set in the then far-off future of 1997 - I could include plenty of real historical and pop-culture shout-outs that a similar piece of Fanfiction written "back in the day" could not.
For example, the "Rivian R1T" reference would have been meaningless until only a few years ago.
And the book Penny liked about a "Boy Wizard" would have been a mere 'throwaway line' if this story had been written prior to 1997. But readers today would immediately get the reference. (Too bad Penny wouldn't get the chance to read the other books in the series, or see the movies . . . .)
And, of course, I just HAD to have Susan get her Taylors mixed up. It was too good an opportunity to pass up on.
The modern internet also made it possible to research details about both shows that weren't easily knowable at the time; such as how the sound effects of the TARDIS was made, or that it was LiS canon that Judy Robinson had a career in Musical Comedy mentioned as an aside in the Pilot episode, but not in the official series.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this work of Fanfiction as much as I enjoyed writing it . . . !
Thanks!