Goddard revealed "I really bonded with him, you know because I listened, and he just talked." He also related how on one occasion he was invited back to Hurt's dressing room, where the brooding Academy award winner cooked up a wild rice feast, and delivered some heavy philosphical lectures.

Australian fans were served a special treat during a special film night when exclusive scenes from the Lost in Space movie involving Goddard and Hurt were shown to a very appreciative audience.

Hiding behind a slatted door, young Will Robinson fiddles with a holographic zapper aimed at his school principal. As she harangues the boy's mother about his obstreperous behavior, Will morphs the matronly principal into a gun-toting Rambo in sensible shoes. Maureen Robinson bursts out laughing. The mortified principal stalks out and Maureen turns back to steeling her reluctant children for a separation anxiety no child-rearing guide could prepare her for--a 10-year jaunt around the universe in search of a way to rescue the Earth. "Saving the planet; gimme a break," snorts 10-year-old Will.

"Lost in Space," the campy '60s television series, has been spectacularly hijacked for a wise and wisecracking cinematic parable of family dynamics, a morality tale hatched under the long metaphoric shadow of that other Spock, Benjamin. Instead of a contest to select the best go-go girl in the galaxy--one of the series' fluffier episodes--the film revolves around such weighty themes as the absent father and the problems of parenting a million miles from home. The film pits the fatally distracted William Hurt against a volatile Gary Oldman--an embittered character so evil even his goatee quivers with demonic intent.

Not that the film isn't a science-fiction extravaganza with a vengeance. It is so full of special effects that it is taking a marathon five months to shoot and is currently sprawled across 11 sound stages at Shepperton Studios in the leafy suburbs of London.

With cuddly and creepy creatures by Jim Henson's workshop, yawning canyons of extraterrestrial sets by Norman Garwood (the fevered imagination behind "Brazil"), time warp portals and hundreds of other computer graphics, New Line Cinema is betting it will get its $70 million worth. The film, New Line's most expensive venture to date, is due for release next spring.

Even NASA has gotten in on the act, called in for story consultations on the look of the future and predictions about family stress in outer space. The studio is gambling that the film will become a franchise, spinning off Robbie the Robot toys and evil Dr. Smith masks.

Says Oldman at the prospect of becoming an action figure: "I'm not bothered because it's an intelligent script. It's not just a shoot-'em-up, let's cram in all the special effects we can and razzle-dazzle 'em with laser guns."

Director Stephen Hopkins, however, was less than thrilled at his first read-through of the script. "My initial reaction was: Oh, no, please don't make me. You can spend as much money as you like; it's impossible to make this film," he recalls over lunch in the studio commissary. "If there's not some crazy computer effect to consider, there are robots wandering around, puppets jumping up and down, TV monitors distorting things, giant moving walls in spaceships, time portals, hyper-gates and hyper-speed." Hopkins, who honed his special effects skills on such horror films as "Predator 2" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street 5," was just coming off a "thoroughly miserable experience" with the star-crossed African epic "The Ghost and the Darkness."

"Lost in Space" screenwriter and producer Akiva Goldsman ("Batman Forever," "Batman & Robin") persuaded him that the film was more concerned with the confrontation between a father and his son than with giant man-eating spiders and other sci-fi staples.

"I use science fiction to have the story sneak up on audiences and catch them off-guard with more content than they might have imagined," Goldsman says during the shooting. Originally, New Line envisaged a wackier, inflated version of the already-wacky television series. Goldsman, Hopkins and Richard Saperstein, the studio's executive vice president, finally cajoled New Line President Bob Shaye into risking a darker film and casting Hurt, Oldman and Mimi Rogers--intensely nuanced actors not known for their wackiness or likely to stand still as foils for an epic of special effects. Despite its visual fireworks, "Lost in Space" is no "Star Wars" redux, even though both films are driven by the search for a father's affection. Where Darth Vader is encased in emotional and technological invincibility, Hurt's John Robinson is vincible to a fault. He bumbles through fatherhood on auto-pilot--more a creature of baffled guilt than a Vader-esque black hole of imperious threat. "Professor Robinson is so serious and such a horrible father, he comes across as funny," Hopkins says with a laugh. For the analytical Hurt, the role is as form-fitted as his rubbery black spacesuit. "To save his family, which means saving his race, he has to do the work that takes him away from them," the actor explains during a break. "That's what's tearing at him. He's robbing them of the thing they could use the most." Like the TV series, the film launches the Robinsons into space in search of a habitable planet after mankind has wrought irreparable environmental havoc on Earth. In this endangered 22nd century world, the inhabitants live under "comfort domes" to escape the perpetually wet weather of the rapidly deteriorating atmosphere.

Cynically scoffing at the Robinsons' planetary rescue mission, Maj. Don West, a lone wolf hotshot flight commander played by Matt LeBlanc of "Friends," parrots the accepted line: "Every schoolchild knows that our recycling technologies will cure the environment; this mission is just a publicity stunt to sell soda." "Every schoolchild has been lied to," Robinson responds in grim earnest. "Our recycling technologies came too late. All fossil fuels are virtually exhausted. The ozone layer is down to 40%. In two decades, the Earth will be unable to support human life."