General Information
Director: Don Richardson
Writers: William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter
Cast: Guy Williams, June Lockhart, Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen, Billy Mumy, Angela Cartwright, Jonathan Harris, and Vitina Marcus
Composer: Alexander Courage
Air Date: 9/21/1966
Production #: 9502
Overview
Unbeknownst to the Robinson family and Major West, Dr. Smith plots a course for Earth using information given to him by the Robot. Complications arise when
Dr. Smith accidentally jettisons the remaining fuel supply, requiring the ship to land on a refueling barge. During the delay, Lorelei (Vitina Marcus)—an alien seductress with green-colored skin—attaches herself to the Jupiter 2 and lures Dr. Smith into outer space, forcing the Robinsons to make a decision that will impact their lives forever.
By emphasizing adventure-themed subject matter in a science fiction setting, the first half of this episode remains true to the original premise for Lost in Space. Nevertheless, “Wild Adventure” is marred by the antics of Dr. Smith and his alien love interest.
Pros
Though normally an irritating and superfluous character, Dr. Smith serves to advance the central conflict of “Wild Adventure” on more than one occasion. In the pre-credit sequence, for example, Dr. Smith damages the astrogator during a scuffle with Major West and knocks the Jupiter 2 off-course as a result. Later in the episode, Dr. Smith manipulates Penny into altering the navigation controls and sends the ship on a collision course with the Sun—an intense situation that should appeal to fans of action/adventure stories.
Cons
Appearing on the cue of Alexander Courage’s musical arrangement, Lorelei—a girl from the green dimension—floats around the ship’s exterior and flirts with Dr. 
Smith through a series of inarticulate, soothing vocal sounds.
In addition to being thoroughly illogical (no creature, alien or not, could hover gracefully over a spacecraft traveling faster than light), the silly behavior of Lorelei may induce groaning from serious science fiction buffs (child viewers, in contrast, may find a great deal of humor in Lorelei’s “relationship” with the hypnotized Dr. Smith).
Analysis
(Spoilers beyond this point)
For highlighting the self-sacrificing nature of the main characters, “Wild Adventure” may evoke praise from those with a strong sense of ethics. Specifically, the Robinsons and Major West give up an opportunity to return home in order to rescue Dr. Smith from Lorelei—a commendable gesture that offers a testament to the moral, compassionate values of the Robinson family.
Concluding Comments
“Wild Adventure” is an exciting, if uneven, installment of Lost in Space. Especially worth noting are the near-misses sprinkled throughout this episode, which maintain a suspenseful and engaging atmosphere from beginning to end.
Overall Quality: 7/10
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I loved the green girl. She seemed so….alien, plus I found her interactions with Dr. Smith to be one of the few times the obvious attempts of humor with that character worked. I also liked that Dr. Smith’s ruining things for the Robinson’s wasn’t his fault, although he was at fault for other things like getting too close to the sun. I hated it when they brought the green girl back later in the season. She lost the mystery around her and became just another LIS alien.
This is my number sixteen ranked episode for the classic down home, cozy and fun, colored mid season..my second favorite season of the series, despite its much maligned and unwarranted status.. :-]
The second colored episode continues the storyline. Alexander Courage did the first of his guest background incidental music scores here. It is very good. The fabulous music in this series always seems to match the story/episode perfectly.
We are introduced to the girl from the green mist here. She will be back.. :-]
The writers of this episode may not have realised that the girl from the green mist would make a deep connection with young male viewers. She is, dare I say, Jungian.
Like the common, pre-adolescent dream of a beautiful young woman floating in through the dreamer’s bedroom window, the alien girl outside the Jupiter 2 is both attractive and repellent. Through Dr Smith’s childlike perspective, she resonated with a generation of boys who still had mixed feelings about girls. Summarised by robot as: “That does not compute”.
Of course, mileage will vary. But there is a generation of men who grew up watching Lost In Space who will remember fondly the cooing soundbite of “oohhhh… Doctor Smiiiiiith”.
I remember this episode as a kid and was disappointed by the second half.
Also its calculations on distances travelled at near light speed were way out.
For example how could they have got back to Earth in just four days if they were in the edge of another galaxy.
However I didn’t bother about such details when I was young – it was just exciting to think that deep space was so close – when in fact it’s taken the Voyager probes decades to travel a reasonable distance.
Ps I was happy that the laws of physics allowed the Green girl to travel along with the Jupiter 2 – however they seemed to have left her near Earth – lucky NASA
I was 13 when I first saw this episode and was excited that the Robinson family was finally getting off that dreary planet they were on during the first season. From watching this episode, I was hoping they would do a lot of travelling in space during the second season; unfortunately, they landed on another boring planet and the subsequent episodes became rather ridiculous. It wasn’t until season three that the family and Dr. Smith finally had more adventures tooling around in space. I liked the show best the final season because they did a lot more travelling. I read somewhere that the writers wanted the show to do more space travel because ‘Star Trek’ was traversing the universe.
As for Dr. Smith, I disliked the character very much. The Robinsons were way too understanding and compassionate with him and should have locked him up for all the antics he committed. I must say, however, that Dr. Smith did show some humanity in a couple of episodes during the second season. I guess the writers wanted to give him just a sliver of humanity to make him a little more tolerable; for me, it didn’t work ; – {