Land of the Giants

The Land of the Giants was an American science fiction television show from the late 1960s and is set in the then-future year of 1983. It is a tale of crew and passengers from a futuristic transport space jet called the Spindrift.

In the pilot episode, the supersonic jet is flying from Los Angeles to London high up in the stratosphere at ultra-speed and just beyond Earth's boundary with space. The futuristic jet encounters a space storm and is propelled to a strange planet where everything is twelve times larger than its counterpart on Earth. The shipwrecked crew calls the people of this weird world "the giants". These giants are about 70 feet tall and the homes, cars - everything on the planet is built to their scale — trees and animals too, etc. The Earth people are of course tiny and they are stranded on the planet with their ship inoperable.

These giants are giant humans and their society is a dictatorship, but their look and fashion is like that of a prehistoric 1950s/1960s USA. Not much is known of this strange state where the giants live, but we do learn the giant government has offered a reward for the capture of the tiny Earth people. This is because Earth people have superior technology.

Most episodes consist of a format plot where a giant captures one of the passengers or crew, with the rest having to rescue the captive. The Earth people avoid capture most of the time because their spaceship is hidden in a forest outside the city.

The show was created by Irwin Allen who did many Sci/fi things one of which was the famous Lost in Space. With a budget of US$250,000 per episode, Land of the Giants set a new record. The actors had to be physically fit, as they had to do many stunts, such as climbing giant curbs, steps and ropes. Don Marshall who played the part of Dan Ericson, said his previous football, track and pole vaulting work helped him with the stunts required.

Elements of Allen's Lost in Space series appear in Land of the Giants, notably the relationship between the foolish, greedy traitor and on-the-run bank robber named (Naval) Commander Alexander B. Fitzhugh (Kurt Kasznar), and the young boy Barry Lockridge (played by Stefan Arngrim). This is the same type of relationship as in Lost in Space between Doctor Zachary Smith and the young Will Robinson.

It was a very entertaining show as the tiny humans made their way around the giant city using a huge safty pin as a grappling hook. I can remember them making phone calls on giagantic telephones – a huge spider in its web in a drain pipe – giant cats, dogs and mice, plus the giants spoke English (What a bit of luck) As a kid I was enthralled by the show and was a keen fan. Like most of the American television shows, it had a wonderful and exciting theme tune with alluring opening credit scene with a cartoon type giant scooping up a tiny person at the beginning.