How did it end?
Was there ever a formal ending to wrap things up when the series ended? I looked at the ep. list and descriptions. The last ep in season three does not seem to indicate them returning or any type of closure.
shareYes and no...
The season finale of the first season ("Circle") was intended to provide a paradoxical conclusion to the series, with one Marshall family returning home while another identical Marshall family entered the LotL. David Gerrold constructed this so that the series could then be viewed in reruns as sort of an endless loop, where the newly introduced Marshall family goes through the same trials and tribulations as the original family until they too leave while yet another duplicate family arrives... and so on, and so on.
This would have worked fine except for one thing - the show was renewed for two more seasons, which basically invalidated what would have been the series finale (or it could be viewed as the adventures of the "duplicate" Marshall family, which turned out to be not identical to those of the original Marshall family).
By the third season the writers had tossed the show's "writer's bible" out the window and clearly had given up caring about the series. As you noticed, the third season finale ("Medicine Man") was a guest-of-the-week episode and did not attempt to wrap up anything. There was also no official attempt to conclude the series through a movie or other media (the 1990s tv series had no connection to the Marshall family at all, and the Will Ferrell movie was a parody).
So basically the series left the viewers hanging with the Marshalls not returning home (except possibly for Rick, though some have noted he may have simply fallen to his death above the canyon...). However, this was not at all unusual for tv series of this era - even most prime time series ended with a typical episode, rather than anything which neatly concluded the series.
THanks mound for taking the time for a great answer. Never knew about the ending of the first season, that ending sounds pretty cool but sad for the Marshalls at the same time since they would be there for eternity. Been so long since I watched these in the seventees now they come on MeTV saturday mornings so I am seeing them again for the first time in quite a while. My kids are watching them with me also and enjoy them. So even in todays world of CGI effects kids still enjoy watching Land Of the Lost!
shareWhen the series was renewed for a third season, the Kroffts were busy with several other productions (the Krofft Supershow were several shows within a show such as Wonderbug, Dr, Shrinker, and Electra-Woman and DynaGirl). The quality of Land of the Lost was reduced due to the attention all of those new shows required; such as the abandonment of the Pakuni language. You couldn't have Ta and Sa speaking English, so they were omitted from the show and Cha-Ka now spoke like Tarzan. Almost every episode featured the Sleestak (who kept repeating the same attempts to get rid of the Marshalls as in previous episodes) to make things easy for the writers. And the episodes were extremely cartoonish (with the exception of the awesome "Timestop"). I was often frustrated with the later timeslot (11:00 AM instead of the previous 10:00 AM), having to be stuck in the house to wait for the show to come on. I used to eat breakfast during the first two seasons and then hang out outdoors the rest of the day.
share"Timestop" was written by Tom Swale, who was a story editor for LotL in its second season and a wrote a couple of second season scripts. This was his only contribution to the third season, which really makes me think the script was a left-over from the second season, making it stand out during the mediocre third season. Similarly, "The Pylon Express" script by sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon was a first season script which wasn't produced until the second season.
As much as the quality of LotL slid drastically in its third season, it's still better than most Saturday morning kids tv of the era.
I usually watched those Saturday morning preview specials each network aired in prime time the week before the new season was starting, but I missed NBC's the year the third season was starting. As soon as I saw that they had replaced Rick Marshall, right away I was convinced that the show was destroyed. However, I was psyched as soon as I saw who was playing Uncle Jack - Ron Harper, who was one of the stars of the Planet of the Apes TV series that briefly aired two years earlier (I was a huge Apes fan). But I wasn't hugely impressed with the majority of the third year's episodes. A Cro-Magnon who could speak sophisticated English? The Sleestak repeating the tactics of "Blackout"? Two different Bigfoot-type creatures? I thought "Survival Kit", "Cornered", and "Abominable Snowman" were atrociously cartoonish, and "Medicine Man" absolutely put me to sleep. Those three episodes that ended with Will singing a bad folk song had me cringing. But I still sat through it every Saturday.
shareI saw season 1's finale this morning on MeTV. I thought it was the finale for the whole series. It was good, but I only saw like the last 10 mins.
The alien made that silly comment that he couldn't help them leave, but he could provide them with the solution to leave. LOL