Robot phwoars: an unlikely character in Lost in Space is an object of desire

Name: The Robot.

Age: About a month.

Found in: The new Netflix remake of Lost in Space.

Played by: Brian Steele. (You may remember him as the sasquatch in the Harry and the Hendersons TV series.)

Appearance: Swee-eet.

Excuse me? I’m just saying that the robot – known only as “the Robot” – looks really good.

Well, I suppose when Netflix makes a big new sci-fi series it doesn’t skimp on the design budget. Yes, everyone agrees that the series is very sleek. But I didn’t mean the robot looked good in that way.

In what way did you mean it, then? You know. There’s a certain sinuousness about the curves in the machinery that …

Oh my God! Do you fancy a robot? He has many admirable qualities! Yes, he’s big and strong, and his rear end sticks out pleasingly when he pushes heavy things, but he is also gentle and protective. I don’t look at him as an object.

But he literally is an object. We don’t know exactly what he is. He is an alien machine or life form of some kind, who becomes attached to the young boy of the family, Will Robinson, whom he looks after.

So he’s like a space au pair? A sexy au pair, yes.

Stop that! Look, I’m not the only one. The series had OK reviews after it launched in mid-April, but the shapeliness of the robot has been almost universally acclaimed.

Call me repressed, but I think I’ll stick to humans. Feel free. This kind of thing is hardly new, however. I think it’s fair to say that Maria, the robot in the early sci-fi classic Metropolis (1922), was rather noticeably, er, busty. Even C-3P0 was more bootylicious than required.

People, including you, are weird. Hey, the heart knows what it wants.

The heart has a limited role in this, by the sound of it. I thought they had already remade Lost in Space, anyway? You must be thinking of the big-budget flop, starring Gary Oldman and Matt LeBlanc, in 1998.

I’m trying not to. And, of course, the original 1960s TV series was already a remake, in a way, of the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson. They were shipwrecked on a desert island, you may remember.

Did they find a strangely attractive robot? They found a monkey.

This conversation ends now. Good idea.

Do say: “Danger, Will Robinson!”

Don’t say: “Danger of mechanophilia!”