Skylons (episode)

Land of the Lost
Season 1, Episode 8

Air date	October 26, 1974
Written by	Dick Morgan
Directed by	Bob Lally
Episode Guide
previous Album	next The Hole

Skylons was the Eighth episode of the First Season. It was written by Dick Morgan.

Summary[]

The Marshalls discover that a Pylon can be used to manipulate the weather and that the Pylons are watched over by mysterious protective flying objects.

Plot[]

Grumpy is chasing Spot through the jungle while Will and Holly watch from the carrot bed. Will spies some brightly-colored blue and red chicken-like birds, and declares that they will provide "something to eat besides carrots!" Holly is skeptical, but Will attempts to sneak up on them in order to catch one.

As Will approaches the birds, Holly observes a trio of golden diamond-shaped objects performing aerial maneuvers over the nearby pylon and screams, startling the birds and ruining Will's plan. Will returns to Holly and she explains what she has seen, saying "there were things in the sky, like pylons." Will is skeptical, asking if Holly will call them "sky pylons." Holly wonders if they might be dangerous. Will replies that "everything here is."

Holly asks Will if he ever dreams of home, telling Will of her dream in which she has arranged her dolls for a party, but Grumpy came and bit off their heads. Will and Holly reminisce about playing ball, skinning their knees, and other ordinary childhood happenings.

Meanwhile, at High Bluff, Rick is signaling the children with his mirror. Will and Rick have a brief conversation, but Will notices that the pylon seems to be reacting to the mirror, flashing back at him. Will asks Holly to go back to High Bluff while he investigates the pylon, but Holly follows him. Holly did not tell Rick where they went, because she could not remember "how to make the P in pylon." Menaced by Grumpy, the children hide while Grumpy savagely attacks Spot and feeds, horrifying Holly. Will tries to comfort her, saying "better Spot than us." Holly says she liked Spot, and Will reminds her "there are lots of other [coelophyses] Spots." Holly does not find this particularly comforting.

At the pylon, Will notices a fist-sized tetrahedral protrusion high up on the wall and flashes his mirror at it again. The object falls right off the pylon, and Will picks it up, noting its unusual weight. He attempts to stick it back onto the pylon but it seems to repel itself from the surface. He alters the position of the tetrahedron in his hand and it sticks back onto the pylon, leaving his hand tingling strangely, while a diamond-shaped opening appears under the protruding tetrahedron.

Rick attempts to signal his children again with the mirror, but they are not in his line of sight. Peering into the pylon, they notice a glowing table of light crystals deep inside the structure, which appears to be far larger inside than outside. Menaced by Grumpy, the children enter the pylon, noting that Grumpy is too big to follow them inside.

Rick Marshall is seeking his children in the jungle, but is hampered because he must avoid Spike. Grumpy approaches the pylon and attempts to bite it, but is repulsed by an electric shock and he leaves.

Approaching the table of glowing crystals, the children hesitantly touch them, creating lightning bolts out in the jungle. Rick evades Spike and discovers Cha-Ka in the underbrush, terrified of the lightning. Inside the pylon, Will and Holly continue to experiment with the crystals, accidentally triggering a continuous storm of lightning and wind. Will tells Holly "it must be something you did!" as they leave the pylon. Over the Land the sky is a vivid, swirling orange and blue and the three diamond-shape objects hover, flashing in different colors. Large hailstones begin falling, so cold that they "burn" the skin like dry ice, and Will is knocked unconscious, pinned under a fallen tree.

Rick finds the children and Will regains consciousness, trapped but uninjured. Rick and Holly free him. Will tells Rick how they were able to enter the pylon. They see Emily, Spot and Spike rampaging through the jungle, apparently terrified by the eerie storm, and head for the water-hole. Seeing Grumpy in their path as they flee from the other group of dinosaurs, they jump into the water to hide. They watch as the three diamond shapes hover overhead, discussing how "they have something to do with the pylon" and "the pylon has something to do with the weather." Will describes the table of glowing crystals to Rick, "like the thing in Enik's cave in The Lost City."

Holly notices that the flying objects are cycling through a series of colors -- yellow, green, red, and blue. "Those colors must mean something!" says Will. Rick believes the flying objects are trying to tell them something, by flashing colors in the opposite sequence of the crystals that Will and Holly touched in the pylon. Rick attempts to signal to the flying objects with his mirror, and they fly off.

The family returns to the pylon, where the flying objects are hovering overhead. Returning to the table of crystals, Rick tells Will and Holly to touch the crystals in sequence: yellow, green, red, and blue. This reverses the changes the children made to the weather, and the lightning, wind, and hail immediately vanish. Outside the pylon, the weather is calm, warm, and sunny again. Will gives the tetrahedral protrusion a twist, and the doorway fades. Hovering overhead are the three diamond-shaped objects, now not glowing with color but just showing the same metallic gold color as the pylon.

Back at High Bluff, Rick tells the children that "when Enik's people built this place, they built it so that it was in perfect balance. When we experiment with things that we don't know anything about, we upset that balance." He cautions the children that they can experiment, but first they must "know the variables." Holly wonders aloud if the pylons can help them return home. Will thinks that this might be possible. He believes the hovering diamond-shaped objects are the "protectors" of the pylons, and that "when anything goes wrong with one of them, they come over to find out why."

Will proposes that they name these flying objects "Skylons," but Rick and Will agree that since Holly saw them first, she should get to name them, but she agrees that "Skylons" is the best name.

Message[]

Patience is a virtue.

Cast[]

Dinosaurs[]

Grumpy
Spike
Spot (killed, although another coelophysis appears later in this episode and in subsequent episodes)
Emily

Quotes[]

Coming Up

Trivia[]

Enik is mentioned, but does not appear during the episode.
This marks the only episode where Grumpy actually succeeds in catching a meal.
The footage in which Grumpy closes in on Spot is also used barely three minutes later when Grumpy charges Will and Holly at the pylon. This same footage is also used in the introduction of Seasons One and Two as Grumpy pursues the Marshalls to High Bluff.
The Marshalls identify Spot as a coelophysis, but these were supposed to be carnivores. Spot is seen grazing on vegetation. Possibly, Spot is a mutant variation that never existed on earth. Another possibility is that the Marshalls misidentified him and he could be a different species, such as a camptosaurus, a bipedal, beaked, herbivorous dinosaur of the Late Jurassic period. Or possibly, like other carnivores, coelophyses munch on plants occasionally to deal with stomach problems.
Spike, Emily and Spot seem to be attuned to the pylons. In this and other episodes (such as Stone Soup) when something goes awry with the pylons, they march through the jungle, side by side. Note, this event occurred after Grumpy killed another Spot.
When the Marshalls converge on the fishing hole, surrounded by Grumpy on one side, Spot, Emily and Spike on the other side, Rick orders his family into the water, an insanely ridiculous idea, considering there is a raging electrical storm in the area.