Daily Inspiration Quote by Mark Goddard

Nostalgia usually flatters the past; Mark Goddard’s brag cuts in a different direction, using numbers to puncture the prestige story we like to tell ourselves about “classic” TV. His point isn’t that Lost in Space was secretly better than Star Trek. It’s that the culture’s memory is a messy editor: we retroactively crown a canon based on influence, reruns, and fan devotion, not on what most people actually watched on a Wednesday night.

The ratings comparison does two things at once. First, it reminds you how insanely concentrated broadcast audiences used to be. A “22” in a three-network universe meant mass attention; a “15” in Seinfeld’s era could still be a phenomenon because the audience had already started splintering across cable, VCRs, and niche programming. Goddard’s shorthand is really a history of media fragmentation disguised as an old actor’s anecdote.

Second, he’s making a claim about dignity. Genre TV and children’s sci-fi were long treated as disposable, even when they were delivering giant audiences. By pointing out that Lost in Space outdrew Star Trek at the time, he’s quietly rebuking the way the industry rewards the cult object over the popular one, the critical darling over the workhorse. It’s a performer’s perspective: visibility mattered, paychecks mattered, and being “important” came later, if it came at all.