While watching a scary vampire movie on the monitor, Penny Ziffel (Penny/Judy/Cosmo) sees a commercial for “Captain Cal’s Space Service Station”. One of the amenities at the station is the “Satellite Diner”. Penny wants to go to the diner but Will Ziffel (Bill Hedges) is having some issues with the ship’s navigation system. He needs a new NG205 circuit board. His ship, the Andromeda, is old and finding parts for it can be difficult. Besides he just considers the diner a tourist trap designed to get your money. Despite Will’s objections, Penny steals the Andromeda’s space pod and takes off for the diner. Will has no choice but to follow her in the spaceship.
At the space station Will finds Penny in the diner at the comic book display. To appease Penny they have a lunch of spam, spam and spam. After lunch Penny gets into a Jitterbug contest and wins first prize. Afterwards Will is looking to get a new circuit board for his ship. They run into Captain Cal who tells them that they may be able to get parts at Haney’s Aerospace Salvage. At Haney’s Will finds what he is looking for but is also conned into buying a robot.
The robot is an old Hoyt-Clagwell that had seen better days. Apparently it picked up a malevolent virus at one point and attacked its owner. Haney says it has since been reprogrammed and functions perfectly. Will has no choice but to buy the robot if he wants the circuit board. The robot is loaded aboard the ship and Will fixes his navigation system. What Will doesn’t know is that the robot has had some reprogramming done by a couple of suspicious looking aliens. Will, already wary of robots in general, finds himself at the mercy of the unpredictable and potentially violent robot.
“While the Cat’s Away” was released in 2025 and was written and directed by Bill Hedges. It is a home grown science fiction short and is the tenth film in the Cosmic Cat series.
As usual there are some shout-outs, homages as well as some science fiction movie and television show references. The main inspiration for this episode is “2001: A Space Odyssey” 1968, complete with a floating pen and the HAL 9000 eye light on the robot. Bill also uses some of the dialogue from the film. Haney describes the robot that Will buys as a Hoyt-Clagwell. This is the fictitious name of the tractor Oliver Douglas rides in the television show “Green Acres”. The space station itself is a miniature and is modeled after that in the Loony Tunes cartoons that featured Marvin the Martian as well as influences from the Jetsons cartoons.
Some Easter eggs in the film that reference episode eleven, the time travel episode, are the Sports Almanac and the cap Marty wore in “Back to the Future” 1985, as well as a flux capacitor that is seen hanging in Haney’s shop. Haney himself is a reoccurring character from a previous episode when Will first bought his spaceship, Andromeda.
There are always so many interesting aspects of Bill’s films that make them fun to watch. Everything from the varied use of his vast storehouse of props to the little homages that are nestled into every episode adds a little extra joy to each story, not to mention Penny herself. For some nostalgia and a just plain good watch, you can’t beat it.
In his spare time Bill has created a tribute video honoring the 60th anniversary of the television show “Lost in Space”. I include it for your enjoyment.
Movie
Trailer
Lost in Space World