The Los Angeles Times caught up this weekend with Phillip Paley, who played the caveboy Cha-Ka in all 43 episodes of the 1974-76 series. Paley earned the role thanks to a childhood spent learning gymnastics and karate; he studied under Chuck Norris and was a black belt by age nine. Today, he's 45 and working at a law firm in Santa Monica, and he tells the Times that, while he no longer has his Cha-Ka costume, he still has the dictionary of the Paku language created for the show that Cha-Ka and his people spoke. Years before Klingon appeared as a full-fledged language of its own in the 1980s in the Star Trek films and on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Land of the Lost hired a UCLA linguist to invent a complete language for Paley and his fellow Pakuni.

Series co-creator Marty Krofft, speaking to British magazine SFX in 1997, said the initial impulse to create an artificial language for the show came from the network, which, hoping to appease the FCC, wanted to ensure that the kids' show had a positive educational component. Sid and Marty Krofft hired linguist Victoria Fromkin to create the language.

In the same issue of SFX, Fromkin said that she developed the language to be revealed over time in the series, so that kids watching could learn new words every week the same way Will and Holly did in their attempts to understand Cha-Ka, by picking up the Paku vocabulary and grammar in context as Cha-Ka used them. (Unfortunately, Fromkin said, the episodes would frequently air out of sequence in reruns, spoiling her lesson plan.) "Since I did a lot of work on West African languages, particularly Akan, the major language of Ghana, Paku appears to be in the Kwa family of Bantu languages," she said. "Or at least if some linguist 2000 years from now would find excerpts of it, through reconstruction methods they would probably conclude that."

Not only was Paku the first artificial language created for a kid's show (according to Stephen Corley and Tim Cain's Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages), but it was also the first instance of a television show hiring a professional linguist to develop such a language. Fromkin went on to invent the far less extensive vampire language spoken in the 1998 film Blade.

Fromkin created a 200-word vocabulary for the Pakuni. A good chunk of which survives in this Pakuni-English dictionary reconstructed by LOTL fan Nels Olsen. So if you're watching the reruns again on SyFy, you can consult the list and learn not to confuse an aganka (iguana) with an agamba (dinosaur).

• The first attempt by the Kroffts to bring scifi the masses was arguably The Bugaloos. You've got mutant kids with wings, a crazy mad scientist lady named Benita Bizarre who wanted to capture them, and Billy Barty as a humanoid firefly.

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• Little known fact: Phil Collins actually auditioned to be a Bugaloo in 1970, before later joining Genesis that year. Who knows what would've happened to all those copies of No Jacket Required if he would've become a mutant.
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• While The Bugaloos only lasted one season, the next show with a scifi bent turned out to be Sigmund and the Sea Monsters in 1973. It ran for two seasons, and featured mutant monsters living near the sea. Sigmund was the nice monster, while his family wanted to make a living scaring humans.

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• Little known fact: Sigmund was actually Billy Barty. The Kroffts sure loved this guy.
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• In season two, Rip Taylor played an extremely effeminate genie named Sheldon who lived in a shell and had a penchant for making bad jokes and throwing confetti. Ouch.
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• In 1974, the Kroffts scared thousands of kids by introducing the Sleestaks in Land of the Lost. We've already covered our secret obsession with this show in a triviagasm. In fact, we're waiting on a Pylon to show up any day on Lost.
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• 1975's Far Out Space Nuts was the first Krofft show set in outer space, and it featured Bob "Gilligan" Denver and Chuck McCann as two hapless NASA employees who accidentally blast themselves into space when they hit the "launch" button instead of the "lunch" button. Nice button layout, NASA.

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• Besides featuring a total ripoff on the Skipper/Gilligan dynamic, the show also starred their alien friend Honk who made honking noises instead of talking.
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• Legendary actor John Carradine played an alien on the show, and according to Bob Denver's website his acting ability left Denver speechless.
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• The Lost Saucer also first appeared in 1975, and like Far Out Space Nuts it only ran for one season as well. It featured Jim "Gomer Pyle" Nabors and Ruth Buzzi as two dingbat androids named Fum and Fi who land on Earth and invite a young boy and his babysitter aboard. However, as onlookers gather and the crowd starts to panic, the androids take off with Jerry and Alice still aboard. The ship, which can also travel through time, becomes damaged, and the series is all about the bumbling idiot-bots trying to return them home.
• The androids had a pet "dorse" aboard the ship, which was half dog, and half horse.
• Jim Nabors had a bizarre "elbow laser" that he frequently used to... er, comic effect.
• 1976 gave us The Krofft Supershow, which was a Saturday morning kid's variety show. It was made up of other shows and musical acts like Kaptain Kool & The Kongs. It introduced the world to my personal favorite Krofft creation, Dr. Shrinker. Three kids crash-land their plane on a mysterious island, and a creepy mad scientist and his assistant (played by Billy Barty, of course) shrink them down as an insidious experiment. For the rest of the show, the "Shrinkies" try to evade the Doctor and figure out how to re-enlarge themselves.

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• Dr. Shrinker wanted to capture the Shrinkies to prove to the world that his shrinking ray worked, because it blew up after he shrunk them down. However, rather than try to repair it, he spent all of his time trying to catch the diminutive teens. What an idiot. As he said himself, "I chase the Shrinkies. I catch the Shrinkies. The Shrinkies escape. It's a vicious cycle and it's driving me mad!"
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• The Krofft Supershow also gave us one season of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, which borrowed heavily from the 1960s Batman television show, as well as Wonder Woman. The show featured two women who were reporters (in their spare time) and who could turn into superheroes with their "Electra-Change". They drove around in an "Electra-Car," had an "Electra-Base," and talked to their scientist buddy Frank via "Electra-Coms." They also had a huge variety of "Electra-Powers", like "Electra-Vision" and "Electra-Beams."

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• The show starred Deidre Hall from Days of Our Lives as Electra Woman, and a new pilot for the show was shot in 2001 starring Markie Post as Electra Woman, but it did not get picked up. If the writer's strike would've lasted longer... who knows?
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• We can't go without mentioning the bizarre Wonderbug show that was part of the Supershow. Three teenagers fight crime and solve mysteries with the help of their jalopy Schlep who could turn into a magical dune buggy when they honked his magic horn. It's not really science fiction, but it was a talking car long before K.I.T.T. ever was. Plus hey, he could fly. Try doing that with Turbo Boost.

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• Sadly, with season two the Krofft Supershow dropped both Dr. Shrinker and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Instead, they added Magic Mongo, about a wacky genie, and Bigfoot and Wildboy, which was all about a boy orphaned in the Pacific Northwest who was raised by Bigfoot. Together they fight people who would do harm to the regions forest.

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• Bigfoot and Wildboy actually got picked up as a standalone show for ABC, and they would edited two 15 minute shows together into one episode. The show featured a lot of 70s style slow-motion, to show how strong Bigfoot was. Kind of like The Six Million Dollar Man. Remember when Bigfoot was on that show? Look for more on that later.
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• Probably the most bizarre thing the Kroffts ever produced (besides Lidsville) was The Krofft Superstar Hour in 1978. It was a reworking of The Krofft Supershow, and they dropped Kaptain Kool & The Kongs, and replaced them with the real life band The Bay City Rollers. They added two skit segments to the show called Horror Hotel, featuring Witchiepoo from Pufnstuf as a bitchy hotel owner, and The Lost Island, which is where things truly went wonky.
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• The Lost Island featured cameo appearances by Enik the Sleestak, H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund the Sea Monster, and Dr. Shrinker, now called Dr. Deathray. They'd have bizarre interactions with the Bay City Rollers, and then there'd be a musical scene. True bizarreness. Check out Part One and Part Two of this mindmelting segment.
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• The Marshalls were stuck in a place that existed outside or normal space and time. During their stay in the Land of the Lost, they encountered a Confederate soldier, found the bones and diary of a soldier from the Revolutionary soldier, a glider pilot from the future, the weird invisible, telepathic alien named The Zarn, and Holly even met a future version of herself.
• There were Pylons scattered around the Land (hatches, anyone?) that were larger on the inside than the outside (TARDIS, anyone?). Their sole purpose was to house these funky crystal matrix chessboard tables which did everything from control the weather to open time doorways. Sadly, the Marshalls never really figured out how to work them right.
• The Sleestaks had a Library of Skulls, which contained the sentient skulls of their ancestors, who could still speak and dispense knowledge, despite being just a skull. They could also predict the future, show visions, and annoy the hell out of people who just wanted a straight answer. Plus they ran things for the Sleestaks and told them what to do. Kind of like that mysterious Jacob ghost/spirit/whatever the hell thing on Lost.
• If you screwed up a Pylon or it started malfunctioning, these bizarre flying shapes would appear in the sky and flash the colors that you'd need to arrange on the matrix table in order to fix things. Rick Marshall dubbed them Skylons, and they appeared to be some form of automated repair units with limited artificial intelligence. Black smoke monster, anyone? Bueller?
• The Sleestaks were descendants of the Altrusians, an alien race who lived a thousand years before the Sleestaks. They were shorter than them, had an extra digit on each hand, and had limited psionic abilities. Plus they weren't nearly as creepy.
• The Land of the Lost existed inside its own closed universe. The Marshalls once tried to take the river out of the land, but found that it looped around and put them back right where they started. In another episode, Holly descended into a pit on a rope, and found herself dangling upside down over the Land. Just like the Hotel California and the island on Lost, you can check in, but you can never leave.
• David Gerrold's backstory for the series explains that the Altrusians actually built the Land as a way-station intended to let travelers cross between various places. The time doorways are gateways which allow users to cross into the Land on their way to their destination. The reason that travel through the time doorways is unpredictable, at best, is that the Land has fallen into disrepair in the time since it was built.
• While the Sleestaks might have been scary as hell, they only had three of those rubber suits, so they couldn't have more than that on the screen at the same time. The producers had to rely on the miracle of editing whenever they wanted it to seem like a Sleestak army was on your ass. Fairly ironic because the Library of Skulls says that the Sleestak number about 7,000.
• The furry Pakunis on the show actually had their own language, created by Professor Victoria A. Fromkin from UCLA, who also created the vampire language for Blade. Keep in mind, this was a Saturday morning kids show that had its own invented language. Not too shabby.
• Sleestaks were played by UCLA basketball players, because they were tall enough to fit the suits. Future Detroit Pistons star Bill Laimbeer famously played a Sleestak for awhile.
• Harlan Ellison submitted a treatment for a Land of the Lost script, but it was never produced. However, you can read a copy of it here.
• David Gerrold who wrote "The Trouble With Tribbles" episode of Star Trek and science fiction writer Larry Niven of Ringworld fame were both writers on the series. Gerrold even served as story editor.
• The intelligent and friendly Sleestak named Enik first appeared in a script written by Walter Koenig of Star Trek fame, and was supposed to be named Eneg. This was a tribute to Gene Roddenberry, since it was his name spelled backwards, but the producers nixed it.
• In order for something to leave the Land of the Lost, something of equal mass had to enter. The show used this in both clever and idiotic ways. At the end of Season One, the Enik explains to them that they can leave, but in doing so they also cause the event that brings them into the Land of the Lost in the first place, so they're stuck inside a repeating loop forever. They did this in case the show didn't get picked up after its first year, but then they never explained how they broke the loop in Season Two. That's the fairly clever way.

  The dumb way was in that the actor who played Rick Marshall left the show after Season Two, so in Season Three an earthquake accidentally knocks him into a time doorway (it was actually one of the producers seen from behind and wearing a wig) and he vanishes. However, moments later the Marshall's Uncle Jack (Rick's brother) appears. Seems like he's been looking for them since they vanished. How very convenient.

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• If reading this has made you want to go back and rewatch this entire series, or maybe see it for the first time (like it did for me), you can pick up all three seasons in a DVD box set for fairly cheap. Just don't blame us when you get sucked in.

Image by The UncredibleSkulk