The character was seldom altruistic to his shipmates, but he was that at times. And the Robinsons are just made out to be saints. Though they banished Smith at least three times.
We know to distrust what the man says about his youth. For those who have seen the first season, remember back to when they were fishing and though he claimed that he used to do just this activity all summer long as a kid he is unable to catch any fish (outdone by the other two) and as the Robot says, "suffers the injury of embarrasment."
Similarly, we are given fantastical
tales of his relatives over time.
We do know he has family. His cousin Jeremiah Smith comes calling plotting to kill Dr. Smith for the rights to an inheritance. This same cousin culminates the scheme with an alien machine that proves he has connections in the wider universe of Lost In Space.
Dr. Smith also encounters a widely feared doppelganger. Now why I should list these two incidences together delves into my own idea of what Dr. Smith's life must have been like before hitching his wagon to the Robinson family.
Barring extreme circumstances, Smith remains an incurable coward and without exception returns to that state in order to undercut the malevolence that inducted him into the series. My purpose is to see if I can draw reasonable conclusions that coincide with the sensibilities of the audience that might explain these two apparently very different characters.
So, I accused Dr. Smith of making his family sound fantastical, but it is always with fondness. And the only physical evidence we have of any real family is extremely hostile. And we have the doppelganger who we could interpret as having only a strong resemblance to Dr. Smith, but I would prefer to think otherwise for the reasons that follow.
The society from which the doppelganger, Zeno, is fleeing from possesses space travel while simultaneously setting itself up to look like the stereotypical old west. They use powder guns as opposed to the laser beams that the series has in abundance. And the strangest part of the episode to me is how Dr. Smith turns the townspeople against him; by destroying the "Sacred Golden Globe of Bacchus," which one of the people declares standing in the saloon to be sacrilege. The story forces me to respect that they treat this as a serious matter, even if it's for comedy.
Wiki on Bacchus
I'll take a leap here. In season one's The Sky Pirate, Alonzo P. Tucker claims to have been abducted by aliens and kept in suspended animation for study (born 1858 and speaking to them in 1997). Once more, he's not fleeing from the aliens that abducted him; he's been allowed to roam free.
From this precedence I draw the possibility that the episode West of Mars presents us with a colony that hosts an amalgamation of alien abductees, which at least holds some hope of explaining the half hazard western motif combined with a Roman god of debauchery.
Now add to the fact that Dr. Smith was a member of the secret organization, Aeolus, which he suspected had space flight capability (the Derelict), and the fact that Zeno looks like him becomes all the more interesting. One way the show saved money was to clone the main cast. So there are some interesting conclusions to draw if Zeno was a clone.
Remember back to when Dr. Smith was lying about his own childhood. What was that man's childhood like? Little known family and cut throat at that. And if Zeno was a clone then we have to explain what he was doing on a colony of abductees (as I think this best explains that community's existence). The characters of Dr. Smith and Zeno are written to be complete opposites. It then stands to reason they were nurtured differently. Indoctrinated, perhaps?
Who's to say Zeno was not also a member of Aeolus?
If there was indoctrination, how early did it start, and for whom?
Dr. Smith does not have to be the original, though, he could be.
Dr. Smith is the go-to character to scream at the sight of the monster of the week. In the face of Zeno's presence, I propose this fear was cultivated in Dr. Smith by Aeolus, even though he had knowledge of their space program, for the sake of discouraging him from leaving Earth since they had other agents on hand. I would go further to have him trained to be afraid of aliens specifically, because he was unafraid of the guard he confronted while infiltrating the Jupiter II.
To be a coward does not preclude being evil, but Dr. Smith relates to the Robinsons differently over time. From the episode The Cave of the Wizards, Dr. Smith frees himself similarly to how Will escaped in Invaders from the Fifth Dimension; he is expelled from the machine that contains him because it will not incorporate his affection for the family.
And we have numerous cases in the series that Dr. Smith proves susceptible to mind control where others do not, which at least underpins my suggestion of brainwashing.
I have left little to be desired in the character. He is a joy to watch, but unscrupulous and childishly so. I wouldn't propose the backstory of brainwashing redeems Dr. Smith. I would, however, assert that like in the Cave of the Wizards he has his moments. And if this can be adopted as a true explanation for Dr. Smith's repetitive treachery then Dr. Smith at least now has a road to redemption and a future in which he is no one's puppet, including himself.
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