It was Saturday. It was early...but I was up, with the T.V. on...waiting. As the promotional commercials had predicted, a new show was coming...and it had dinosaurs in it...
On September 7th, 1974, it began...
Marshall, Will and Holly, on a routine expedition...
I was only four years old but I remember it like it was yesterday. There had been nothing like it for my generation. Yes we had Sigmund the Sea Monster, New Zoo Review and a room to romp in with Miss Nancy...but never before had a blow-up raft negotiated waterfalls so deftly, straight down without even tipping over and dumping the crew. Never before had a father and his kids been able to evade hungry dinosaurs to find that perfect cave in which to set up permanent camp, and never before had any lost survivor sported such groovy, polyester clothing...clothes that never seemed to tear or get dirty. This was..."The Land of the Lost".
"Follow that Dinosaur" was episode 13 of the first season where we are introduced to these two brave and intrepid Revolutionary War soldiers. You never actually see Koenig and Potts, they are long dead in their debut, and I assume it was written this way as a fake skeleton and a set of Colonial era clothes are much cheaper than paying an actor. Nevertheless, William and Harry provide the Marshalls with some much needed information and get their hopes up of an escape. By chance, Will and Holly discover a dummy made of Koenig's 18th century clothing stuffed with what Holly calls "dinosaur nip". This stuff looks like common fern fronds to me, picked up cheap by the prop department at the local Fedco garden center. Apparently all the dinos in Land of the Lost crave the smell of this particular discount greenery. Grabbing the fern filled "yankee doodle", they hightail it back to the cave to discover the first piece of Koenig's journal tucked in the waistcoat pocket.
Now my history side is going to kick into gear...
The suit of colonial clothing they used for the episode looks really good. You might want to assume that the show would use any old Revolutionary War uniform out of the costume department, but they didn't, and whether by accident or by intent, they chose something that actually might have been worn by a soldier in the early on. Many American soldiers were wearing civilian clothes in 1775 and 1776 as uniforms were scarce. An old brown suit of 18th-century clothing really works. But riddle me this, once Koenig fashioned his clothes into a dummy filled with "dino nip"...what did he wear after?
At some point, Potts and Koenig split up, Harry Potts entering the lost city and leading William Koenig to believe he had found a way back to New England. After finding the dummy, Marshall, Will and Holly decide to follow. To the lost city they go. Koenig's journal reveals many things. The Marshalls learn that the Sleestak, the dreaded "Lizard Men" were named Sleestack by Koenig and Potts in honor of what was probably their commanding officer, Major Joshua Sleestack. Koenig and Potts were the ones who wrote "Beware of Sleestack" for the Marshall family to find.
The way the Koenig's journal is scripted for the show really takes into account how an 18th-century American would see the world of "Land of the Lost". While not perfect, the writers actually tried to include syntax that would sound period, and it doesn't hurt to have Koenig's perspective of what he would see as giant lizards and lizard men, something he could not imagine from his world where dinosaurs from Earth's distance past were unknown and only appeared in excavations roughly 100 years later.
Both Potts and Koenig never make it out alive. Koenig's bones are found along with the last piece of his journal at what he thought was the way back to Massachusetts, or Connecticut or New Hampshire. It's also discovered that Potts met the fate he was soon to meet, alone in a cave with bubbling lava, an army of Altrusians/Sleestack waiting to nab him if he should go back the way he came.
When it was all over, the Marshall's had the complete journal, all three parts, and the sinking feeling that they would be trapped, lost forever in this strange land.