UNIVERSAL PICTURES (1995)

It's peculiar that some sectors of the science-fiction universe -- specifically TV and film -- have so little regard for scientists. Think of Forbidden Planet's Dr. Morbius, a genius torn apart-literally-by his neuroses. Or The Thing (From Another World)'s Dr. Carrington; when he appeals to the brutal, uncomprehending alien at the film's climax, audiences everywhere sigh, ''What a dink.'' And the list goes on. Last summer's big sci-fi success, Stargate (1994, LIVE, PG-13, priced for rental), similarly tells of a brainiac-versus-brawnmaster struggle. And while the moviemakers are clearly on the side of sweet reason, they can't resist making their man of science a bit of a dink.

Or ''dweeb,'' as Col. Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell) refers to Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader). Egyptologist Jackson, first seen clearing a lecture hall with his theories on the pyramid builders of the Fourth Dynasty, is enlisted in a hush-hush defense project involving a portal to a planet outside Earth's galaxy whose citizens are enslaved by Ra, the Sun God (The Crying Game's Jaye Davidson). Jackson goes there to translate but spends a lot of time looking wide-eyed and making an idiot out of himself. O'Neil goes to destroy but ends up leading a rebellion against Ra and becoming father figure to a new ''son.''

Stargate rehashes all that ancient-astronaut speculation from the '70s (remember Chariots of the Gods?) but does so with a soupcon of panache and a substantial amount of money. The conflict between Russell's colonel, suicidal since the death of his child, and Spader's scholar, more absentminded than usual since his divorce, never reaches the boiling point. Rather, their stay on the distant planet helps fill the voids in their lives. Traditional sci-fi demands sacrifice from the characters; this movie chooses to heal them instead. Decent of the moviemakers but still secondary to the spectacle, which crosses Lawrence of Arabia with Star Wars to somewhat diminished effect on the small screen.

The other big new-to-video sci-fi title, Lost in Space: The Collector's Edition (1965-68, Columbia House, $7.50 for first tape, $23.34 for additional tapes, 1-800-638-2922), seems right at home on the small screen, with a scope that's light-years away from Stargate's.

Are you familiar with Major Donald West's theory, the one that ''rocked the scientific world''? It has to do with the suitability of other planets for inhabitation by earthlings. And the guy came up with it when he was only a grad student-very impressive.

Guess you can't be blamed if you drew a blank. West after all is the sneering, macho pilot for the galaxy-hopping Robinson family on the Formica-laden '60s TV series. Played humorlessly by Mark Goddard, West is constantly looking for an excuse to throttle the treacherous stowaway Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), a saboteur who winds up accompanying the crew when its mission to colonize another planet goes awry.

In the rarely seen pilot, ''No Place to Hide'' (included on the tape with ''The Reluctant Stowaway,'' the show's first televised episode), much is made of West's scientific acumen. As the series progressed, the only theory you might have associated with West is one in which he figures out how to get voluptuous Judy Robinson (Marta Kristen) away from her family for, say, 40 minutes. And the villainous Smith -- absent from the pilot but a major character in ''Stowaway'' -- eventually became the voyage's resident intellectual of sorts. His smarts gave West all the more reason to sneer. Bad enough that the guy's an effete four-flusher -- he's an egghead, too.

If you want to compare sci-fi then and now, checking out Lost in Space back-to-back with Stargate isn't terribly useful. Some would argue that Lost in Space has as much to do with serious science fiction as Godzilla movies do. The 81 episodes scheduled for release (two on each tape) function best as pleasing TV nostalgia -- not quite camp, unless you make the dubious case for Dr. Smith as some sort of gay antihero. Its value for baby-boomer sci-fi fans may be in the fact that the series, which premiered in 1965, represented their first taste of the genre. Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian, The Twilight Zone, the cheesy but often eerie '50s sci-fi flicks that played regularly on local stations -- all these constituted the doorway, or perhaps the Stargate, through which we traveled to Star Trek, Star Wars, and the like. Whether the upcoming big-screen Lost in Space will take us forward or backward is anybody's guess, but sci-fi fans who say they don't care are probably lying. Stargate: B; Lost in Space: The Collector's Edition: B-

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