"Give me a child at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life." So the fanatical teacher of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969) liked to say. And so the TV networks have repeatedly proved.

In 2014, development began on Lost in Space, a modern reboot of an iconic television science fiction series from the 1960s. Rather than a broadcast or cable network, Netflix won the rights for it just ...