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Few sci-fi TV series have ever had anything to do with science; most aresci-fi only in setting. But as Mr. Vonnegut pointed out, this is generally true of the sci-fi genre. Most of those of the ’50s and ’60s were just dumbfamily viewing. However, many explored the social issues of the times, and afew really took a stab at the natural or scientific aspects of sci-fi.

The social aspects of these series was perhaps significant. It iscentral to the sci-fi genre to explore strange situations, to ask “what if”questions. So in sci-fi media, different social arrangements is oftenexplored: for example, different political systems, and such ideas as racialan sexual equality.

Besides listing the basic sci-fi props of vehicles, weapons, robots and othergadgets, I’ll discuss why series worked or failed, and why I personally appreciate them, or not. I’ll try to collect parables, although most of this pap defies deep analysis.

I’ve only seen U.S., British and one German series of this time(although I’ve heard of Japanese and Russian ones.)

In the 1950s U.S., many children’s serials-for-TV were aired with sci-fisettings, all of the hero pilot genre, but the first real sci-fi show forgrown-ups wasOut There, which aired stories by several of the big 1950ssci-fi authors, followed by another purely sci-fi anthology showTales of Tomorrow.These were before my time, but I remember vividly (still with some dread) itssuccessor, the Twilight Zone, which was too scary for me. Thereafter, the three networks struggled with a flurry of poorly conceived andhopelessly hobbled sci-fi series, until Star Trek aired in ’68,which blew all the others out of the water. Always popular, it was killed for dubious reasons, despite a public outcry.

Thereafter, very little sci-fi happened on U.S. TV until the end of the ’70s,no new space shows appearing in the States until Battlestar Galactica in ’78. But that wasn’t great either and didn’t last long, so the’70s and ’80s remained very spotty sci-fi-wise until a renewedinterest in the ’90s gave rise to a another flurry of space fiction shows,dominated by Star Trek spin-offs.

Just why the networks decided sci-fi wasn’t good enough for the U.S. public,I can’t fathom. It’s amazing that even the success of Star Wars in 1977 didn’topen the network exec’s eyes.They are not ruled by good business sense or common senseor logic. Stupidity remains the prime suspect. Also, I always say, thepeople most susceptible to ads and fads are advertisers and marketers.

Great Britain took up the sci-fi slack in the early ’70s, especially withthe wonderful (and ongoing) Dr. Who series. But they alsoturned out awful stinkers.

Out There

1951–52 CBS
12 episodes

This is before my time, and I’ve never seen an episode.

Aired stories by several of the big 1950s sci-fi authors:Heinlein, Bradbury and Sturgeon.

One reads that its success was doomed by a very poor time slot: Sundayafternoons.

Tales of Tomorrow

1951–53 ABC
85 episodes

This is before my time. I’ve only seen public-domian copies.

The acting is very good, live stage plays for TV.Some themes are old monster shows redone, such as Frankenstein.Other themes form the basis for later sci-fi and horror shows.Lovely old electric organ theme music.

Space Patrol

1963–4 National Interest Pictures (UK)
39 episodes

This was a marionette show, the brainchild of the prolific Roberta Leigh.It followed the better known U.S. show of the same name, and the U.K.marionette show Fireball XL-5 of the Andersons. Leigh had previously worked with the Andersons on TV puppet shows.

The show’s curious electronic music, it seems, is also Leigh’s invention.The story is, she put some gadgets together from parts she bought herself.

Time frame: 2100.

Primary space vehicle, Galasphere 347, is driven by “meson power”.They go really fast, but not faster than light—so a trip to Pluto still requires months.The captain always switches to robot control for landing: the same sceneof a robot walking to strange percussive electronic music always follows(no other scenes involve this particular robot.)When exploring planets, the crew rides “hover jets”.Alien species appear in different sorts of ships, but none is a boringrocket.

These galaspheres consist of a torus with a middle axial section; theinside has various compartments, one of which is a “freezer” which theyenter for extended trips. The crew wears space suits outside the craft,in space and on planets with no atmosphere.

Aliens: most action takes place in our solar system (unfortunately consistentlyreferred to as “our galaxy”). The crew consists of a Martian and a Venusian as well as a captain. These seem to be just people with funny voices.They meet (intelligent, not always nice) life forms on each other planet,as well as one from another star. An annoying talking parrot (a “gammadictum”)from Mars is a repeat character. Some planets have intelligent plants.

Various weapons, often dreamed up by “Professor Haggarty”.

Robots are common, sometimes being treated as persons, sometimes as servants.(In one episode they revolt.)

World Space Patrol is a sort of scientific military thing. Rules the “galaxy”(by which they mean solar system).

Character development is relentless (one is always hungry, one is very precise, one talks too much…) At least they thought about it. The dialogis silly and badly dated, but often deals with grown-up interpersonal issues.The mood is supposed to be work-a-day: a running joke is how much leave thecrew should get versus what they really get.A couple of woman characters are pretty and sensible in their subordinatepositions. Another running gag is that women talk too much.

The themes are mostly simple adventure in various places in space, whilesaving the “galaxy” (solar system) from bad guys. And while the hero aspectis very pronounced, the story lines aren’t usually simple hero-villain.

This series is different from many contemporaries, in that at least somescientific facts are somewhat accurately applied, and some imagination wasevident in its aliens and gadgets.

Science Fiction Theatre

1955–57 Ivan Tors Productions,
78 episodes

This is before my time. I have seen only a few public domain episodes.

The episodes are introduced in science documentary format, with hostTruman Bradley giving science and history background for the theme,joined sometimes by real scientists, followed by a story portrayed by actors.Bradley emphasizes that the story is fictional.

The science-babble and gee-whiz stuff gets a little thick.As silly as some of the dialog is, it is clear that real scientists wereconsulted… on occasion.

Established actors such as: Basil Rathbone, Vincent Price, new actors such as DeForest Kelley (“Bones” of Star Trek).

Sci-fi themes, for example: inheritance of memory, space flight, moon landing,flight to Jupiter and Mars, alien abduction, Egypt’s pyramids built bylevitation, time travel, etc.

“Science has a hard time separating fact from fiction…of course our story is fiction, but it might offer a possible explanation.”

The Twilight Zone

1959–63 CBS
156 episodes

Twilight Zone wasn’t a sci-fi series per se. Rather, itwas a collection of short stories, tales of the supernatural, unnatural orplain weird. Many episodes had sci-fi themes—the distinction between“weird” and “sci-fi” being blurred, of course, in the setting of deepest darkestTwilight Zone.

Besides varying in setting, the episodes vary greatly in production quality. Most are wonderful in some way, by being really scary or weird stories,or by fantastic acting, or by simply excellent, classy execution.I love the late ’50s feeling.

Don’t expect glorious special effects or mind-bending science.With few exceptions, these are stage plays of short stories, made witha very small budget—which was expended mostly on great actors.

Several other TV shows of the late ’50s and early ’60s were anthologiesof stories of the strange or unnatural. Some purely sci-fi ones are listedhere, but some such as Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond(1959–61) treated only supernatural topics.

Serling was far more interested in psychological and social aspects ofsci-fi—the few times when aliens are depicted, they are deliberatelyridiculous (or else, they’re people). Androids (never by that name)appear in several episodes, but they too are just adorned people.

In a half dozen or so episodes, a flying saucer familiar fromForbidden Planet appears,(once showing its real dimensions: about 7′ across).The one future car is just the one from that same movie.And yes “Robby” the robot of that movie gets his chops in too, in a coupleof episodes (his head is replaced in one).In “The Little People”, a classic rocket ship with fins is depicted.

Perhaps the most famous episode is “To Serve Man”. I remember this vividly,because when the alien appeared, it was too much for my five-year-oldbravery: I went to the bathroom at the far side of the house, turned thewater on, and plugged my ears. Here, the brief view of a flying saucer isinstead a Harryhausen animation, a clip from Earth vs. the FlyingSaucers. The aliens’ makeup jobs are the most ambitious ever used in the series, andit is ultimately—a black comedy.

Besides space travel, aliens, particle beam weapons, various episodes treat:

• time loops
• time travel (more often accidental than scientific)
• alternate realities
• alternate universes (crossing into)
• parallel universes
• various alien visitors
• telekinesis
• suspended animation
• robots and androids
• flying saucers
• particle beam weapons (“Two”)
• replicators
• invisible walls
• post-holocaust world
• dystopia
• earth doomed by natural catastrophe
• child with godlike abilities to transform things
• mental telepathy
• suspended animation
• flat-screen TV(!)

Star Trek drew very heavily from TZ: Each of Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Scotty (James Doohan), Sulu(George Takei), and many familiar extras and guest stars, and many of thesituations explored in its several generations. Besides, some of themood music of TZ was very thinly re-worked for Star Trek.

Lost in Space? Dr. Smith (Johnathan Harris) plays significantroles in several episodes, Will Robinson (Billy Mumy) showed his naturaltalent in a couple of very serious and scary episodes.

Bewitched? Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery), (the 1st) Darren(Dick York), Endora (Agnes Moorhead), and Larry (David White) were each the star of a TZ episode.

(By the way, Serling himself refers to Twilight Zone as “TZ”.)

How about the ’60s Batman’s Alfred (Alan Napier), and Chief O’Hara(Stafford Repp)—and first Catwoman (Julie Newmar) as theDevil—with cute horns!

Get a load of Nancy Kulp—Jane Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillys,playing a far more serious character than really belongs in a comedy. But there’s also Raymond Bailey, who played Mr. Drysdale.

Famous old movie stars: Ed Wynn, Burgess Merideth, James Whitmore,Buddy Ebsen, Buster Keaton, Mickey Rooney, Estelle Winwood, Lee Marvin,Gary Merrill, Cedric Hardwicke, Gladys Cooper,Joan Blondell, William Demarest, Sterling Holloway, Jackie Cooper;many others
Famous new movie/TV stars: Charles Bronson, Anne Francis, Jack Klugman,Dennis Weaver, Carol Burnett, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall, Robert Duvall,Martin Landau, Patrick Macnee, Cloris Leachman, Doug McClure, William Windom,Keenan Wynn, Burt Reynolds, Richard Kiel, Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas,Richard Basehart, Robert Lansing, Mariette Hartley, Michael Constantine,George Lindsey, Morgan Brittany;gobs more
Famous guest stars: Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters
Familiar supporting actors: an absolute parade

This is a list of episodes that involve some sort of sci-fi theme. (Of course, the gray area is very broad, as broad as the Twilight Zone!)

• “Time Enough at Last” Burgess Meredith
• “Third from the Sun” Fritz Weaver, Edward Andrews, Joe Maross, Denise Alexander, Lori March
• “And When the Sky Was Opened”, Rod Taylor, James Hutton, Charles Aidman
• “I shot an Arrow into the Air” Dewey Martin, Edward Binns
• “Elegy” Cecil Kellaway, Jeff Morrow, Don Dubbins, Kevin Hagen
• “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” Claude Atkins, Garrett Atwater, Jack Weston
• “People Are Alike All Over” Roddy McDowall, Susan Oliver, Paul Comi, Byron Morrow
• “The Mighty Casey” Abraham Sofaer, Jack Warden, Robert Sorrels
• “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” Simon Oakland, Oscar Beregi, Jr., Lew Gallo, John Mitchum
• “The Invaders” Agnes Moorhead
• “The Prime Mover” Buddy Ebsen
• “A Hundred Yards over the Rim” Cliff Robertson, John Crawford, Evans Evans, John Astin
• “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” John Hoyt, Jean Willes, Jack Elam
• “The Obsolete Man” Burgess Meredeth, Fritz Weaver
• “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” Don Rickles, Burgess Meredeth
• “The Lateness of the Hour” Inger Stevens, John Hoyt, Irene Tedrow
• “Eye of the Beholder” Maxine Stuart, William D. Gordon, Jennifer Howard
• “Two” Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Bronson
• “Death Ship” Jack Klugman, Ross Martin, Fredrick Beir
• “The Midnight Sun” Lois Nettleton, Betty Garde, Tom Reese
• “It’s a Good Life” Billy Mumy, Cloris Leachman
• “Once upon a Time” Buster Keaton, Stanley Adams, Jesse White
• “To Serve Man” Lloyd Bochner, Richard Kiel, Susan Cummings
• “No Time Like the Past” Dana Andrews, Malcom Atterbury
• “Parallel” Steve Forrest, Jacquelin Scott
• “On Thursday We Leave for Home” James Whitmore, Tim O’Connor, James Broderick, Paul Langton
• “The Fugitive” James Pat O’Malley, Nancy Kulp
• “The Little People” Claude Aikins, Joe Maross
• “Hocus-Pocus and Frisby” Andy Devine, Howard McNear, Dabbs Greer
• “The Trade Ins” Joseph Schildkraut, Alma Platt, Noah Keen, Theodore Marcuse
• “The Gift” Nico Minardos, Paul Mazursky, Vito Scotti, Geoffey Horne, Edmund Vargas
• “I Sing the Body Electric” David White, Veronica Cartwright, Josephine Hutchinson
• “Uncle Simon” Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Ford, Ian Wolfe, (part of) Robby the Robot
• “Probe 7, Over and Out” Richard Basehart, Antoinette Bower
• “The Long Morrow” Robert Lansing, Mariette Hartley
• “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” Collin Wilcox, Suzy Parker, Richard Long, Pam Austin
• “Black Leather Jackets” Lee Kinsolving, Shelley Fabares, Denver Pyle, Michael Conrad
• “From Agnes — with Love” Wally Cox, Raymond Bailey
• “Stopover in a Quiet Town” Barry Nelson, Nancy Malone
• “The Fear” Peter Mark Richman, Hazel Court

“It’s been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things:science fiction — the improbable made possible, fantasy — theimpossible made probable. What would you have if you put these two differentthings together…”

My Favorite Martian

1963–66 CBS
107 episodes

A martian anthropologist (named Exigus 12½) is surveying Earth,when his space ship is hit by a U.S. X-15 space plane, and he has to crash.A reporter, Tim, finds him and takes him home, and proceeds to pass him off as his uncle Martin, supposedly until the ship can be fixed.

It’s a sitcom, most of the humor arising from the pretense about uncleMartin’s nature.

Martin can raise little antennas at the back of his head, go invisible,levitate things remotely with his finger, rearrange molecules (to makea thing turn into another), travel in time, etc. So many standard sci-fi situations are covered, comedically.

It was a thin premise for a comedy, and their material was likewise limited. I think it only went on so long because of the public’s interestin things spacey.

The Outer Limits

1963–65 ABC
49 episodes

Like its predecessor The Twilight Zone,The Outer Limits was an anthology of short story plots, butin contrast, its themes were of decidedly sci-fi content.

The monsters were usually intended to be scary—some were good enoughto reappear in later sci-fi shows. (Notably, the horta ofStar Trek began here as a giant microbe.)

Also the actors Shatner, Nimoy, Doohan and Whitney of Star Trekeach played in The Outer Limits episodes.

Although the sets and special effects are often very cheesy, they’re much moreelaborate than anything in Twilight Zone, or any other seriesof the period.

While the acting in many episodes is very good, and the mood really is verycreepy, often far too much sciencebabble is provided as explanation.And the “control voice” narrator, which even at the time seemed strainingfor eeriness, really is a distraction—a sophomoric answer to Serling’sepisodic remarks.

One of my favorite episodes was “Behold Eck!”, about a two-dimensional alienand an optician(!) who makes lenses that allow him to see it—partlybecause I know of no other sci-fi discussion of 2D beings, and partlybecause I never saw an optician portrayed as a hero genius.

Another is “Soldier”, which depicts infantrymen in a future war zone, transported to the present time. Way too much is explained to keep it creepy,but the future scenes are great, and so are some of the ideas explained bythe soldier.

Also check out: “The Invisible Enemy”, about the scariness of travel to Mars,with Adam West (Batman), Bob DoQui (the first portrayalof a black astronaut, to the best of my knowledge), and also Ted Knightof The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Dr. Who

1964–89 BBC Studios

This longest-running of the sci-fi series is more than I can discuss inany detail. I’ve seen only a fraction of the episodes. I’ll talk aboutwhy it works.

Vehicle: the Tardis is a time machine, but more than that, so much more.And just for fun, on the outside it’s appearance is “stuck” as an oldBritish police telephone booth, but it’s much much bigger on the insidethan on the outside.

The Doctor’s weapons: only his genius! (And a bunch of other gadgets.)

Aliens, androids, robots, entities, etc. made weekly appearances.Notably, the homicidal robot “Daleks” (particularly scary as theirscariness was left to the viewer), were a recurring menace.

The show isn’t so much based on a premise, as a person:the Doctor himself is the main draw, a sort of cross between an understated super-hero and a mad scientist, whose purpose of course is ever to savethe universe.In the Tardis, he can go anywhere, and to anytime he likes, for any adventure imagination would allow.He has some limitations: for example, he’s not exactlyimmortal—but if he gets killed, or his actor gets bored or laid off,he switches bodies.

It’s just fun.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

1964–68 ABC
110 episodes

Note: David Hedison was known from the science fiction filmThe Fly.

Date: 1970s (! the future—only 2 years away when the series ended)

Ship: nuclear powered super-submarine Seaview, with very cool flukes, very roomy inside.
Shuttle: nuclear powered Flying Sub
Weapons: The subs both sported lasers, and could “electrify” their hulls.

Lots of sea monsters, aliens, ghosts, etc. visit. Time-travel is arecurring theme.

The series is based on the rather silly and confused film by the same name, an attempt at undersea sci-fi, that mooshed up space themes (Van Allen belts)with the secret agent theme (a secret submarine), and the always-popularsalvation of the world (using nukes).

While the mood of the episodes remained darkly and militarily serious,they quickly devolved into a weekly monster show, with many episodes centeredaround some guy in a scary rubber suit shaking the submarine modelaround in a swimming pool—too pathetic for anyone over ten.

The series was based on a 1961 film of the same name, which was a directoffspring from a 1959 film The Atomic Submarine, which alsofeatured a nuclear sub thwarting a giant monster.

Lost in Space

1965–68 CBS
83 episodes

Date: 1997

Mission: From United States to scout out Alpha Centauri with a viewtoward colonization. Mission glitch: an evil stowaway saboteur.

Vehicle: Jupiter 2. A basic flying saucer, nuclear powered. Looks (and sounds) cool in flight, but crashes great deal, and in laterepisodes just sits. Questions of gravitation and light speed are never raised.

Robot: “The Robot”, by the same Robert Kinoshita who created “Robby” forForbidden Planet (which sibling comes to visit in at leastone episode). Too good a character to lose, the initiallysinister robot stays on to the end.

Weapons: laser pistols and 'rifles'. (Now that I think of it, why doesa laser need to be rifled?)

It started out as a rather creepy space opera with a deadly robot,but lightened by a “Swiss Family Robinson” motif. The family wanderedthrough space, meeting danger everywhere, constantly thwarted and exposedby betrayals of saboteur-cum-coward Smith, incomprehensibly tolerating him.(Well, without him they wouldn’t have been “lost”, which would have leftthem merely “in space”.)

The over-the-top Dr. Smith completely up-stages the rest of the cast fromthe start. By the third season, it was all Smith, the boy, and his robot—the rest became familial backdrop. The younger sister had a few cute episodesof her own, while the older sister, perhaps in need of no further development,got none; the second-in-command was forever peeved at being so completelywritten out.

It worked for a while as cute children’s entertainment.The series suffered throughout from confusion about its audience, and overall in plot and tone. The scary robot became the lad’s funny puppy, and the young lad had softenedthe evil doctor’s hard heart, rendering him a greedy cowardly boob ofuncertain gender affinity.By the end, Mom and Dad were no longer watching:it was just for kids; the Jupiter 2 was grounded, and theincreasingly silly aliens had to come to visit.

The writers never showed any interest whatever in the science aspect ofsci-fi, which bugged a portion of the young adults who formed the apparenttarget audience.

This was too confused a show to draw coherent parables from—theprinciples were simply American family values of the time.
Maybe one: Fruits can’t be trusted in space, either. But they’re good with kids.

The Time Tunnel

1966–67 ABC
30 episodes

Date: 1968 (slightly in the future)

Besides the prop of the tunnel itself, there isn’t much here in the wayof special effects. A few scenes made for the pilot are flashed in everyepisode, but nothing ever comes of them.

The main sci-fi premise is that of time travel, but its narrownessdoomed the show to a limited future.

So the two main guys are forever popping around famous historical periods,hiding their true identities, being caught by authorities or bad guys,escaping, trying to get back to the present and on the way generallymessing with history. A couple of times they pop into the future andmess with aliens.The psychological hook is the lost-child sensation—this is all Iremember of it.

Beside this, it had the super-secret government mega-project angle,with a U.S. Senator pushing them to prove the expensive technology, and thusgetting them into all their troubles. This, along with the door tosomething else, predates the modern series Stargate.

Both male leads are alphas (maybe one a capital alpha and the other a cutelowercase alpha). They each occasionally get girls, only to regretfully leave’em in the past!

If there is a parable to be drawn from this, it might be:
If only the gummit would give us lots more money and keep their hands out ofit, we could fix the past, and make it all hunky-dory!

Star Trek

1966–67 Desilou,
1968–69 Paramount Television
78 episodes

Note: Majel Barrett-Roddenberry played in many episodes asNurse Christine Chapel but in the pilot episode was “Number One”.

Date: 2266+

Premise: The United Federation of Planets maintains a fleet offaster-than-light starships, “To seek out new life and new civilizations”. But “Star Fleet” is a military outfit, and also protects the Federation fromaggressive groups. The main setting is one of those starships.

Vehicle: A proper starship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, carrying a crew ofhundreds, cruising at speeds faster than light by means ofwarp drive, which used antimatter as fuel, and enginesthat somehow involve trilithium.Various alien cultures have their own starships with different capabilities.Sometimes, stranger vehicles appear.

Other transportation: the transporter, which conveniently disintegrates things on one end, and re-integrates them on the other (usually). Various space shuttles, also capableof warp speed over short distances.

Weapons: radiation-beam phasers, could be set to stun or killor just make the enemy disappear in a glow, were used both as hand weaponsand as part of the starship arsenal.The Enterprise also fires explosive photon torpedos.Alien groups have their own kinds of weapons. The Klingons pack disruptors, which are much like phasers but make a different noise.

Shields: The Enterprise could raise defensive shieldsto defend itself to some extent from most weaponry. The shields drewa lot of energy, and precluded the use of the transporter.

Computer: a semi-intelligent device, built into the Enterprise, usually interacted with vocally. Sometimes represented as arrays of largeboxes, recognizable as computers to viewers in the ’60s. Data could betransported by hand on tapes: these were depicted by solid littleblocks of colored plastic (which get points for not being immediately outdated).

Other gadgets: various sensors and scanners, hand-held tricorderswith a battery of sensing equipment, hand-held communicatorsfor inter-personal talk and for contacting space ships.

Robots: appear rarely, and usually in the form of androids, and usually area theme of the episode rather than an everyday affair.

Aliens: almost as many species as there are episodes. Most common are“Vulcans” (Spock is a Vulcan). Klingons, Romulans, Tellurites,Andorians appear in many episodes.Occasionally they’re like monsters, but usually they’re latex-makeup humanoids. In many episodes, they are crucially non-humanoid however, and oftenonly “take human form”.

Star Trek is the archetype of sci-fi TV. So much is said about it,and almost everybody knows what it’s about, so I’ll confine myself topersonal observations.

At least five spin-off series followed in the ’90s and 2000s, and aand at the timeof this writing, a dozen films of the Star Trek franchise,besides a short-running TV cartoon spin-off in the ’70s.

Why it worked:

A layered cast chemistry:The choleric, playboy captain Kirk, the cool strange first officer Spock,and the seriocomic medical officer McCoy.The beautiful exotic communications officer Uhura,the excitable first engineer Scotty,and the super-competent but boyish navigators Sulu and Chekov.Some other characters appeared a few times, notably Nurse Chapel (who hadplayed “Number One” in the pilot, to be written out as too sexuallyprogressive), and Yeoman Rand, a super-cute understudy to Kirk (who perhapsleaned too far the other way).

A future world:The notion of a starship was better developed in this show than ever before (or in fact, since); with this as a means of visiting distant placesin space lending show a plausibility that hadn’t existed before. (Kids who learned the planets of the solar system knew how limited thepossibilities were in our vicinity.)Previous sci-fi shows had space ships somehow wandering into planets all over the place, often accidentally, or else, planets wandering tous.

Exploration of social ideas: the crew is racially and sexually mixed(especially with Uhura holding an important position.) This drew some criticism, and probably speeded the demise of the series, but it certainlyinterested people.

Flexibility: The premise placed the crew so that many sci-fi themes seemednatural: besides aliens etc., time travel etc., and all manner of strangeencounters.

A relatively well thought-out fictional world, including good reasonsfor their being in space (so often a dizzy afterthought in sci-fi)

The mission to seek out new life was the underlying reason for their being there, and although the episodes often strayed from that mission,the excuse was always available.

Likewise, the elaborate but relatively sensible starship sets, withfeatures such as the automatic sliding doors, the transporter, and rathercomfortable-looking environment lent credibility to the world.

I think Star Trek was still going strong to the end—it was killed bycorporate shortsightedness. One plausible idea is that space fantasy hadbeen rendered passée by the moon landings, which were happening at the sametime—and themselves got some anti-science political backlash. But there isplenty of evidence that viewer interest was still strong. Looking backat it, the writing was still strong too, and there was plenty of material toexplore. On the other hand, it was killed at the top of its game—not theworst way to go.

My perspective on it was, they moved the time slot to 10 PM, which wasusually after my bed time. But I remember being dismayed by episodes with amore romantic or sexual nature, which were also beyond me at the time.This is apparently another failure of the executives to comprehend theiraudience.

Parables. This show was chock-full of parables, including ones about:

• race relations (usually played out by alien relations)
• sex relations (some progressive, some not so much)
• treatment of developing societies,
• the imperative of curiosity,
• reason vs. emotion,
• military bravery, decorum and duty.

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In contradiction to the parables told in most other space sci-fi shows, inStar Trek, we do belong out there, and the aliens areno more scary than we are (largely because they’re caricatures of ourselves).

A particularly important principle repeatedly stated in the show is thePrime Directive: That no “pre-warp” culture may be exposed to theexistence of extra-planetary civilizations or their technologies, to avoidaltering the culture’s natural development. It is an interesting idea initself, but importantly serves to explain why we haven’t yet encounteredaliens, if they’re all zipping around in starships as depicted in the show.

As alpha male and interstellar playboy, Kirk regularly got the (often alien)girl, but owing presumably to the greater alphabet of the cast, both Spockand McCoy occasionally scored, and even Scotty and Chekov got girls once each. (Sulu not.)Very interestingly, Uhura had a couple of anti-romantic scenes, onceflirting musically with cold Spock, and once (unwillingly?) kissing Kirk.

Raumpatrouille Orion

1966–67 Bavaria Atelier GmbH, by order of WDR

Premise: Humanity on Earth lives at the bottom of the ocean, to protectagainst increased solar activity. Otherwise, people have colonized manyplanets, moons, and planetesimals. There are no more nation-states.

Mission: to protect Earth from alien threats, as part of theGalaktischer Sicherheitsdienst (GSD).

Aliens: F.R.O.G.S.“Feindliche Raumschiffe ohne galaktische Seriennummer“(hostile space ships without galactic serial numbers)Slender, shimmering light-beings, humanoid in shape.

Vehicles: Raumkreuzer Orion VII and VIII,basically flying saucers, with interesting thorn-like details. Take off from an ocean whirlpool, travel faster than light (“Hyperspace”). Also “Lancets”, which are smaller saucers with a semi-spherical top coveredwith clear plastic bubbles, and usually used as escape vehicles.

FROGS ships are dart-like, flying in tight formation, but frequentlymaking instantaneous shifts in position.

Weapons: “Lichtwerfer“ (light-thrower), a sort oflaser gun (to which FROGS are immune). “Overkill”, a sort of super-bomb;useful for blowing up planetoids.

Very cool futuristic décor, making much use of clear plastic, with a preference to rounded forms. An object that is in fact a clothes iron is the centerpiece of one of the control panels.

Computer: “Electronic brain”, of whom one asks pressing questions.

Robots: “Alpha Android” a floating submarine-like object, not very android at all, which often makes a mess of things.

McLane is forever breaking orders so as to save the Earth. He gets no endof grief from General Wamsler and other upper-echelons, but he is clearlygoing to get all the girls.

Oberst Villa speculates as to the motives of the FROGS, but is later captured and brainwashed by them.

The Invaders

1967–68 ABC
43 episodes

Premise: UFO sightings and alien abductions stories are of realextraterrestrials from a dying planet (in another galaxy) are infiltratingsociety to make the world their own. There is some explanation that theirspacecraft have limitations, so they can only arrive in small numbers.

Vehicles: a flying saucer, modelled after famous UFO photos, shaped ratherlike a lady’s hat, with flashing lights and eerie sounds. In some episodes,the outside glows purple and orange as though fluorescing in black light. Inside, well they look like any other sci-fi gadgets of the era.

Aliens: almost always appear disguised (imperfectly) as humans. (Their pinkie fingers stick out at odd angles.) When killed they glow red and burn up.

Alien equipment: installations all over, have lots of strange devices,including mind-reading chairs, spinning crystals for mind control.

It’s a paranoid nightmare, where the good guys who know the truth are fewand far between (and called “Believers”), while everybody else thinks they’rekooks, or else… is one of “them”. A direct forerunner of The X-Files.

The writing isn’t bad, and the actors are some of the best of the time.

I had almost forgotten the creepy foghorn theme music.

Parables:
The prettiest guy is the good guy. The next-prettiest guy…bettercheck his pinkie.
“They” never say “they”’re sorry.
“They” are in fact out to get you, and “they” may be from outer space, and itis highly likely “they”’re commies too.

Land of the Giants

1968–70 ABC
51 episodes

Date: 1983

Premise: A fast airplane (an almost spaceship) encounters aspace storm and somehow ends up on another planet (an alternate Earth?)whose people are many times bigger (supposedly 12 times, but the ratiochanges from one scene to the next.)

These “giants” are often not nice, and have a vaguely totalitarian government,but otherwise, it’s just the U.S. of the ’60s, scaled up.

Of course, this was a very shaky and narrow idea from the start. The writers didn’t know where to go with it (neither would I).It didn’t grab me as a child, and still doesn’t.

UFO

1970–1971 ATV, ITV
26 episodes

Date: 1980

A super-secret armed force,SHADO, Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization,on land, at sea, and on the moon, battle to protect Earth from alien invasion.The main headquarters is conveniently located beneath a film studio, thusexplaining all the fancy cars and outfits required by the beautiful combatants.

Vehicles: A submarine with a rocket aircraft mounted on its nose,A space station, a moon base that launches rockets that are essentially fighter jets that launch missiles from their noses, various tractor-crawlerson the moon and on earth.

The UFOs (being pronounced “yufoes” rather than spelled out), despitetraveling at the speed of light to Earth, are flimsy, dizzy affairs,that readily disintegrate in the atmosphere, or blow up when targeted by interceptors. But they can hide longer underwater (hence the underwaterscenes.)

Aliens: mostly show up in wave after wave of UFOs. I don’t think their originis ever discussed. They are basically humanoid—most of their appearance(skin coloration, weird eyes) is explained as effects from the equipment theyuse for space travel. They are here to harvest human body organs, and to carryout this harvesting, heroically sacrifice themselves, dozens at a time. (It may be that the bodies altogether are those of human abductees.)

The Andersons were famous for their marionette series Thunderbirds,were given a bigger budget on this one. In their own light, the models andspecial effects really are lovely. The show could be said to revolve aboutthese models (and variety of colorful sets and sexy futuristic fashions.) But while the toys were very much fun, and much better props than in concurrent adventure shows, there is a discordance between their colorfulness and thevery serious tone of the show. Somehow the toys are quite concrete,while the story line is terribly vague.

Despite the apparent targeting of younger viewers, many subthemes were ofadult nature, and involved marital or sexual relations and drug abuse.

The glittery, colorful, skin-tight fashions went well with the decor and toyspace ships, very much in the direction of the marionettes of the Andersons’children’s shows. The women look outright Barbie-like. The fashions,overstated early ’70s styles, looked kind of silly even to me at the time,and are now ridiculously dated. The theme music was very solidly ’60s spyshow stuff, already dated by the time the show aired.

While the alien invasion is the overriding fixation of all episodes, the natureand origin of the aliens remains a mystery throughout, so really the mainquestion remains unexplored, and while many standard fantasy themes are playedout (besides alien abduction, identity swapping, time travel, etc.)they are all made to revolve about the alien invasion.

Somehow the central cast never really gelled either, sort of a main guy and everybody else.This series too exhibits confusion as to its audience. It was too sexyfor family viewing, too cute for young adults, too serious for kids.

Timeslip

1970–71 ATV, ITV
26 episodes

Children’s show about time travel. Never saw it.

Space 1999

1975 ITV / RAI
48 episodes

This was a follow-up to UFO, using the props from the lunarscenes, but with an unrelated plot—or rather, sans the plotof UFO.

Premise: nuclear waste carelessly piled on the far side of the moon explodes,sending the moon careening into deep space, along with a populated base. Then they meet lots of interesting space folks. Uh…right.

The premise was so flimsy, there was no fear of losing logical cohesion,and so what transpired was—just whatever, kind of in space. Make it dark and atemporal, maybe nobody will notice.It was like Lost in Space, less any cuteness whatever, withsets from UFO less the action imperative, with fashionablepsychedelia, less any guidance from imagination or science or common sense.

The producers experimented with variations in the tone and cast, as thoughthat were the problem.

This series was unwatchable, even by a teenager in desperate need of sci-fi.

The Six Million Dollar Man

1975–78 ABC
99 episodes

Steve Austin is a former astronaut who is saved from death after a crash byreceipt of bionic implants (in the sum of six million dollars), incidentallyproviding him super strength and speed and senses.But the irony is, he hates it, and just wishes he were just a normalawe-inspiring, sexy astronaut again.

Sort of to pay it off, or for love of country, or something, he works fora super-secret government spy organization to do good and combat evil, and gets into most of the usual super-spy and sci-fi messes.

Lowest common denominator stuff, solidly popular.

Spin-offs: The Bionic Woman; several TV movies.

The Bionic Woman

1976–78 ABC then NBC then CBS
22 episodes

See: The Six Million Dollar Man for most details, except:Sommers is female, and was a top tennis star nearly killed in a skydivingaccident.

This is more or less a spy show, with the superhero element.

The pickins were slim in the ’70s. New ideas were regarded passée.

Battlestar Galactica

1978–79 ABC
17 episodes (two of them 2-part)
1980 as Galactica 1980
10 episodes

Date: (unclear: they finally find Earth, but it’s in the 1960s.so either space colonization had happened long ago and been forgotten,or some time-travel occurred.)

Robots: malevolent civilization of Cylons.

Vehicles: starships, especially Battlestar Galactica

The Cylons mount a sneak attack on human space colonies, meaning to wipe outthe human race.A few humans escape in star ships, lead by Battlestar Galactica,in search of the lost planet Earth.The Cylons give chase, and episode after episode, they are shot down in identical scenes by the fighter pilots of theGalactica!—who then get the girls!

In temperment and diction, the Cylons are the Daleks of Dr. Who.The battles were the same romantic resetting of WWII air battlespresented in Star Wars.

No new ground was broken in Galactica, in new science or socialideas, in special effects, or even in style. It was formulaic entertainment.

My story about this show: in my gigantic men’s dorm at Texas Tech, there was a TV room for the less-well-to-do’s. We all heard about Galactica, andfilled the room for the pilot, hoping that on that night there would be nofootball (which had unquestionable priority at TTU). The pilot wasn’t bad, but kind of stupid. No one spoke as we filed out of the room (none of us knew one another).The second episode half-filled the room. It was really stupid. The third episode I watched with a couple other guys. Somebody came in andchanged the channel to sports. Nobody objected.I doubt anybody watched any further episodes—just too embarrassing.

Years later I watched a few episodes elsewhere, and was impressed at how farthe silliness had been taken. It was only about these two cute guys zoomingoff to blow up the robots’ ships. And then I heard the voice of JonathanHarris, as “Lucifer”, the smart robot—in a gut-wrenching twist ofTV irony, Dr. Smith had returned, bumbling and conniving as ever, as hisnemesis, a robot.

After the first episode, for me, this became an unwatchable waste of time.

Parables:
The enemy are a bunch of soulless machines, bent on destruction.
“All in a days’ work, ma’am!”

Mork & Mindy

1978–82 ABC
95 episodes

Spin-off of Happy Days.

Setting: contemporary Boulder CO., sometimes planet Ork.

Spaceship: egg-shaped capsule, exited by cracking open.

Aliens: Robin Williams was reportedly the only alien who auditioned for therole. Orkans are “the white bread of the universe”. But Jonathan Wintersalso works wonderfully as the alien child who grows young. To wrap up eachepisode, Mork reports back to planet Ork to superior Orson.

More genuine sci-fi happened in this most popular spin-off ofHappy Days than in many of the action sci-fi shows. Space travel, levitation—no problemo.Time loops—whenever you need one, need one, need one…

The Birdmen 1971 Tv Movie

Fonzie: “Don’t men date women on your planet”?
Mork: “Hard to tell, parts are interchangeable.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Birdmen Movie

1981 BBC 2
5 episodes

Setting: England, deep space, various planets, various spacecraft, various hyperspacy whatsits, and the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

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Spaceships: Vogon constructor, “infinite improbability drive“starship Heart of Gold, black space ship, B Ark.

In all scenes besides Earth, everybody but Dent and Trillian are aliens.

Marvin the manically depressed robot, the insufferable doors ofHeart of Gold,the computer of Heart of Gold, all have personalities.

This was a television version of a popular stage play of the same name,with mostly the same cast.

Æon Flux

1991-91 Colossal Pictures, MTV Animation
15 episodes

Date: 7698

Escape Of The Birdmen 1971

City-states Bregna and Monica, which share a common border, but not commonprinciples.

Besides being set in the future, various episodes involve differentscience-fiction themes, including robots, mind control, human cloning,time travel, really icky medical operations, ... and on and on.

The Birdmen 1971 Movie

This is a very wildly twisted dreamworld of remorseless assassins and spies,psychiatrist dictators and sadistic doctors. The spidery acrobat Æon is ever fouling up the layerd plans of evil dictator Trevor. Or is she? Do they even know?