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Movies Star Wars

Star Wars action figures

Star Wars figuresWith an incredibly tight lead time (rights were secured some weeks after Star Wars became a box-office hit), General Mills subsidiary Kenner Toys brings the first Star Wars action figures to market. A dozen characters are sold individually, with a colorful mixture of the film’s heroes (Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Ben Kenobi, R2-D2, C-3PO, Chewbacca) and villains (Darth Vader, Stormtrooper, Death Squad Commander, Tusken Raider, Jawa). While Kenner brings the figures to market in both the industry-standard 12-inch scale and a smaller, cheaper 3 3/4″ scale, marketing focuses almost entirely on the smaller toys, which then redefine the industry-standard size of boys’ character toys (and make any future vehicles and playsets much more affordable). Ironically, prior to the movie’s release when no one expected Star Wars to take off, 20th Century Fox surrendered all toy and merchandising rights to George Lucas, meaning that the runaway success of the toy range is key to his fortune.

More about Kenner Star Wars figures in ToyBox

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Television

The Next Step Beyond: Ondine’s Curse

The Next Step BeyondThe week-long syndication window opens for the fifth episode of The Next Step Beyond, a revival of the 1950s/60s supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Meredith MacRae (Petticoat Junction) guest stars.

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Television

The Next Step Beyond: Dream Of Disaster

The Next Step BeyondThe week-long syndication window opens for the sixth episode of The Next Step Beyond, a revival of the 1950s/60s supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. This is a remake of the One Step Beyond episode Tonight At 12:17.

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Video Games

No love for Studio II

Studio IIJust before Valentine’s Day, RCA kills its Studio II home video game console, whose blocky black & white graphics and library of “edutainment” cartridges have proven to be no competition for the more game-oriented, full-color consoles from Fairchild and Atari over the previous two Christmas shopping seasons. 120 employees directly involved with developing for or assembling the Studio II and related products are laid off from RCA’s facility in Swannanoa, North Carolina as a result. The company makes no further attempts to break into the video game business.

More about Studio II in Phosphor Dot Fossils

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Television

The Next Step Beyond: Ghost Town

The Next Step BeyondThe week-long syndication window opens for the seventh episode of The Next Step Beyond, a revival of the 1950s/60s supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland.

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Computers

CBBS: first computer bulletin board system

CBBSProgrammers Ward Christensen and Randy Suess put their brainchild, the CBBS or Computer Bulletin Board System, online for the first time. Accessible to anyone with a computer modem and a phone line, CBBS allows users to log in one at a time since the system is limited to a single phone line; messages both public and private can be posted. Christensen and Suess become the first SysOps, or System Operators, responsible for both technical maintenance and moderation of the system’s content. Similar bulletin board systems spring up across America and elsewhere (indeed, in the late 1980s, theLogBook itself will be launched as a series of text files on such a BBS).

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Television

Project UFO Sighting 4001: The Washington D.C. Incident

Project UFOThe first episode of Harold Jack Bloom’s sci-fi series Project UFO premieres on NBC, portraying fictionalized investigations into what the show claims are actual cases from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigations. William Jordan (Beyond Westworld) and Caskey Swaim star; the series is produced by Jack Webb (Dragnet). Anne Schedeen (ALF) guest stars.

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Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

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Television

The Next Step Beyond: Drums At Midnight

The Next Step BeyondThe week-long syndication window opens for the eighth episode of The Next Step Beyond, a revival of the 1950s/60s supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Majel Barrett (Star Trek) guest stars.

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Categories
Communications Science & Technology Uncrewed Spaceflight

NAVSTAR-1

NAVSTARThe U.S. Air Force launches NAVSTAR-1, the first of a planned constellation of experimental satellites supporting the Department of Defense’s Global Positioning System project. Envisioned as a network of satellites providing extremely accurate location data for military purposes, the Global Positioning System will later grow to service civilian customers as well. Three other NAVSTAR satellites are launched in 1978 alone, and later satellites in the original NAVSTAR series will be launched betwen 1980 and 1985. Unlike the later, more advanced NAVSTAR II satellites of the 1990s, data from the original NAVSTAR constellation is restricted to the American military.

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Uncrewed Spaceflight Voyager

Voyaging blindly onward?

Voyager 1 (CG)NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe, en route to its first destination, develops a potentially mission-jeopardizing problem: the scan platform, which contains and aims many of Voyager’s scientific instruments, jams and becomes stuck in place. As Voyager 1 has yet to even reach Jupiter, this threatens to make it an expensive failure. Transmitting commands from Earth to give the scan platform a gentle three-axis workout, engineers at NASA manage to free the stuck instruments, salvaging Voyager 1’s mission to the outer planets and their moons. (A similar fault develops in Voyager 2 during its 1981 encounter with Saturn.)

Categories
Movies Star Wars

Star Wars Sequel

Star WarsScience fiction writer Leigh Brackett, who is battling cancer, turns in her first and only draft of a screenplay simply titled “Star Wars Sequel” (later to be known as The Empire Strikes Back); this early draft includes the notation “Episode II”. Brackett, a golden-age SF writer hired by Lucas to help him generate ideas for the second film, loses her battle with cancer soon afterward, and the screenplay is revamped significantly before shooting, though the finished movie will retain her writing credit.

More about Star Wars in the LogBook

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Television

The Bionic Woman: Which One Is Jaime?

The Bionic WomanThe 54th episode of The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, airs on NBC. James B. Sikking (Hill Street Blues, Doogie Howser M.D.) and Brock Peters (To Kill A Mockingbird, Star Trek VI, NPR’s Star Wars radio adaptation) guest star.

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