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Welcome to Gene-ology, a podcast by Roddenberry Entertainment that dives deep into the early TV writing works of Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry wrote more episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel than the people who created the show, and his streak ends here, just weeks away from the end of the show. Paladin knows quite a bit about art, and he knows what he likes, but does he like settling an old grudge between "The Savages"? Hosted by Earl Green & Ashley Thomas About Gene-ology Gene-ology explores Gene Roddenberry's early television scripts, including his lesser-known works before Star Trek using the Mission Log format popularized by Roddenberry Podcasts. We analyze the themes, writing style, and cultural impact of his scripts, and we even unearth stories from the Roddenberry archives that were never produced. Join us as we trace the roots of Gene's creative genius. In This Episode A breakdown of key moments and themes in Have Gun – Will Travel. Exploring Gene Roddenberry's evolving style and storytelling. How this episode ties into the broader TV landscape of the time and reflects the early seeds of Roddenberry's visionary work. Guest stars and unique production elements that bring this episode to life. Join the Conversation What did you think of this episode? Share your thoughts, theories, and favorite moments in the comments or reach out to us on social media or email us at missionlog@roddenberry.com Did you know Roddenberry Podcasts is on YouTube? Find the video versions of your favorite shows like Mission Log: Prodigy, Mission Log: The Orville, as well as exclusive content only available on YouTube. Subscribe now! https://www.youtube.com/@RoddenberryEntertainment?sub_confirmation=1 Follow us on Social Media: INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/roddenberrypodcasts BLUESKY https://bsky.app/profile/roddenberrypod.bsky.social THREADS https://www.threads.net/@roddenberrypodcasts FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/MissionLogPod Our shows are part of the Roddenberry Entertainment family. For more great shows and to learn how we live the legacy of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, follow us here: RODDENBERRY PODCASTS https://www.instagram.com/RoddenberryPodcasts RODDENBERRY ENTERTAINMENT https://www.instagram.com/RoddenberryOfficial RODDENBERRY FOUNDATION https://www.instagram.com/TheRoddenberryFoundation Support the Show For as little as $1 a month, you can gain access to our Mission Log Discord Community! There, we continue the discussion with dedicated channels and a weekly video chat with the hosts. Become a member of our Patreon today! https://www.Patreon.com/MissionLog Subscribe and Stay Tuned Be sure to subscribe to Gene-ology for more deep dives into Gene Roddenberry's early works. New episodes are released regularly as we uncover more of Gene's television legacy. – Gene-ology is produced by Roddenberry Entertainment. Executive producer Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry. Visit https://Podcasts.Roddenberry.com for more great content. Edited by Earl Green.
Streaming service Disney Plus premieres the first and second episodes of WandaVision, created for TV by Jac Schaeffer and starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprising the characters of Wanda Maximoff and Vision. Kathryn Hahn also stars. Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the series involves the characters after the events of Avengers: Endgame, and progresses through a succession of styles patterned on classic TV sitcoms (for reasons that become apparent as the story unfolds).
A relatively routine spacewalk at the International Space Station is cut short when astronaut Tim Kopra notices a globule of water in the helmet of his spacesuit. Perhaps mindful of a far more serious incident in 2013, NASA calls off the spacewalk, ordering Kopra and fellow astronaut Tim Peake – the first British spacewalker – back inside the station.
IDMusic releases Ambition by Atanas Valkov, and album that serves, in part, as the soundtrack to the short film accompanying the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The 33rd episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. Caity Lotz (Mad Men, Legends Of Tomorrow) guest stars.
NASA’s unmanned Stardust space probe successfully returns its samples of comet and interstellar dust to Earth. A few minutes after 5:00am Eastern time, the Stardust sample return capsule makes a soft landing in Utah, its record-setting 29,000mph return to Earth slowed by a series of parachutes. (Before Stardust’s return, the fastest vehicle to enter Earth’s atmosphere was the capsule bringing home the crew of Apollo 10 in May 1969.) It is hoped that analysis of the tiny particles captured in cakes of a special porous material called aerogel will shed some light on the origins of the solar system. The “mother ship” portion of the Stardust probe is left on a course that will put it into a permanent orbit around the sun. Stardust was launched in February 1999, and gathered its samples from the cloud of gas and dust surrounding Comet Wild-2 in January 2004, zipping through the comet’s coma at 13,000mph.
The BBC announces that a private collector has returned part two of the mostly-missing twelve-part Doctor Who story, The Daleks’ Master Plan, to its archives. Last seen in late 1965, the episode has been in the possession of the former chief engineer of the competing Yorkshire Television network ever since the early ’70s – when he snatched it from the BBC archives (where he was a trainee at the time) rather than destroying it as ordered. The 25-minute episode, subtitled Day Of Armageddon, is handed over to the Doctor Who Restoration Team, which oversees the preservation and restoration of past episodes for DVD release.
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 122nd episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, starring Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor. Kevin Smith guest stars.
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the tenth episode of Lexx. Unusually, this episode deals directly with events that took place in one of the first season’s movie-length episodes, which originally aired on Showtime under a different title.
The third phase of data gathering begins for NASA’s Magellan unmanned space probe, launched via space shuttle in 1989 and currently orbiting the heavily-clouded planet Venus. Using radar to peer through the planet’s dense clouds, Magellan has now mapped 96% of the planet’s surface, and will now spend much of the remainder of 1992 filling in details in regions it has missed, as well as re-scanning some regions of Venus stereoscopically, allowing for three-dimensional terrain reconstruction.
ITV airs the 106th episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. John Alderton guest stars in the final episode of the series to adapt a Roald Dahl short story.
CBS airs the 13th episode of Ron Koslow’s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and Roy Dotrice. Rosalind Chao and James Hong guest star.
NBC airs the seventh and final episode of Darkroom, a horror anthology hosted by James Coburn. This installment includes the stories Exit Line (written by the future creators of Murder, She Wrote), Who’s There?, guest starring Grant Goodeve (Eight Is Enough), and The Rarest Of Wines.
NBC airs the 23rd episode of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, the first of the show’s second season, and the first to feature new series regulars Thom Christopher as Hawk and Wilfrid Hyde-White as Dr. Goodfellow. BarBara Luna and Sid Haig (Jason Of Star Command) guest star.
ITV airs the 18th episode of P.J. Hammond’s science fiction series Sapphire & Steel, starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley. David Collings (Doctor Who, Blake’s 7) guest stars.
NBC airs the first installment of the lavish three-part miniseries based on Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Adapted for TV by respected SF author Richard Matheson, the miniseries has already taken an embarrassing public beating by none other than Bradbury itself, inspiring NBC to yank the heavily-publicized off of the fall 1979 schedule and burn off the miniseries in January 1980 prior to the 1980 Winter Oympics. Rock Hudson, Bernie Casey, and Robert Beatty star. The miniseries is a co-production between NBC and the BBC (who won’t air it until later in 1980).
The 442nd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This story introduces the Doctor’s new companion, the bright but primitive Leela (Louise Jameson). Leslie Schofield (Star Wars) guest stars.
The Soviet Union launches a three-man crew aboard Soyuz 5, which docks in orbit with the already-launched Soyuz 4 – the first two crewed spacecraft to accomplish this feat. The Soyuz 5 crew consists of cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov, but only Volynov makes the return journey aboard Soyuz 5, as his crewmates board Soyuz 4 via spacewalk. It’s probably just as well for them: after three days in orbit, Soyuz 5 begins its descent to Earth, but the failure of explosive bolts meant to separate the re-entry capsule from the rest of the vehicle fail. To maintain some semblence of a survivable aerodynamic profile, Volynov flies Soyuz 5 in nose-first – one of the riskiest re-entries in the history of human spaceflight, since the nose of the capsule is not covered by any heat shielding. The vehicle separates just before the stress of re-entry would have destroyed it, but then its parachutes fail to completely deploy, resulting in a punishingly jarring but non-fatal landing, hard enough to break Volynov’s teeth.
Similar malfunctions will plague a pair of Soyuz vehicles returning from the International Space Station in 2007. Soyuz 5 is the final crewed Soviet flight prior to the moon landing.
Ralph Baer files the first patent for his Television Gaming & Training Apparatus, United States patent #3,728,480. The patent is assigned to Baer’s employer, government contractor Sanders Associates, and is the first patent filed for the design of a video game. Though Baer will eventually build, and sell the design for, the first home video game, the real reward to be reaped from this patent will be licensing: every company manufacturing a video game console will have to pay Sanders and Baer for the privelege of expanding upon this basic patent, and it stands up in numerous court cases well into the 1980s as the “pioneer patent of the video game industry.”
The 75th episode of Irwin Allen’s adventure series Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea airs on ABC, starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison. Alfred Ryder guest stars.
The 100th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is part ten of the mammoth 12-part story now collectively known as The Daleks’ Master Plan. This is one of only three parts of this story not missing from the BBC’s archives.
British broadcaster ABC airs the sixth episode of Pathfinders To Mars, a follow-up series to Pathfinders In Space, produced by future Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman. George Colouris and Gerald Flood (City Beneath The Sea) star; the script is written by Malcolm Hulke (Doctor Who) and Eric Paice (Star Maidens). Though the original master tape of this episode was later wiped for reuse, film recordings of all six episodes would be recovered and released on DVD in the 21st century. This concludes the Pathfinders To Mars storyline; a further (and final) follow-up, Pathfinders To Venus, will premiere in March.
The 12th episode of the syndicated horror anthology series 13 Demon Street airs on stations across the U.S., hosted by Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man), and created (and frequently written and directed) by Curt Siodmak.
Streaming service Disney Plus premieres the first and second episodes of WandaVision, created for TV by Jac Schaeffer and starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprising the characters of Wanda Maximoff and Vision. Kathryn Hahn also stars. Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the series involves the characters after the events of Avengers: Endgame, and progresses through a succession of styles patterned on classic TV sitcoms (for reasons that become apparent as the story unfolds).
The CW airs the 101st episode of The Flash, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ superhero starring Grant Gustin. 
A relatively routine spacewalk at the International Space Station is cut short when astronaut Tim Kopra notices a globule of water in the helmet of his spacesuit. Perhaps mindful of a far more serious incident in 2013, NASA calls off the spacewalk, ordering Kopra and fellow astronaut Tim Peake – the first British spacewalker – back inside the station.
IDMusic releases Ambition by Atanas Valkov, and album that serves, in part, as the soundtrack to the short film accompanying the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. 
The 33rd episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. Caity Lotz (Mad Men, Legends Of Tomorrow) guest stars.
Big Finish Productions releases the 14th Doctor Who audio drama in its Fourth Doctor Adventures range, starring Tom Baker and Mary Tamm. David Warner guest stars. 
The 24th episode of Joss Whedon’s futuristic “spy-fi” series Dollhouse airs on Fox, starring Eliza Dushku. Amy Acker (Angel) guest stars.
NASA’s unmanned Stardust space probe successfully returns its samples of comet and interstellar dust to Earth. A few minutes after 5:00am Eastern time, the Stardust sample return capsule makes a soft landing in Utah, its record-setting 29,000mph return to Earth slowed by a series of parachutes. (Before Stardust’s return, the fastest vehicle to enter Earth’s atmosphere was the capsule bringing home the crew of Apollo 10 in May 1969.) It is hoped that analysis of the tiny particles captured in cakes of a special porous material called aerogel will shed some light on the origins of the solar system. The “mother ship” portion of the Stardust probe is left on a course that will put it into a permanent orbit around the sun. Stardust was launched in February 1999, and gathered its samples from the cloud of gas and dust surrounding Comet Wild-2 in January 2004, zipping through the comet’s coma at 13,000mph.
The BBC announces that a private collector has returned part two of the mostly-missing twelve-part Doctor Who story, The Daleks’ Master Plan, to its archives. Last seen in late 1965, the episode has been in the possession of the former chief engineer of the competing Yorkshire Television network ever since the early ’70s – when he snatched it from the BBC archives (where he was a trainee at the time) rather than destroying it as ordered. The 25-minute episode, subtitled Day Of Armageddon, is handed over to the Doctor Who Restoration Team, which oversees the preservation and restoration of past episodes for DVD release.
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 122nd episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, starring Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor. Kevin Smith guest stars. 
The 77th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, airs in syndication, starring Robert Leeshock, Jayne Heitmeyer, and Von Flores.
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the tenth episode of Lexx. Unusually, this episode deals directly with events that took place in one of the first season’s movie-length episodes, which originally aired on Showtime under a different title. 
Boston Books releases the Star Trek non-fiction book “Trek Navigator”, written by Mark Altman and Edward Gross. 
UPN airs the 55th episode of Star Trek: Voyager. 
The 13th episode of Lawrence Hertzog’s paranoid spy-fi thriller Nowhere Man, starring Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek), airs on UPN. Robin Sachs guest stars. 
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 12th episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. 
UPN airs the 28th episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Rick Worthy guest stars. 
The third phase of data gathering begins for NASA’s Magellan unmanned space probe, launched via space shuttle in 1989 and currently orbiting the heavily-clouded planet Venus. Using radar to peer through the planet’s dense clouds, Magellan has now mapped 96% of the planet’s surface, and will now spend much of the remainder of 1992 filling in details in regions it has missed, as well as re-scanning some regions of Venus stereoscopically, allowing for three-dimensional terrain reconstruction.
NBC airs the 64th episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell.
Christopher Franke’s soundtrack compilation CD New Music For Films Volume 1 is released on Varese Sarabande Records. 
The ninth episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 airs on KTMA, an independent TV station in Minneapolis, starring Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and Josh Weinstein. 
ITV airs the 106th episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. John Alderton guest stars in the final episode of the series to adapt a Roald Dahl short story.
CBS airs the 13th episode of Ron Koslow’s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and Roy Dotrice. Rosalind Chao and James Hong guest star.
NBC airs the seventh and final episode of Darkroom, a horror anthology hosted by James Coburn. This installment includes the stories Exit Line (written by the future creators of Murder, She Wrote), Who’s There?, guest starring Grant Goodeve (Eight Is Enough), and The Rarest Of Wines.
NBC airs the 23rd episode of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, the first of the show’s second season, and the first to feature new series regulars Thom Christopher as Hawk and Wilfrid Hyde-White as Dr. Goodfellow. BarBara Luna and Sid Haig (Jason Of Star Command) guest star. 
ITV airs the 18th episode of P.J. Hammond’s science fiction series Sapphire & Steel, starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley. David Collings (Doctor Who, Blake’s 7) guest stars.
NBC airs the first installment of the lavish three-part miniseries based on Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Adapted for TV by respected SF author Richard Matheson, the miniseries has already taken an embarrassing public beating by none other than Bradbury itself, inspiring NBC to yank the heavily-publicized off of the fall 1979 schedule and burn off the miniseries in January 1980 prior to the 1980 Winter Oympics. Rock Hudson, Bernie Casey, and Robert Beatty star. The miniseries is a co-production between NBC and the BBC (who won’t air it until later in 1980). 
The ninth episode of Wonder Woman airs on ABC, starring Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner. Tim O’Connor (Buck Rogers In The 25th Century) guest stars. 
The 442nd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This story introduces the Doctor’s new companion, the bright but primitive Leela (Louise Jameson). Leslie Schofield (Star Wars) guest stars.
The 20th episode of Gerry Anderson’s space adventure series Space: 1999 premieres on British broadcaster ITV. 
The first episode of The Sixth Sense premieres on ABC, starring Gary Collins and Catherine Farrar. Belinda Montgomery (Man From Atlantis) guest stars.
The 306th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Nicholas Courtney and Aubrey Woods guest star. 
The Soviet Union launches a three-man crew aboard Soyuz 5, which docks in orbit with the already-launched Soyuz 4 – the first two crewed spacecraft to accomplish this feat. The Soyuz 5 crew consists of cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov, but only Volynov makes the return journey aboard Soyuz 5, as his crewmates board Soyuz 4 via spacewalk. It’s probably just as well for them: after three days in orbit, Soyuz 5 begins its descent to Earth, but the failure of explosive bolts meant to separate the re-entry capsule from the rest of the vehicle fail. To maintain some semblence of a survivable aerodynamic profile, Volynov flies Soyuz 5 in nose-first – one of the riskiest re-entries in the history of human spaceflight, since the nose of the capsule is not covered by any heat shielding. The vehicle separates just before the stress of re-entry would have destroyed it, but then its parachutes fail to completely deploy, resulting in a punishingly jarring but non-fatal landing, hard enough to break Volynov’s teeth.
Ralph Baer files the first patent for his Television Gaming & Training Apparatus, United States patent #3,728,480. The patent is assigned to Baer’s employer, government contractor Sanders Associates, and is the first patent filed for the design of a video game. Though Baer will eventually build, and sell the design for, the first home video game, the real reward to be reaped from this patent will be licensing: every company manufacturing a video game console will have to pay Sanders and Baer for the privelege of expanding upon this basic patent, and it stands up in numerous court cases well into the 1980s as the “pioneer patent of the video game industry.”
The 75th episode of Irwin Allen’s adventure series Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea airs on ABC, starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison. Alfred Ryder guest stars.
British broadcaster ABC airs the sixth episode of Pathfinders To Mars, a follow-up series to Pathfinders In Space, produced by future Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman. George Colouris and Gerald Flood (City Beneath The Sea) star; the script is written by Malcolm Hulke (Doctor Who) and Eric Paice (Star Maidens). Though the original master tape of this episode was later wiped for reuse, film recordings of all six episodes would be recovered and released on DVD in the 21st century. This concludes the Pathfinders To Mars storyline; a further (and final) follow-up, Pathfinders To Venus, will premiere in March.
CBS airs the 15th episode of Rod Serling’s anthology series The Twilight Zone. Serling adapts a short story of the same name by Madelon Champion.
The 12th episode of the syndicated horror anthology series 13 Demon Street airs on stations across the U.S., hosted by Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man), and created (and frequently written and directed) by Curt Siodmak.