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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. There are a million stories in the Naked City, and Gene Roddenberry told just one of them – but it was an unusual specimen for 1962 prime time, a story that decisively put women, including some with future involvement in Star Trek, at the forefront of a complex, challenging story. 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 "The Rydecker Case". 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 Paramount+ debuts the 16th episode of Star Trek: Picard, starring Patrick Stewart, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Alison Pill, Evan Evagora, and Jeri Ryan. Brent Spiner and John de Lancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation) guest star.
The CW airs the tenth episode of Legends Of Tomorrow, starring Arthur Darvill, Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz and Victor Garber. Jewel Staite (Firefly, Stargate: Atlantis) guest stars.
The internet-based fan film Star Trek: Phase II releases its eighth full-length episode, The Child, based on the original version of a Star Trek: Phase II story written in the 1970s (which was eventually hurriedly recycled into TNG’s second season finale after the 1988 Writers’ Guild strike). Jon Povill, the original co-writer of the 1970s script, directs.
The fifteenth full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-10. Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin take up residence on the ISS for 196 days. Arriving with them on the ISS for an 11-day stay is space tourist Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft software engineer (whose successes included such widely-used software as Microsoft Word and Excel), who returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-9 with the Expedition 14 crew. Like other “space tourists” before him, he has paid for his own Soyuz seat and mission training. When Kotov and Yurchikhin return in October 2007, the Soyuz suffers a dangerous malfunction, failing to jettison its service module; the result is an off-balance spacecraft that re-enters the atmosphere nose-first, exposing under-insulated portions of the vehicle to the heat of re-entry. The crew manages a survivable landing, but news of the incident is kept quiet by the Russian space program until a similar mishap occurs aboard the next Soyuz flight.
Bridging the gap between Star Wars Episode II and Episode III, Cartoon Network premieres the 19th mini-episode of Genndy Tartakovsky’s The Clone Wars animated shorts.
The 195th episode of Chris Carter’s modern-day science fiction series The X-Files airs on Fox, starring Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick, and Annabeth Gish. Burt Reynolds (Smokey & The Bandit, Cannonball Run) guest stars.
Actor David Graf, forever known as Sergeant Tackleberry in the Police Academy series of films, dies of a heart attack at the age of 50. Graf made a number of guest appearances on TV series near and dear to SF fans, perhaps most notably in the role of aviator Fred Noonan in the original season finale of Star Trek: Voyager’s first season, The 37s (which was later relocated to the show’s second season by UPN). Mr. Graf also guest starred on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quantum Leap, Lois & Clark and Beauty And The Beast, as well as appearing alongside ex-DS9er Terry Farrell in some recent episodes of Becker, a recurring role in The West Wing, and providing character voices for the Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force video game.
The sixth episode of Joss Whedon’s trend-setting supernatural series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, airs on the WB network. Anthony Stewart Head and Alyson Hannigan also star; Jennifer Sky (Cleopatra 2525) guest stars.
The fifth episode of the science fiction series VR.5 airs on Fox, starring Lori Singer (Fame), Michael Easton (Total Recall 2070), and Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy The Vampire Slayer).
Premium cable channel Showtime airs the third episode of The Outer Limits, a revival of Leslie Stevens’ 1960s science fiction anthology series. Charles Martin Smith, Kate Vernon (Battlestar Galactica), Tom Cavanagh (The Flash), and Martin Kemp guest star.
NBC airs the third episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. Guy Stockwell and Michelle Joyner guest star.
CBS airs the 37th episode of Ron Koslow’s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and Roy Dotrice. David Neidorf guest stars.
The second episode of the American-made Max Headroom series premieres on ABC, starring Matt Frewer and Amanda Pays. (This is the the American-made drama series, not the music video/talk show series featuring the same character.) Howard Sherman and Wortham Krimmer guest star.
ABC airs the 28th episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp. Chuck McCann (Far-Out Space Nuts) and Danny Wells (Super Mario Brothers Super Show) guest star.
The sixth episode of Supertrain airs on NBC, starring Edward Andrews and Patrick Collins. Joyce DeWitt (Three’s Company), Jamie Farr (M*A*S*H), Isobel Sanford (The Jeffersons), Bernie Kopell (The Love Boat), Vic Tayback (Alice), and Tony Danza (Who’s The Boss?) guest star.
ITV airs the third episode of Roald Dahl’s anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected, hosted by the author himself and adapted from his short stories. This story had previously been adapted for Dahl’s 1961 American anthology series, ‘Way Out.
The eighth episode of the short-lived NBC series The Fantastic Journey premieres. The travelers stumble into a deadly escalation of a war between the sexes. Joan Collins guest stars.
This is the observed day of the internet’s birth, actually marking the day that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency chose the contractor to build the initial nodes and connections of the ARPAnet. Though the internet is ubiquitous from a 21st century perspective, its origins lie in a disquieting Cold-War-era concept of a distributed computer communications network whose operations could continue even if multiple nodes of the network have been disrupted or destroyed. ARPAnet, the forerunner to the modern internet, will become operational on an experimental basis later in 1969.
The Soviet Union launches unmanned space probe Luna 14 toward the moon, where it takes up a lunar orbit and returns scientific data on cosmic rays and gravitational variances. This is the last orbital mission of the Luna series; future Luna vehicles will be landers or landers with rovers, some with sample return capability.
The 30th and final episode of Irwin Allen’s science fiction series The Time Tunnel airs on ABC, starring James Darren and Robert Colbert. Whit Bissell, and Lee Meriwether geust star in the last episode of the series, whose time travel coda – usually meant to hook viewers into the next week’s episode – instead loops around to the first episode, leaving Tony and Doug in a loop of perpetual reruns!
Using the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, a team of radio astronomers led by Gordon Pettengill makes the determination that Mercury rotates on its axis once every 59 Earth days, a much shorter “day” for Mercury than the previously estimated 88 Earth day rotation. Pettengill is a pioneer of radio and radar astronomy, and will go on to use both methods to study asteroids, Venus, and Earth’s moon.
CBS broadcasts the second episode of the anthology series ‘Way Out, hosted by author Roald Dahl. Marc Daniels (Star Trek) directs an episode starring Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian).
The 40th episode of the syndicated science fiction Science Fiction Theatre airs on stations across the U.S. Hosted by Truman Bradley, the episode stars Peter Hansen and Walter Kingsford, and is the first episode of Science Fiction Theatre’s second season. For budgetary reasons, the second season reverts to black & white filming (the first season was shot in color).
Streaming service Paramount+ debuts the 16th episode of Star Trek: Picard, starring Patrick Stewart, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Alison Pill, Evan Evagora, and Jeri Ryan. Brent Spiner and John de Lancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation) guest star. 
The CW airs the tenth episode of Legends Of Tomorrow, starring Arthur Darvill, Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz and Victor Garber. Jewel Staite (Firefly, Stargate: Atlantis) guest stars.
The internet-based fan film Star Trek: Phase II releases its eighth full-length episode, The Child, based on the original version of a Star Trek: Phase II story written in the 1970s (which was eventually hurriedly recycled into TNG’s second season finale after the 1988 Writers’ Guild strike). Jon Povill, the original co-writer of the 1970s script, directs. 
BBC Audio releases the audiobook Who And Me, a memoir by Doctor Who producer/writer/director Barry Letts, who was effectively the showrunner of the Jon Pertwee era. 
The 728th episode of Doctor Who (the 30th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Dean Lennox Kelly guest stars. 
The fifteenth full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-10. Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin take up residence on the ISS for 196 days. Arriving with them on the ISS for an 11-day stay is space tourist Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft software engineer (whose successes included such widely-used software as Microsoft Word and Excel), who returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-9 with the Expedition 14 crew. Like other “space tourists” before him, he has paid for his own Soyuz seat and mission training. When Kotov and Yurchikhin return in October 2007, the Soyuz suffers a dangerous malfunction, failing to jettison its service module; the result is an off-balance spacecraft that re-enters the atmosphere nose-first, exposing under-insulated portions of the vehicle to the heat of re-entry. The crew manages a survivable landing, but news of the incident is kept quiet by the Russian space program until a similar mishap occurs aboard the next Soyuz flight.
Bridging the gap between Star Wars Episode II and Episode III, Cartoon Network premieres the 19th mini-episode of Genndy Tartakovsky’s The Clone Wars animated shorts. 
The 195th episode of Chris Carter’s modern-day science fiction series The X-Files airs on Fox, starring Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick, and Annabeth Gish. Burt Reynolds (Smokey & The Bandit, Cannonball Run) guest stars.
Actor David Graf, forever known as Sergeant Tackleberry in the Police Academy series of films, dies of a heart attack at the age of 50. Graf made a number of guest appearances on TV series near and dear to SF fans, perhaps most notably in the role of aviator Fred Noonan in the original season finale of Star Trek: Voyager’s first season, The 37s (which was later relocated to the show’s second season by UPN). Mr. Graf also guest starred on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quantum Leap, Lois & Clark and Beauty And The Beast, as well as appearing alongside ex-DS9er Terry Farrell in some recent episodes of Becker, a recurring role in The West Wing, and providing character voices for the Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force video game.
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the 26th episode of Farscape. Wayne Pygram guest stars as Scorpius. 
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 41st episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. Tim Thomerson guest stars. 
The sixth episode of Joss Whedon’s trend-setting supernatural series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, airs on the WB network. Anthony Stewart Head and Alyson Hannigan also star; Jennifer Sky (Cleopatra 2525) guest stars.
The fifth episode of the science fiction series VR.5 airs on Fox, starring Lori Singer (Fame), Michael Easton (Total Recall 2070), and Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy The Vampire Slayer).
Premium cable channel Showtime airs the third episode of The Outer Limits, a revival of Leslie Stevens’ 1960s science fiction anthology series. Charles Martin Smith, Kate Vernon (Battlestar Galactica), Tom Cavanagh (The Flash), and Martin Kemp guest star.
The Ralf Illenberger instrumental album Sedona is released. 
NBC airs the third episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. Guy Stockwell and Michelle Joyner guest star.
CBS airs the 37th episode of Ron Koslow’s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and Roy Dotrice. David Neidorf guest stars.
The second episode of the American-made Max Headroom series premieres on ABC, starring Matt Frewer and Amanda Pays. (This is the the American-made drama series, not the music video/talk show series featuring the same character.) Howard Sherman and Wortham Krimmer guest star. 
ABC airs the 28th episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp. Chuck McCann (Far-Out Space Nuts) and Danny Wells (Super Mario Brothers Super Show) guest star.
The sixth episode of Supertrain airs on NBC, starring Edward Andrews and Patrick Collins. Joyce DeWitt (Three’s Company), Jamie Farr (M*A*S*H), Isobel Sanford (The Jeffersons), Bernie Kopell (The Love Boat), Vic Tayback (Alice), and Tony Danza (Who’s The Boss?) guest star. 
ITV airs the third episode of Roald Dahl’s anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected, hosted by the author himself and adapted from his short stories. This story had previously been adapted for Dahl’s 1961 American anthology series, ‘Way Out.
The eighth and final episode of Buck Henry’s science fiction spoof Quark premieres on NBC. 
The eighth episode of the short-lived NBC series The Fantastic Journey premieres. The travelers stumble into a deadly escalation of a war between the sexes. Joan Collins guest stars. 
ABC airs the fourth episode of Future Cop, starring Ernest Borgnine (McHale’s Navy), Michael J. Shannon, and John Amos (Good Times). 
The ninth episode of The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, airs on ABC.
The first episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky premieres on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). 
The 344th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Prentis Hancock (Space: 1999) guest stars. 
This is the observed day of the internet’s birth, actually marking the day that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency chose the contractor to build the initial nodes and connections of the ARPAnet. Though the internet is ubiquitous from a 21st century perspective, its origins lie in a disquieting Cold-War-era concept of a distributed computer communications network whose operations could continue even if multiple nodes of the network have been disrupted or destroyed. ARPAnet, the forerunner to the modern internet, will become operational on an experimental basis later in 1969.
The Soviet Union launches unmanned space probe Luna 14 toward the moon, where it takes up a lunar orbit and returns scientific data on cosmic rays and gravitational variances. This is the last orbital mission of the Luna series; future Luna vehicles will be landers or landers with rovers, some with sample return capability.
The 30th and final episode of Irwin Allen’s science fiction series The Time Tunnel airs on ABC, starring James Darren and Robert Colbert. Whit Bissell, and Lee Meriwether geust star in the last episode of the series, whose time travel coda – usually meant to hook viewers into the next week’s episode – instead loops around to the first episode, leaving Tony and Doug in a loop of perpetual reruns!
The 26th episode of Batman airs on ABC. Cesar Romero guest stars as the Joker.
Using the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, a team of radio astronomers led by Gordon Pettengill makes the determination that Mercury rotates on its axis once every 59 Earth days, a much shorter “day” for Mercury than the previously estimated 88 Earth day rotation. Pettengill is a pioneer of radio and radar astronomy, and will go on to use both methods to study asteroids, Venus, and Earth’s moon.
The 59th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Cliff Robertson and John Crawford star in an episode written by Serling.
CBS broadcasts the second episode of the anthology series ‘Way Out, hosted by author Roald Dahl. Marc Daniels (Star Trek) directs an episode starring Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian).
ABC airs the 12th episode of the supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Patrick O’Neal guest stars.
The 101st episode of The Adventures Of Superman airs in syndication, starring George Reeves, Noel Neill, and Jack Larson.
The 40th episode of the syndicated science fiction Science Fiction Theatre airs on stations across the U.S. Hosted by Truman Bradley, the episode stars Peter Hansen and Walter Kingsford, and is the first episode of Science Fiction Theatre’s second season. For budgetary reasons, the second season reverts to black & white filming (the first season was shot in color).