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.
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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.
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.
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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.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
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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.
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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 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.
The 306th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Nicholas Courtney and Aubrey Woods guest star.
The first episode of The Sixth Sense premieres on ABC, starring Gary Collins and Catherine Farrar. Belinda Montgomery (Man From Atlantis) guest stars.
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The 20th episode of Gerry Anderson’s space adventure series Space: 1999 premieres on British broadcaster ITV.
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.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
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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.
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). 
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Christopher Franke’s soundtrack compilation CD New Music For Films Volume 1 is released on Varese Sarabande Records.
NBC airs the 64th episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell.
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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.
UPN airs the 28th episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Rick Worthy guest stars.
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 12th episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.
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.
UPN airs the 55th episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
Boston Books releases the Star Trek non-fiction book “Trek Navigator”, written by Mark Altman and Edward Gross.
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 77th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, airs in syndication, starring Robert Leeshock, Jayne Heitmeyer, and Von Flores.
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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.