The BBC airs the second episode of Nigel Kneale’s trend-setting science fiction series The Quatermass Experiment, starring Reginald Tate as Prof. Bernard Quatermass. Broadcast as a live play with minimal footage from other sources played back during air, this is one of the earliest BBC drama productions archived on film, though BBC technicians opt not to preserve any further episodes of this series.
The 35th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is part five of the story now collectively known as The Sensorites.
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation airs the 12th and final episode of the science fiction series The Stranger, starring Ron Haddrick.
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Less than two years after arriving at Mars, the “mothership” orbiter that delivered the Viking 2 lander to the red planet is permanently shut down. Having lost most of its fuel to a leak, the Viking 2 orbiter can no longer be commanded to change orbit, and is placed in a parking orbit. Without an orbiter to relay its findings to, Viking 2 continues operating on the surface of Mars for two more years, sending data directly to Earth at a lower bit rate.
ITV airs the 65th episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. Anthony Valentine guest stars.
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BBC Radio 4 begins airing the six-part Doctor Who radio drama Slipback, starring Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, and Valentine Dyall, as part of the “Pirate Radio 4” programming block. The story is written by Doctor Who’s current television script editor (and occasional novelist) Eric Saward. This is the final recorded radio drama performance for Valentine Dyall, who died weeks before broadcast.
Scitron Digital releases the album Konami Game Music Volume 1, featuring sound and music recorded from the company’s early arcade hits.
The self-titled debut CD by Ben Folds Five is released, featuring the single “Underground”.
Showtime airs the 61st episode of The Outer Limits, a revival of the 1960s science fiction anthology series. Alan Thicke guest stars in the third season finale.
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The 138th episode of Stargate SG-1 airs on the Sci-Fi Channel, starring Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Judge.
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British actor and music hall performer David Jackson, best known to genre fans as Gan from Blake’s 7, dies of a heart attack at the age of 71. A veteran of the stage, film and many TV appearances (including two heavily-costumed roles in Space: 1999), he played the role of Gan for the first two seasons of Terry Nation’s space epic, only relinquishing the role when Nation decided that one of the characters needed to be killed off to lend the series some gritty reality. He was also an expert on Victorian theater and created a one-man stage show recreating the atmosphere of the Victorian music hall. He continued to appear at science fiction conventions and reunions of the Blake’s 7 cast as recently as 2004.
American Records releases Tom Petty‘s final solo album, Highway Companion, featuring the single “Flirting With Time”.
Sci-Fi Channel airs the second episode of the quirky modern-day science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson, Debrah Farentino (Earth 2), Joe Morton (Mercy Point), and Matt Frewer (Max Headroom). (In the UK and elsewhere, this series is retitled A Town Called Eureka.)
Big Finish Productions releases the 110th Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton.
The fan-produced Star Trek production Star Trek: Intrepid releases a short vignette. The UK-based production is shot almost entirely in front of green screen with computer-generated backgrounds added in post production.
Syfy airs the 56th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000), and Stan Lee guest star.
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Eureka now streaming on Amazon Prime
Actor John Saxon, a frequent guest star in American TV and movies from the 1960s through the ’90s (and still actively working well into the 2010s), dies at the age of 83. He began appearing in movies in his late teens in the early 1950s, but became a frequent flyer on the small screen, with guest roles in such genre fare as The Time Tunnel, The Sixth Sense, Night Gallery, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, The Fantastic Journey, Ray Bradbury Theater, and Masters Of Horror, with movie roles in Battle Beyond The Stars and the A Nightmare On Elm Street Series. In the early ’70s, he starred in two iterations of a Gene Roddenberry series pilot, Planet Earth and Strange New World, neither of which went to series.