Day: September 17, 1955

Categories
Television

Mission: Impossible

  • September 17, 1966

Mission: ImpossibleCBS airs the first episode of Bruce Geller’s “spy-fi” series Mission: Impossible, starring Steven Hill, Barbara Bain (Space: 1999), Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, and Martin Landau (Space: 1999, Ed Wood). Together with NBC’s recent pickup and premiere of Star Trek, Mission: Impossible becomes a mainstay of CBS’ prime-time schedule, and marks a major turnaround in the fortunes of Lucille Ball’s Desilu Studios.

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Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Enterprise Space Shuttle

Enterprise leaves drydock

  • September 17, 1976

EnterpriseOn schedule, the Space Shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California to much public fanfare, a ceremony including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the cast who played the crew of the Enterprise’s fictional namesake (William Shatner was conspicuously absent). The timing of the rollout, ironically, was intended to roll the test shuttle – originally named Constitution – out of the hangar on Constitution Day during the bicentennial year.

Categories
Movies Star Trek Television

First Star Trek movie announced

  • September 17, 1976

Star TrekHaving tried to find a suitable script for a big-screen relaunch of Star Trek virtually since the cancellation of the television series, Paramount – riding the coattails of the much-publicized unveiling of the Space Shuttle Enterprise – issues a press release announcing that the first Trek movie is finally underway – in this case, a still-in-development script called Star Trek: Planet Of Titans, featuring a radically redesigned Enterprise concept by illustrator Ralph McQuarrie, whose other recent genre work – designs for the yet-to-be-released Star Wars – has yet to make him a household name.

More about Star Trek in the LogBook

Categories
Television

Battlestar Galactica

  • September 17, 1978

Battlestar GalacticaThe three-hour premiere movie kicking off Glen A. Larson’s science fiction series Battlestar Galactica airs on ABC… only to be interrupted by a live special report covering the ratification of the Camp David peace accords. The full movie is shown after the interruption, however, making its planned three-hour time slot a four-hour time slot. Despite this, the audience seems to stick with the show, the first major TV American science fiction series to try to venture into Star Wars territory.

More about Battlestar Galactica in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
Battlestar Galactica now streaming on Amazon Prime

Categories
Video Games

The Imagic just isn’t there anymore

  • September 17, 1983

Demon Attack by ImagicSoftware company Imagic, which started out marketing games for the Atari VCS before branching out into the Intellivision, Colecovision, home computer and even Odyssey2 markets, nixes plans to sell public stock in the company. Shortly afterward, 40 of Imagic’s 170 employees are laid off, with every indiciation that more employees will follow as the company tries to stay afloat. Potential investors are told that Imagic’s initial public offering has been delayed until early 1984, but stock in the company is never sold.

More about Imagic in Phosphor Dot Fossils

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Salyut Soyuz

Soyuz T-14

  • September 17, 1985

Soyuz T-14The Soviet Union launches the Soyuz T-14 mission, carrying a crew of three cosmonauts intended to become the next long-term occupants of space station Salyut 7. The crew consists of Vladimir Vasyutin, Georgi Grechko and Alexander Volkov, though Grechko only remains until September 26th, returning to Earth with the Soyuz T-13 crew. Two months into the crew’s stay on Salyut, however, Vasyutin becomes seriously ill. Communications between the station and ground controllers are carried out on a scrambled frequency for a week, at which point the crew is recalled to Earth, ending an occupancy that was meant to last for half a year. Soyuz T-14 returns to Earth, carring Vasyutin, Volkov and Soyuz T-13 crew member Viktor Savinykh home on November 21st, once again leaving Salyut 7 unoccupied for several months.