The 25th episode of the syndicated science fiction Science Fiction Theatre airs on stations across the U.S. Hosted by Truman Bradley, the episode stars Macdonald Carey and Jean Byron.
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The 65th episode of The Adventures Of Superman airs in syndication, starring George Reeves, Noel Neill, and Jack Larson. Philip Van Zandt guest stars in the third season finale.
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The 132nd episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is the first story to feature the Cybermen, and is the final story of William Hartnell’s tenure as the first Doctor.
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ITV broadcasts the third episode of The Prisoner, produced, occasionally written by, and starring Patrick McGoohan. Colin Gordon guest stars as Number Two.
The 88th episode of Irwin Allen’s adventure series Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea airs on ABC, starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison. Gene Dynarski guest stars.
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ABC airs the fourth episode of the modern-day science fiction series The Immortal, starring Christopher George. Susan Howard guest stars.
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Boasting a curved, futuristic fiberglass cabinet that truly looks like an alien art object, Nutting Associates’ arcade video game Computer Space hits an amusement market dominated by pinball machines and jukeboxes. Devised by Nolan Bushnell, Computer Space is a coin-operated homage to the mainframe game Spacewar, complete with complicated controls, and fails to sell well. Bushnell later has a revelation: arcade games will need to be easy to learn (but not easy to beat) in order to catch on.
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NASA and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration launch NOAA-2, a weather satellite intended to operate in a near-polar low Earth orbit. NOAA-2 is based on the already-flown ITOS satellite design, and will function in orbit through October 1974, with a break of only a few months due to a failed vertical temperature profile radiometer instrument. NOAA-2 will be shut down in January 1975.
Electric Light Orchestra‘s sixth album, A New World Record, is released, featuring the singles “Livin’ Thing”, “Telephone Line” and “Rockaria!”; the record goes gold and then platinum by the end of the year. This is the group’s first album to sport artwork with the now-familiar ELO logo, created from a mirrored image of the upper part of a Wurlitzer jukebox; following the post-Star Wars science fiction revival, future albums render this logo as a flying saucer.
The sixth episode of Filmation’s Saturday morning science fiction series Space Academy airs on CBS. Living asteroids rock the Space Academy cadets back on their heels.
The 460th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Michael Sheard (The Empire Strikes Back) and Frederick Jaeger guest star; John Leeson joins the cast as the voice of K-9.
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The 41st episode of The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, airs on NBC. Andrew Prine (V, Weird Science) guest stars.
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NASA prepares a preliminary schedule of Space Shuttle launches, covering the years 1979-1982 (and assuming the shuttle will be ready to launch in 1979). The ambitious schedule (which also assumes, in line with current planning, that the test orbiter Enterprise will be upgraded to spaceworthiness) includes almost-monthly flights from 1979 onward to deploy communications and weather satellites already on the drawing board, as well as frequent science missions with the cargo-bay-mounted Spacelab. On only the second test flight, the schedule has OV-102 (yet to be named Columbia) slated for a mission to the abandoned early 1970s space station Skylab, using a teleoperator retrieval system which also exists only on paper. While many of the schedule’s goals will be met, the delay in the shuttle program will be longer than NASA anticipates at this time.
The fifth episode of Glen A. Larson’s science fiction series Battlestar Galactica airs on ABC. Ian Abercrombie guest stars.
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General Computer Corp., a small company making “grey market” modification kits to freshen up Pac-Man and Missile Command arcade games, cuts a deal with Midway, the American licensee for Pac-Man, handing over the code to its Pac-Man modification kit Crazy Otto. Midway contracts GCC to continue work on the kit, but now under license. The first thing to go are the kit’s name and its modified Pac-Man character, who now has legs. A few changes and a few months later, the game’s central character has no legs, but will now sport lipstick and a pink bow, as Midway prepares to officially release the new game as an authorized Pac-Man sequel, Ms. Pac-Man – amazingly good luck for a small business that could just as easily have been sued into oblivion.
The fifth episode of the science fiction series The Powers Of Matthew Star airs on NBC, starring Peter Barton and Louis Gossett Jr. Arthur Roberts (Air America) guest stars.
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NBC airs the 21st episode of the Marvel animated series Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, starring the voices of Dan Gilvezan, Kathy Garver, and Frank Welker.
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The fourth episode of the Hammer Studios-produced horror anthology series Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense airs on ITV; the series will be shown later in the U.S. under the title Fox Mystery Theatre. David McCallum (The Man From UNCLE, Sapphire & Steel) and Jan Francis (Just Good Friends) guest star in an episode written by David Fisher (Doctor Who) and directed by Gabrielle Beaumont (The Tomorrow People, Star Trek: The Next Generation).
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Atlantic Records releases Julian Lennon‘s debut album, Valotte, featuring the singles “Too Late For Goodbyes” and “Valotte”.
With $4 billion having been spent on upgrading and customizing a special launch facility since 1972 to handle (mostly military) Space Shuttle launches in polar orbits, Vandenberg AFB declares Space Launch Complex 6 launch-ready, with a year to go before the first scheduled polar orbit shuttle launch. But in 1986, amid jitters in the wake of the Challenger disaster, planned use of the west coast launch facility is curtailed and finally cancelled, despite the money and time spent.
The 39th episode of a revival of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs in syndication. Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) stars.
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The second episode of the syndicated Alexander and Ilya Salkind-produced Superboy series, starring John Haymes Newton and Stacy Haiduk, airs. Julie McCullough (Growing Pains, Robin’s Hoods) guest stars.
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CBS airs the fifth episode of the animated series Superman, starring the voices of Beau Weaver and Ginny McSwain, and comprised of two stories: The Big Scoop and Overnight With The Scouts.
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The week-long national syndication window opens for the 77th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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The ninth Doctor Who New Adventures novel, “Love And War” by Paul Cornell, is published. A pivotal point in the young book series, “Love And War” sees the exit of TV companion Ace and the introduction of an older companion, archaeologist Professor Bernice Sumemrfield, for the seventh Doctor. Using a non-sequitur mention of the “Hoothi and their great gas dirigibles” from the television story The Brain Of Morbius as a starting point for this book’s enemy, author Cornell crafts a novel that forces the series to grow into more mature territory, with a truly unsettling adversary for the Doctor to fight. An audio version will be produced by Big Finish Productions 20 years later.
Fox airs the eighth episode of the sci-fi western, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., starring Bruce Campbell, Julius Carry, and Christian Clemenson. John Astin (The Addams Family) and Billy Drago (The Untouchables) guest star.
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The feature-length 29th episode of George Lucas’ historical adventure series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles airs on cable channel The Family Channel, starring Sean Patrick Flanery. Allison Smith (Kate & Allie) guest stars.
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Fox premieres the fourth episode of the military science fiction series Space: Above And Beyond. Tony Amendola (Stargate SG-1) guest stars.
The 47th episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman airs on ABC, starring Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher. Julian Stone guest stars.
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NASA/JPL’s interplanetary probe Cassini, with the European Space Agency-built Huygens Titan probe tagging along, lifts off on a Titan IV-B rocket. The voyage to Saturn will last seven years, during which Cassini does close flybys to receive gravity assists from Venus, Earth, Earth’s moon, and Jupiter en route to Saturn. It will operate in Saturn’s vicinity for over a decade and launch the Huygens probe, the first landing probe to visit a body in the outer solar system.
