The 254th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC, the first of the series’ seventh season. Nicholas Courtney returns as the Brigadier, now a series regular, while Caroline John makes her first appearance as the Doctor’s companion, Liz Shaw. As of this story, the Doctor is exiled on Earth indefinitely by the Time Lords, unable to travel in space or time in the TARDIS. This is Jon Pertwee’s first episode as the Doctor, and the first Doctor Who episode filmed in color. Due to a BBC studio strike, the story is filmed entirely on location, a rarity for Doctor Who.

NASA formally cancels the planned Apollo 20 mission to the moon’s Copernicus crater in order to begin converting the upper stage of the mission’s Saturn V rocket into the Skylab space station, to be launched in the early 1970s. Construction of the Apollo command/service module and lunar module scheduled to fly this mission was halted before either vehicle was completed. The crew would have consisted of Stu Roosa, Paul Weitz and Jack Lousma; ironically, Weitz was transferred to the first Skylab crew, while Lousma was part of the second Skylab crew. Both later flew on shuttle missions.
ABC airs the 42nd episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Torin Thatcher guest stars.
The third episode of children’s fantasy series The Owl Service is broadcast by British broadcast Granada Television. The series is adapted by novelist Alan Garner from his own novel.
ITV airs the 15th episode of the mystery/spy-fi series Strange Report in the U.K., starring Anthony Quayle, Kaz Garas, and Anneke Wills (Doctor Who). (The series is an international co-production and airs in the United States on NBC.)
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NASA and ESSA launch the ITOS satellite, also known as TIROS-M, a next-generation weather satellite intended to take over from the constellation of short-lived ESSA weather satellites. With a configuration that is, for the first time, significantly different from the TIROS/ESSA satellites, the TIROS-M design’s shakedown cruise is a short and bumpy one: after system failures force a shutdown of the satellite’s attitude control system, it is shut down in mid-
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