What Tomorrow Looked Like Yesterday…

Published On: January 28, 2016

ArrowThe CW airs the second episode of Legends Of Tomorrow, starring Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Caity Lotz (Mad Men), and Victor Garber (Alias). Neal McDonough makes his first appearance as recurring villain Damien Darhk, and Casper Crump guest stars as Vandal Savage.

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Published On: January 28, 2002

Stratford Johns as a giant space frogActor Stratford Johns, a familiar face to British TV audiences for more than four decades, dies at the age of 76. Among his notable genre appearances were Peter Davison’s second Doctor Who story, Four To Doomsday, and one of the final Blake’s 7 episodes, Games; Mr. Johns also appeared in such staples of BBC-TV’s golden era as Z Cars and Softly Softly.

Published On: January 28, 1989

The Twilight ZoneThe 54th episode of a revival of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs in syndication. Damir Andrei and Deborah Raffin star in an episode written by J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, Jeremiah, Sense8).

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Published On: January 28, 1986

Space Shuttle73 seconds after liftoff, Space Shuttle Challenger explodes when a rubber O-ring designed to be a tight seal between solid rocket booster segments allows flames from the booster to breach the shuttle’s external fuel tank, causing the tank’s highly flammable contents to ignite. The shuttle is destroyed with all hands aboard. Later analysis reveals that frigid cold temperatures in the nights leading up to the launch allowed the booster’s O-rings to become brittle enough to break – a possibility that NASA had been warned of by engineers at Morton-Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the solid rocket boosters.

Lost in the explosion are Commander Francis R. Scobee, Pilot Michael Smith, mission specialists Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka and Ronald McNair, and payload specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, the highly-publicized first “teacher in space.”

The Space Shuttle program is grounded for over two years during an investigation and an extensive review of safety and launch procedures.

Published On: January 28, 1979

ChallengerWith a newly-awarded NASA contract in hand, Rockwell International begins the process of converting Space Shuttle Structural Test Article 099 into the Orbiter Vehicle 099, later to be christened Space Shuttle Challenger. A process originally envisioned for the test vehicle Enterprise, it is deemed more cost-effective and faster to upgrade STA-099 into OV-099. The first order of business is the construction of a new crew module, since the corresponding section of STA-099 was never actually intended to house human beings.

Published On: January 28, 1978

The Bionic WomanThe 51st episode of The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, airs on NBC. Jim McMullan (Beyond Westworld) and Frank Aletter (It’s About Time) guest star. This episode’s music marks one of the first uses of an electrical instrument called the Blaster Beam in a film scoring context; that instrument will become much more widely known when it’s used in the soundtracks of such films as Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Black Hole over a year later.

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Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Published On: January 28, 1956

Science Fiction TheatreThe 39th episode of the syndicated science fiction Science Fiction Theatre airs on stations across the U.S. Hosted by Truman Bradley, the episode stars Skip Homeier and Beverly Garland, and concludes the show’s first season. For budgetary reasons, this is the final episode filmed in color.

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