ABC airs the 19th episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp. James Shigeta guest stars.
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Earl Green is the creator, curator, and head writer of theLogBook.com.
ABC airs the 19th episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp. James Shigeta guest stars.
More about The Greatest American Hero in theLogBook.com Store
The 562nd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Richard Todd, Nerys Hughes and Simon Rouse guest star. 
The 563rd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Richard Todd, Nerys Hughes and Simon Rouse guest star.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
ABC airs the 20th episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp.
More about The Greatest American Hero in theLogBook.com Store
The 564th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Richard Todd, Nerys Hughes and Simon Rouse guest star.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
The 565th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Richard Todd, Nerys Hughes and Simon Rouse guest star.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
ABC airs the 21st episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp.
More about The Greatest American Hero in theLogBook.com Store
CBS unleashes a particularly virulent strain of Pac-Man Fever into record stores, courtesy of rock group Buckner & Garcia, and there is no cure in sight. With musical odes to the arcade games Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, Frogger, Asteroids, Berzerk, Centipede, and even the relatively obscure coin-op Mouse Trap, this album’s release probably marks the high point of the video game industry “boom” – the apex at which public awareness of video games is at the saturation point, having seeped into the rest of pop culture.
At Rockwell International, a spare Space Shuttle crew module is assembled alongside components intended for the orbiters Discovery and Atlantis, and though the spare isn’t intended for a specific shuttle yet to be built, it will find a purpose in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster: the spare crew module will become one of many completed shuttle spares that will eventually be assembled in the late 1980s as the Space Shuttle Endeavour, Challenger’s replacement and the last space shuttle constructed.
The 566th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Michael Robbins guest stars as Richard Mace.
The 567th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Michael Robbins guest stars as Richard Mace.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
ABC airs the 22nd episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp. Thalmus Rasulala and Ron O’Neal (Super Fly) guest star.
More about The Greatest American Hero in theLogBook.com Store
Cupertino businessman Larry Jones incorporates Mythicon, a new video game software publisher focused entirely on providing games for the Atari VCS. With the knowledge that the market for VCS software is already becoming flooded, Mythicon’s business model involves selling games for a price point just under $10 each, and distributing them in grocery stores and drug stores rather than the usual retail chain outlets. Only three games – all three regarded as some of the worst yet produced for the VCS – are released before Mythicon closes up shop.
Imagic, recently formed from a group of ex-Atari programmers, releases its first wave of cartridges for the Atari VCS home video game system, including Rob Fulop’s Demon Attack, a game which quickly draws the legal ire of Atari itself.
Imagic, recently formed from a group of ex-Atari programmers, releases its first wave of cartridges for the Atari VCS home video game system, including Bob Smith’s Star Voyager, a space shooter.
Atari releases the Namco-developed arcade video game Dig Dug in the United States. The game’s release is accompanied by an elaborate theatrical trailer, a rarity for any video game, then or now.
The 568th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Michael Robbins guest stars as Richard Mace.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
Konami introduces the arcade game Loco Motion in the United States, one of its earliest self-released coin-ops (most titles had previously been licensed through Stern).
The 569th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Michael Robbins guest stars as Richard Mace.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
Released a couple of years after the movie that inspired it, Parker Brothers’ The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari VCS is the very first official Star Wars video game to hit the market. Though games inspired by the movies have been appearing since the first film was still in theaters, this is the first game officially licensed by Lucasfilm. It pits players against an endless onslaught of Imperial Walkers (and unlike the movie’s rebels, the player has no chance of surviving indefinitely). 
ABC airs the 23rd episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp.
More about The Greatest American Hero in theLogBook.com Store
Gottlieb introduces the arcade game Reactor in the United States, a unique trackball-driven game with thumping synthesized hard rock musical accompaniment.
The 570th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Many fans of the series consider this the “last pure historical story” – the Doctor and his companions are merely witnesses to events that have no other science fiction influence.
In a federal court hearing in Chicago, Atari and Midway – as the American licensees of Pac-Man – are victorious over Magnavox, whose Odyssey² cartridge K.C. Munchkin was alleged to infringe on Pac-Man. The court ruling, which results in an injunction forcing Magnavox to pull K.C. Munchkin off the market, says it “captures the ‘total concept and feel’ of, and is substantially similar to, Pac-Man,” and that Magnavox “jeopardized the substantial investments of Midway and especially Atari.” Beaten but defiant, Magnavox releases a K.C. Munchkin sequel later in the year.
The 571st episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Many fans of the series consider this the “last pure historical story” – the Doctor and his companions are merely witnesses to events that have no other science fiction influence.
This timeline entry leads to an entry covering this entire Doctor Who serial; there are plans to write new episodic entries in the future. You can support this effort!
Order Earl Green’s book VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store
ABC airs the 24th episode of Stephen J. Cannell’s superhero comedy series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt, Connie Sellecca, and Robert Culp.
More about The Greatest American Hero in theLogBook.com Store
ABC premieres the first episode of the cop show spoof Police Squad, in color, starring Leslie Nielsen and created by the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker team behind the hit movie Airplane! Despite the same team’s success on the big screen (with the same star), ABC seems to have little idea how to promote the series, which eschews such prime-time comedy conventions as laugh tracks, and Police Squad proves short-lived, though it will inspire a more successful movie franchise, The Naked Gun, also starring Nielsen.
The Soviet Union’s unmanned Venera 14 space probe successfully lands on the planet Venus, its landing module enduring almost an hour in temperatures of nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit and air pressure nearly 100 times that experienced at sea level on Earth. A soil sampling experiment is thwarted by an unforseen problem, namely the lens cap of Venera 14’s camera popping off and landing precisely where its sampling arm was designed to gather Venusian soil for testing.
Emerson, an American radio and telvision manufacturer that has shown no previous interest in the video game boom, releases its own console, the Emerson Arcadia 2001. Intended to be a serious challenger to the Atari VCS and Intellivision, the Arcadia 2001 has limited graphics capabilities and a limited library boasting relatively generic sports games and knock-offs of popular arcade games, as well as a few incredibly obscure licensed arcade ports.
The 572nd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. What most fans don’t realize, thanks to a carefully coordinated reveal, is that Earthshock is the first Cyberman story since 1975’s Revenge Of The Cybermen. The Cybermen are only seen at the end of part one, and producer John Nathan-Turner declines the potentially valuable offer of a Radio Times magazine front cover in order to preserve the surprise.