Russia launches Soyuz TM-28 on a mission to the Mir space station, with cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, Sergei Avdeyev and Yuri Baturin aboard. Padalka spends 198 days aboard Mir, conducting further repairs to the station damaged by a 1997 collision with a Progress cargo vehicle, while former politician Baturin remains aboard for 11 days before returning to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-27 with Mir’s previous crew. Avdeyev is aboard Mir for the long haul, spending just over a year in space and not returning to Earth until August 1999.

Showtime airs the 81st episode of The Outer Limits, a revival of the 1960s science fiction anthology series. This is a remake of the 1960s Outer Limits episode of the same name.
Pay cable channel Showtime premieres the
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 57th episode of the science fiction series Sliders, starring Jerry O’Connell, Cleavant Derricks, Kari Wuhrer, and Charlie O’Connell.
The first episode of the Sci-Fi Channel original series Welcome To Paradox airs, a loosely-connected anthology of science fiction stories set in Betaville, a utopian future city whose incredible technology has frequently unintended side-effects. Steven Bauer (Scarface) stars in a story co-written by SF novelist Alan Dean Foster.
Pay cable channel Showtime premieres the
Pay cable channel Showtime premieres the
A memo from cable network TNT is leaked to the internet, revealing that the network’s programming executives are requesting an increase in sex and violence on the upcoming Babylon 5 spinoff series Crusade. A specific example from one episode is cited in which a telepath is lured into believing that a crewmember is a terrorist and acts rashly as a result; the network would prefer the telepath’s rash actions to be the result of a more straightforward (and less sci-fi-oriented) seduction scene. Series creator J. Michael Straczynski cryptically refuses to confirm or deny that the memo is real. The series has been in production for only four weeks, and won’t air until 1999.
Welsh toy company Dapol announces the release of the first wave of
The first episode of Highlander: The Raven, starring Amanda Gracen and Paul Johannson, premieres in syndication; the series is a spinoff from Highlander: The Series. Torri Higginson (Stargate Atlantis) guest stars.
The week-long national syndication window opens for the
The week-long national syndication window opens for
The 35th episode of Joss Whedon’s trend-setting supernatural series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, airs on the WB network. Anthony Stewart Head, David Boreanaz, and Alyson Hannigan also star in the third season premiere.