The 70th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. Frank Gorshin (Batman) guest stars. 
Earl Green is the creator, curator, and head writer of theLogBook.com.
The 70th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. Frank Gorshin (Batman) guest stars.
The 230th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Philip Madoc guest stars. This is the first Doctor Who story written by Robert Holmes, who will become a frequent writer for the show during the early ’70s and take over as script editor during Tom Baker’s era.
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 14th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Warren Stevens guest stars.
More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
With only cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov aboard, the Soviet Union launches Soyuz 4 into Earth orbit. Another manned vehicle, Soyuz 5, is launched the next day, and the two vehicles dock in orbit, the first docking of two manned spacecraft. Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov perform a spacewalk to leave Soyuz 5 and board Soyuz 4 for the return home (though the two capsules have primitive docking hardware, they do not have a docking tunnel or airlocks). Soyuz 4 makes a safe landing after two days in orbit – which is more than can be said for its sister ship.
BBC2 airs the 27th episode of science fiction anthology series Out Of The Unknown. Adapted by David Campton from a story by Isaac Asimov, the story stars Ian Ogilvy. This episode no longer exists in the BBC’s archives.
The Soviet Union launches a three-man crew aboard Soyuz 5, which docks in orbit with the already-launched Soyuz 4 – the first two crewed spacecraft to accomplish this feat. The Soyuz 5 crew consists of cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov, but only Volynov makes the return journey aboard Soyuz 5, as his crewmates board Soyuz 4 via spacewalk. It’s probably just as well for them: after three days in orbit, Soyuz 5 begins its descent to Earth, but the failure of explosive bolts meant to separate the re-entry capsule from the rest of the vehicle fail. To maintain some semblence of a survivable aerodynamic profile, Volynov flies Soyuz 5 in nose-first – one of the riskiest re-entries in the history of human spaceflight, since the nose of the capsule is not covered by any heat shielding. The vehicle separates just before the stress of re-entry would have destroyed it, but then its parachutes fail to completely deploy, resulting in a punishingly jarring but non-fatal landing, hard enough to break Volynov’s teeth.
Similar malfunctions will plague a pair of Soyuz vehicles returning from the International Space Station in 2007. Soyuz 5 is the final crewed Soviet flight prior to the moon landing.
The 71st episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. Sharon Acker and Gene Dynarski guest star.
The 231st episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Philip Madoc guest stars. This is the first Doctor Who story written by Robert Holmes, who will become a frequent writer for the show during the early ’70s and take over as script editor during Tom Baker’s era.
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 15th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Kimberly Beck guest stars.
More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
The 72nd episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. Lee Meriwether (Batman) guest stars.
The 232nd episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is the second appearance of the Ice Warriors.
ABC airs the 16th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Michael Ansara guest stars.
More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
The BBC archives erase dozens more episodes of Doctor Who due to an ongoing space crunch and an impending change of video standard from 405-line PAL to 625-line PAL. Whereas the first round of tape-wiping in 1967 was targeted at episodes involving the first Doctor, this round marks episodes featuring the current Doctor, Patrick Troughton, for deletion. The fourth episode of The Tenth Planet – Hartnell’s swan song in the role of the Doctor – is erased at this time, as well as a curious scattershot selection of Troughton episodes.
The 73rd episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. This episode is co-written by Shari Lewis, better known as the puppeteer behind Lambchop.
The 233rd episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is the second appearance of the Ice Warriors.
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 17th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Paul Fix guest stars.
More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
BBC2 airs the 30th episode of science fiction anthology series Out Of The Unknown. Written by Donald Bull, the story stars Milo O’Shea and Clive Morton. This episode no longer exists in the BBC’s archives.
The 234th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is the second appearance of the Ice Warriors.
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
BBC2 airs the 31st episode of science fiction anthology series Out Of The Unknown. Adapted by Owen Holder from a story by John Wyndham, the story stars Keith Barron. This episode no longer exists in the BBC’s archives.
The 74th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. This episode sees Spock use a version of a Vulcan mind-meld on Kirk, urging him to “forget”; the later movies will reveal that this memory manipulation technique has an opposite number: “remember”…
The 235th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is the second appearance of the Ice Warriors.
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 18th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Alfred Ryder guest stars.
More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
NBC announces that it is dropping Star Trek from the fall 1969 network schedule. Having taken the show’s Friday night “death slot” as a sign of things to come, Gene Roddenberry has already begun seeking greener pastures, leaving the day-to-day showrunner duties to Fred Freiberger. Roddenberry also has no plans to manipulate fan protests against the cancellation this time (as he had done in 1967 and 1968); some NBC publicity and promotions executives are surprised when the seemingly inevitable backlash fails to materialize.
The gigantic Soviet-made N1 rocket, Sergei Korolev’s answer to the American Saturn V launcher, lifts off for the first time with an unmanned Zond spacecraft intended for a lunar flyby. Barely 70 seconds after leaving the pad, the N1 explodes at an altitude of seven miles, but the Zond space probe is salvaged by its escape tower rockets. The Soviet Union is no closer to safely sending a crew of cosmonauts to the moon.
The 75th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Star Trek airs on NBC. This infamously “hippie themed” episode guest stars Charles Napier.
The 236th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This is the second appearance of the Ice Warriors.
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 19th episode of Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Land Of The Giants, starring Gary Conway, Don Matheson, Deanna Lund, and Don Marshall. Kevin Hagan guest stars.
More about Land Of The Giants in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
NASA and JPL launch the unmanned Mariner 6 space probe on a mission to Mars, where it will be joined by its yet-to-be-launched identical twin, Mariner 7. Mariner 6 will take five months to reach the red planet, with its slightly faster sister ship mere days behind it, and will fly past Mars twice as close as the planet’s previous unmanned visitors.
BBC2 airs the 34th episode of science fiction anthology series Out Of The Unknown. Adapted by Julian Bond from a story by C.M. Kornbluth, the story stars Emrys Jones and Geraldine Moffatt.
The recently-rechristened Environmental Sciences Service Administration launches, with the help of NASA, ESSA-9, the latest in a constellation of weather satellites. ESSA-9 is the last weather satellite to carry the ESSA designation, as the government reorganizes ESSA into a new agency, NOAA, the following year. ESSA-9 remains in service until 1972.