Doctor Who: Planet Of The Daleks, Part 5

Doctor WhoThe 348th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Prentis Hancock (Space: 1999) guest stars.

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

Doctor Who: Planet Of The Daleks, Part 6

Doctor WhoThe 349th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Prentis Hancock (Space: 1999) guest stars.

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

Skylab launched

SkylabThe first American space station, Skylab, is launched unmanned atop the last Saturn V rocket ever to be flown. Within minutes, however, it’s obvious that the space station – whose habitable space is actually the heavily modified third stage of the Saturn V – is already in serious trouble. Launch vibrations rip off one of the solar panels, and the other panel fails to automatically open. With less than two weeks before the first Skylab crew is due to lift off, the clock is ticking for mission planners to devise contingency and repair procedures.

Night Gallery: The Doll Of Death

Night GalleryNBC airs the 43rd and final episode of Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Rod Serling. Susan Strasberg guest stars. The series will resurface in syndication, but cut down to half-hour form, often severely truncating or even omitting story segments from the earlier hour-long episodes and, bizarrely, incorporating equally significantly edited-down episodes of the hour-long Gary Collins series The Sixth Sense (also produced by Universal) with new Rod Serling intros to pad out the syndication package.

More about Rod Serling’s Night Gallery in the LogBook

Chasing the storm

Weather BulletinThe National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma dispatches “storm chasers” to track, follow, and observe the behavior of storms in a predicted tornado outbreak. The chasers manage to document the complete development of a tornado in Union City, Oklahoma on film and on an experimental Doppler radar system; for the first time, large-scale cloud rotation at high altitude is observed on radar prior to the appearance of a funnel cloud, a key discovery in tornado prediction. This phenomenon, called the Tornadic Vortex Signature, is a precursor to virtually every radar-detected tornado.

Skylab 2: save the station!

SkylabThe first three-man Skylab crew lifts off to undertake a mission far different from the one for which they had trained. Their primary objective is now to save the crippled station from the damage it suffered during launch; as it is, Skylab is uninhabitable, with temperatures in its workshop and crew quarters soaring above 100 degrees, threatening to heat up items inside enough to fill the space with toxic gases. The first repair spacewalk takes place less than 24 hours after the crew arrives in an Apollo capsule, and succeeds in starting to drop the temperature inside.

Doctor Who: The Green Death, Part 2

Doctor WhoThe 351st episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Stewart Bevan and Talfryn Thomas (Survivors) 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

Doctor Who: The Green Death, Part 3

Doctor WhoThe 352nd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Stewart Bevan and Talfryn Thomas (Survivors) 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

Skylab 2: risky repair job

SkylabTwo members of Skylab‘s first three-man crew undertake a three-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to take on the most difficult and dangerous part of the repairs to the space station: freeing a jammed solar “wing” required to provide almost half of the station’s electrical power. With no handholds and only tethers keeping them anchored to the station, astronauts Pete Conrad and Joseph Kerwin have a hard time even reaching the solar panel, and are knocked loose when, after overexerting themselves trying to manually pull the panel free, it jerks open; with only their tethers keeping them attached to Skylab, it’s a potentially life-threatening situation for both. Conrad, the third man to walk on the moon, later admits that the Skylab repair spacewalk gave him much greater concern for his own survival.

Doctor Who: The Green Death, Part 4

Doctor WhoThe 353rd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Stewart Bevan and Talfryn Thomas (Survivors) 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

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes

Planet Of The ApesThe fifth and last of the original cycle of time-bending sequels, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes is released in theaters. Facing diminishing returns, and a desire on the part of 20th Century Fox to exploit the Apes franchise on the small screen, the series comes to a suitably post-apocalyptic end. Read more Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Doctor Who: The Green Death, Part 5

Doctor WhoThe 354th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1.

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

Skylab 2: mission accomplished

SkylabHaving repaired and secured the damaged Skylab over the course of three spacewalks, the space station’s first three-man crew leaves the station and returns to Earth after 28 days in space, experiencing gravity after nearly a month of zero-G.

The first Skylab crew’s stay in space sets a new record, twice as long as the previous longest American manned spaceflight, Gemini 7 in 1965.

Doctor Who: The Green Death, Part 6

Doctor WhoThe 355th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This episode closes the series’ tenth season on the air, and is the last to feature Katy Manning as the Doctor’s companion, Jo Grant. The character doesn’t resurface until a 2010 episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

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

Space Race

Space RaceAtari releases its second arcade game: the very first video racing game, Space Race. Devised to fulfill a contractual game development obligation to rival manufacturer Bally Midway, the game is released by Midway under the title Asteroid, though Atari releases its own “clone” (of its own game) under the title Space Race on this date. Read more

Skylab 3

Skylab 3With the first Skylab crew having salvaged the first American space station, the second crew – designated Skylab 3 – lifts off for another long-term stay in space. Alan Bean, Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott spend 59 days aboard Skylab, performing a spacewalk to conduct further repairs to their damaged space station, investigating the effects of long-duration weightlessness and space travel on the human body, and observing the sun through Skylab’s solar telescope system. A thruster leak in the Apollo command/service module forces NASA to consider a rescue mission.

The Tomorrow People: The Vanishing Earth, Part 4

The Tomorrow PeopleThe 13th episode of The Tomorrow People is broadcast on ITV. Kevin Stoney (Doctor Who) and John Woodnutt (Knights Of God) guest star in the fourth and final part of a four-part serial, and the last episode of the show’s first season. This marks the final appearances of original cast members Sammie Winmill and Stephen Salmon. Read more