ABC premieres the two-hour TV movie Earth II, starring Gary Lockwood (2001: a space odyssey) and Mariette Hartley. The movie is intended to serve as a pilot for a potential series, but despite making a powerful impression on science fiction fans, Earth II doesn’t draw a large enough audience to merit a series pickup. 
In the British tradition of scary stories on Christmas, and hearkening back to the early days of BBC science fiction, BBC2 airs The Stone Tape, written by Nigel Kneale (Quatermass) and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, and Iain Cuthbertson (Children Of The Stones). The production leaves a lasting impression upon its viewers.
CBS premieres the made-for-TV movie Genesis II, starring Alex Cord, Mariette Hartley, Ted Cassidy, and Percy Rodrigues. Created and written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Genesis II is clearly a series pilot, the first of several attempts by Roddenberry to chart a career beyond Star Trek. The story concerns an astronaut named Dylan Hunt who is frozen in suspended animation, only reawakening after the fall of human civilization; the pilot does not result in a series pickup, though the story of Dylan Hunt will form the basis of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, a syndicated series produced in the early 2000s after Roddenberry’s death.
ABC premieres the made-for-TV movie The Questor Tapes, starring Robert Foxworth, Mike Farrell, John Vernon and Majel Barrett. Created and co-written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, The Questor Tapes is a promising series pilot, though no series based on it is ordered. (Years later, many observers will notice that Roddenberry transfers Questor’s personality and even some of his backstory to a new Star Trek character named Data.)
ABC premieres the made-for-TV movie Planet Earth, starring John Saxon, Ted Cassidy, Diana Muldaur and Majel Barrett. Created and co-written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Planet Earth is the second attempt to build a series pilot around the story of astronaut Dylan Hunt, frozen in suspended animation and reawakened only after the fall of human civilization by an organization called PAX. For the second time, this does not result in a series pickup, though the story of Dylan Hunt will form the basis of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, a syndicated series produced in the early 2000s after Roddenberry’s death.
ABC premieres the made-for-TV movie Strange New World, starring John Saxon, Keene Curtis, and Catherine Bach. Created by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (but heavily rewritten by writers hired by Warner Bros.), Strange New World is the third attempt to build a series pilot around the story of an astronaut frozen in suspended animation and reawakened only after the fall of human civilization. Again, there is no series pickup, though the concept will eventually form the basis of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, a syndicated series produced in the early 2000s after Roddenberry’s death.
NBC airs the made-for-TV movie Alien Lover as that week’s NBC Mystery Movie, starring Pernell Roberts and, in one of her earliest TV appearances, Kate Mulgrew.
The Gerry Anderson-produced educational sci-fi TV movie Into Infinity airs on NBC as part of the Special Treat series. (It will air later in the UK under the title Gerry Anderson’s The Day After Tomorrow.) Brian Blessed (Flash Gordon) and Nick Tate (Space: 1999) star.
NBC premieres the made-for-TV movie Spectre, starring Robert Culp, Gig Young, John Hurt and Majel Barrett. Created and co-written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Spectre is an atypical Roddenberry project, dealing in magic and the occult rather than science fiction. It is intended to serve as a series pilot, though no series is ordered.
NBC premieres the two-hour TV movie Exo-Man, starring David Ackroyd (AfterM*A*S*H, A Peaceable Kingdom), Anne Schedeen (ALF), and Harry Morgan (M*A*S*H). The movie is intended to serve as a pilot for a potential series, but despite decent ratings in its time slot, Exo-Man does not get a series pickup from NBC.
UK broadcaster Anglia TV (later part of ITV) premieres the TV movie Science Report: Alternative 3, a “mockumentary” positing a scenario about Earth’s best and brightest young minds leaving their doomed world to start a colony on Mars. Originally intended to air on April 1st, 1977, the special – which is presented as an episode of a non-existent “Science Report” series – has been delayed due to broadcast industry strikes, but despite the end credits still carrying the April 1st date, the joke is lost on members of the viewing public, who call Anglia demanding further information; the “Alternative 3” scenario will gain traction as an actual conspiracy theory in the years to come, particularly when its 1978 novelization replaces the TV movie’s fictional astronauts with the names of real astronauts.
The TV movie-of-the-week Dr. Strange premieres on CBS, starring Peter Hooten, Jessica Walter, Clyde Kusatsu, and John Mills. Intended to serve as the pilot for a series, Dr. Strange goes no further in the 1970s as a film or TV character; a big-screen live-action movie based on the same character will appear in 2016.
CBS airs Starstruck, a pilot for a series that the network ultimately turned down. Beeson Carroll and Lynne Lipton (Thundercats) star in a story that straddles the line between sci-fi and family-hour western. Roy Brocksmith guest stars, and sci-fi publishing icon Forrest J. Ackerman is a background extra.
NBC premieres the two-hour TV movie Special Bulletin, presented in the style of a live breaking news report, and conceived, written, and directed by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (later creators of the late ’80s series Thirtysomething). As is often the case with fictional presentations produced in the style of a news broadcast, some audience members are genuinely alarmed by the movie, despite frequent on-screen disclaimers advising those watching that it is just a movie.
HBO premieres the made-for-TV movie Countdown To Looking Glass, starring Scott Glenn and Helen Shaver as reporters caught in the outbreak of World War III. In later years, when the movie becomes part of a movie package syndicated to local TV stations, it will accidentally cause panic among some of its audience.
In the best tradition of Orson Welles’ infamous War Of The Worlds radio broadcast, CBS airs a made-for-TV movie, Without Warning, depicting a slow-building attack on Earth as a series of newscasts. Starring real-life news personalities Sander Vanocur, Bree Walker and Warren Olney, mixed in with obvious actors such as John de Lancie, Gina Hecht and Jane Kaczmarek, Without Warning tricks many viewers – despite extensive on-screen notification that they are not viewing a real news event – into thinking that a real national emergency is underway. Welles would’ve been proud.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2009 productions of Hamlet, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, airs on BBC1.
BBC2 broadcasts the movie An Adventure In Space And Time, starring David Bradley, Brian Cox and Jessica Raine, chronicling the genesis and the early years of Doctor Who (and celebrating the show’s 50th anniversary). Numerous past stars of the series make cameo appearances in other roles. The movie is written by Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss, who had originally proposed the project a decade earlier.