The 32nd episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future) guest stars in an episode directed by Robert Zemeckis.
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The 653rd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Lynda Bellingham, Michael Jayston and Honor Blackman guest star; Bonnie Langford debuts as new TARDIS traveler Melanie.
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!
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The 33rd episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. David Carradine (Kung Fu) and Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) guest star.
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Directed by Leonard Nimoy, who also has a hand in development of the story, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home premieres in theaters. Directly following up on events in the prior two movies, Star Trek IV closes out a trilogy, and by bringing the action to 20th century Earth, complete with fish-out-of-water comedy, becomes a solid hit with an embedded ecological message. The movie’s success caps off a year-long celebration of Star Trek’s 20th anniversary 
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The 654th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Lynda Bellingham, Michael Jayston and Honor Blackman guest star; Anthony Ainley appears as the Master. This is Robert Holmes’ final Doctor Who script completed before his death, and the last episode of the season must be completed by other writers under trying circumstances, including the controversial sudden exit of current script editor Eric Saward. (more…)
MCA Records releases Leonard Rosenman’s soundtrack from the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, featuring tracks by the Yellowjackets. (more…)
The 34th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. June Lockhart (Lost In Space) guest stars.
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CBS airs the 29th episode of a revival of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. David Greenlee (Beauty And The Beast) stars in The Toys Of Caliban, marking a single-story departure for a series that has thus far worked at least two or three stories into each episode.
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The 655th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Lynda Bellingham, Michael Jayston and Honor Blackman guest star; Anthony Ainley appears as the Master. Though no one realizes it at the time of production, this is Colin Baker’s final appearance as the sixth Doctor before the BBC replaces him in the role. It’s also the final Time Lord story until well into the new series of the 21st century. The 23rd season of Doctor Who, and the trial storyline, concludes with this episode.
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 35th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC.
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CBS airs the 30th episode of a revival of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Joe Penny (Jake And The Fatman, Riptide) stars in George R.R. Martin’s The Road Less Traveled, directed by Wes Craven (A Nightmare On Elm Street).
This series is not fully chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.
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Zang Tuum Tumb releases the Art Of Noise compilation Daft, gathering much of the band’s first album and B-side and EP material in one release. (more…)
After the cancellation of the Centaur liquid-fueled propulsion module – considered too risky for use aboard the space shuttle, all aspects of which are now under a wide-ranging government review after the Challenger disaster – NASA/JPL’s Galileo Jupiter probe is to begin undergoing modifications for a long, looping trajectory developed by Dr. Roger Diehl and dubbed “VEEGA” – Venus/Earth/Earth Gravity Assist. (Another nickname for this new trajectory, the Solar Cruiser, doesn’t stick in acronym-happy NASA.) VEEGA will see Galileo taking an extra four years to reach Jupiter, getting gravity assists from the planets of the inner solar system during those additional years. Galileo must be modified because it was designed for outer solar system exploration, not exposure to solar heating and radiation within 1 AU of the sun. Since the primary high-gain antenna must be pointed away from Earth during some of this flight, NASA adds a medium-gain antenna to the spacecraft – a last-minute modification which will save the mission when the high-gain antenna fails to open on schedule. Galileo is scheduled for launch via space shuttle in 1989.
The Max Headroom Christmas special, Max Headroom’s Giant Christmas Turkey premieres, guest starring Tina Turner, Robin Williams, Dave Edmunds, and Bob Geldof. This is the final episode of the UK-made talk show/music video presenter format for the character. (more…)
The 36th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) guest stars.
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The tenth episode of The Max Headroom Show airs, starring Matt Frewer. (This is the music video/talk show series, not the American-made drama series featuring the same character.) Tracey Ullman guest stars. (more…)
The Alan Parsons Project releases its tenth album, The 37th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC.
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The 38th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC.
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Scitron Digital releases the album Taito Game Music, collecting recordings of music and sounds from the company’s classic arcade games. (more…)
RCA Records releases a significantly reworked edition of Australian group Pseudo Echo‘s album Love An Adventure in North America, adding the single “Funkytown” (a cover of the Lipps Inc. song). (more…)
The 39th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC.
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The Soviet Union launches Soyuz TM-2, the first manned launch of a newly uprated version of the Soyuz capsule. Cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveykin travel to the Mir space station, where Laveykin remains for 174 days before departing in July, but Romanenko sets a new space endurance record, remaining in orbit for 326 days. Romanenko’s return to Earth just before the end of 1987 marks the end of Expedition 2’s occupancy of Mir.
British label Legacy Records releases Starting Up, the fourth and final solo album of new material by Roy Wood (ELO, Wizzard). (more…)
The 40th episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. This is the series’ only animated episode, written and directed by Brad Bird, and featuring the voices of Stan Freberg and Annie Potts. Bird will revive the concept as its own series in the 1990s.
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CBS airs the 31st episode of a revival of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Susan Blakely and William Allen Young star in an episode comprised of two short stories, The Card and The Junction.
This series is not fully chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.
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A&M Records releases the Supertramp compilation album Classics, Volume 9 – Supertramp as part of the label’s 25th anniversary Classics series. (more…)
Astronomers both amateur and professional glimpse the first supernova to occur in the age of modern science. Given the name Supernova 1987A, the huge burst of light – visible to the naked eye in Earth’s southern hemisphere by the early summer months of 1987 before it begins fading out – is a collapsing star on the edge of the Tarantula Nebula. The star previously seen in that location is a blue supergiant, which wasn’t a likely candidate to go nova according to the existing theories of stellar evolution at the time. In the 1990s, the slowly expanding ring of debris rushing outward from Supernova 1987A becomes a favorite observation target for the Hubble Space Telescope. The supernova is more than 150,000 light years away from Earth’s solar system in the direction of the Large Magellenic Cloud.
NOAA’s GOES-7 Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral into a geosynchronous orbit now designated GOES-EAST to monitor weather patterns over the United States. Originally intended for a 1986 launch, GOES-7 has been kept on the ground by the investigation into the destruction just after launch of its predecessor, GOES-G. GOES-7 will become the first of the GOES satellites to operate in both the GOES-EAST and GOES-WEST orbits, and will be retired from active weather-watching duty in 1999, becoming a communications relay satellite until it is decommissioned in 2012.
A victory lap after its successful study of Halley’s Comet in 1985 and 1986, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter uses its unique position at the solar system’s second planet to observe another comet, the recently-discovered Comet Wilson. Spotted for the first time only the year before, little is known about Comet Wilson, a lack of data that Pioneer Venus helps to correct by imaging the comet in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. Pioneer Venus will also study two other comets later in 1987.
The 41st episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. Bob Balaban (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, 2010: The Year We Make Contact) guest stars in an episode co-written and directed by Paul Bartel.
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The 42nd episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC. Adam Ant guest stars.
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EMI Records releases the Pseudo Echo album Long Plays ’83-’87, gathering extended mixes of the storied Australian group’s various singles. (more…)
The 43rd episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories airs on NBC.
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Patrick Troughton, the first actor to inherit the lead role of Doctor Who from another actor (and still one of the best-loved incarnations of the time-traveling Doctor), dies at the age of 67 on the second day of a science fiction convention in Columbus, Georgia. Despite worries about a persistent heart condition (he had already suffered heart attacks in 1978 and 1984), Troughton had made the trip to America against his doctor’s advice, suffering a fatal third heart attack after breakfast. His final TV appearance, the series Knights Of God, will air later in the year, having actually been filmed in 1985.