Alpex Corporation, an American computer company, files “the ‘555 Patent” for a “television display control apparatus” capable of loading software from ROM chips embedded in swappable cartridges and other media. This patent effectively shifts the infant video game industry from a hardware-based model to a software-based model, and is licensed by Fairchild Semiconductor for the first cartridge-based video game, the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (later known as Channel F), a year later; the resulting sea change forces a sudden reassessment in the R&D departments at Atari and Magnavox, among others. Due to the remarkably broad nature of patent #4026555, Alpex will be able to take nearly every video game manufacturer to court to force them to license the technology from Alpex through the early ’90s. The first major challenge to Alpex’s patent will come from Nintendo in 1986, a case that will eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 – by which time Alpex will go bankrupt pursuing the case.
ABC airs the 19th episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, based on Jeff Rice’s novel and the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin. Cathy Lee Crosby guest stars. 
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The 393rd episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This episode marks the first-ever appearance of Davros in the series, as well as the first attempt to nail down an origin story for the Daleks themselves.
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 NASA/JPL probe to the inner planets, Mariner 10, makes its last flyby of Mercury, zipping over the planet’s north pole at an altitude of just over 200 miles, and taking the last close-up pictures of Mercury until the Messenger space probe in 2008. Just over a week after its final Mercury encounter, Mariner 10 runs out of fuel and is instructed to shut down. The next Mariner probes, Mariners 11 and 12, are slated to venture toward the outer solar system, and eventually undergo a name change, becoming Voyagers 1 and 2 – making Mariner 10 the last of the Mariner space probes.
The 32nd episode of The Six Million Dollar Man is broadcast on ABC, starring Lee Majors and Richard Anderson. Lindsay Wagner and Malachi Throne guest star.
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The 394th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This episode marks the first-ever appearance of Davros in the series, as well as the first attempt to nail down an origin story for the Daleks themselves.
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 The Six Million Dollar Man is broadcast on ABC, starring Lee Majors and Richard Anderson. Lindsay Wagner and Malachi Throne guest star. Although the character of Jaime Sommers is killed off in this episode, audience reaction is strong enough to merit not only a return appearance in the third season, but an entire spinoff series.
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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. 
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Construction begins on Space Shuttle Orbiter Vehicle 102 (OV-102 for short), the shuttle orbiter that NASA intends to launch as early as 1977. But OV-102 encounters the inherent pitfalls of being the first of its kind: years of delays are ahead, with many of the delays linked to the complicated system of protective thermal tiles designed to bear the brunt of the shuttle’s punishing re-entry through the atmosphere. (The test orbiter, later named Enterprise, is never intended for spaceflight, so it only has to conform to the shape and weight of a returning shuttle for landing tests, and therefore it doesn’t face the same hurdles.) OV-102’s first flight won’t take place until 1981, leaving a six-year gap between manned American spaceflights; during this period OV-102 will be named Columbia.
ABC airs the 20th and final episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, based on Jeff Rice’s novel and the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin. Tom Bosley (Happy Days) and John Hoyt (Star Trek: The Cage) guest star. A remake with a new cast, simply titled Night Stalker, will be attempted in the early 21st century, also on ABC, but will have an even shorter lifespan than the original series. (more…)
The 395th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This episode marks the first-ever appearance of Davros in the series, as well as the first attempt to nail down an origin story for the Daleks themselves.
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 396th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This episode marks the first-ever appearance of Davros in the series, as well as the first attempt to nail down an origin story for the Daleks themselves.
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 two-man crew selected to become the second group of occupants for the Soviet Union’s Salyut 4 space station nearly rockets into disaster. Interstage connectors, intended to open simultaneously to allow the third stage of the booster to carry the Soyuz spacecraft into orbit, fail to open on cue, leaving the third stage dragging the dead weight of the spent second stage, changing the trajectory of the entire vehicle. The Soyuz capsule carrying cosmonauts Vasili Lazarev and Oleg Makarov is blasted free, and the two men experience acceleration of 23 Gs as the capsule roars toward a bruisingly rough emergency landing. As if that’s not bad enough, the Soyuz capsule lands perilously close to the USSR’s border with China, and rescue crews spend over 24 hours looking for the crew. The usually secretive Soviet space agency reluctantly reveals details of the mission to NASA, with whom they are collaborating ahead of the historic Apollo-Soyuz joint launch.
The first episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky premieres on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who).
The 397th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This episode marks the first-ever appearance of Davros in the series, as well as the first attempt to nail down an origin story for the Daleks themselves.
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 second episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky airs on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). (more…)
The 34th episode of The Tomorrow People is broadcast on ITV. Sandra Dickinson (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) and Peter Davison (Doctor Who) guest star; this is Davison’s first television role. (more…)
The first episode of Terry Nation’s post-apocalyptic series Survivors premieres on BBC1. The series is heavily promoted in the UK press and, unusually for its time, is shot entirely on video with no filming employed for location scenes. (more…)
The 398th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This story marks the Cybermen’s first story since the Troughton era, and closes out both the series’ 12th season and the “Nerva” plotline. (more…)
The 34th episode of The Six Million Dollar Man is broadcast on ABC, starring Lee Majors and Richard Anderson. Martine Beswick guest stars.
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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.
The third episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky airs on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). David Jackson (Blake’s 7) guest stars. (more…)
The second episode of Terry Nation’s post-apocalyptic series Survivors airs on BBC1. Many of the series’ regular stars do not appear until this episode. (more…)
The 399th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This story marks the Cybermen’s first story since the Troughton era, and closes out both the series’ 12th season and the “Nerva” plotline.
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 The Six Million Dollar Man is broadcast on ABC, starring Lee Majors and Richard Anderson. Gary Lockwood (The Lieutenant, 2001: a space odyssey) guest stars in the second season finale.
More about The Six Million Dollar Man in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
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.
The fourth episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky airs on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). (more…)
The 
The 400th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This story marks the Cybermen’s first story since the Troughton era, and closes out both the series’ 12th season and the “Nerva” plotline.
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 fifth episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky airs on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). (more…)
The TV movie-of-the-week The Invisible Man airs on NBC, starring David McCallum (The Man From UNCLE, Colditz), Melinda Fee, and Jackie Cooper. This is the first TV series to credit Harve Bennett (of The Six Million Dollar Man and Star Trek II) as one of its creators, alongside Steven Bochco, for whom The Invisible Man is his second such credit. The movie achieves a high enough rating to merit a series pickup later in 1975. (more…)
NASA launches Explorer 53, renamed Small Astronomy Satellite C, from an Italian-owned offshore launch platform off the coast of Kenya. SAS-C is a smaller spacecraft than NASA’s larger Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) series, but can be aimed very precisely at any cosmic X-ray sources that it detects. One of SAS-C’s discoveries is MXB1730-33, a binary star giving off rapid X-ray bursts. SAS-C will remain in orbit and functional until it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere in 1979.
The The 401st episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. This story marks the Cybermen’s first story since the Troughton era, and closes out both the series’ 12th season and the “Nerva” plotline.
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 sixth episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky airs on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). (more…)
The 
The seventh and final episode of the children’s science fiction series Sky airs on ITV, created and written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin (later the creators of K-9 for Doctor Who). Bernard Archard guest stars. (more…)