Retrogram #7342: Saturday Morning Cartoons, Saturday Night Massacre
theLogBook.com releases the first episode of the Retrogram podcast, hosted by Earl Green, covering the following shows from the week of October 14th, 1973:
- The Starlost: Children Of Methuselah
- Star Trek: The Animated Series: The Infinite Vulcan
- The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women, and War
- Moonbase 3: View Of A Dead Planet
- Super Friends: Too Hot To Handle
Arrow: Lian Yu
The 115th episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. This is the finale of the series’ fifth season.
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Jared Martin, actor, dies
Actor Jared Martin, star of the cult classic genre series The Fantastic Journey and War Of The Worlds, dies of pancreatic cancer at the age of 75. In the 1960s, Martin had the good fortune to befriend and room with fellow college student Brian De Palma, and was given a role in some of De Palma’s early films. He moved on to roles in such movies as Westworld, though he may best be known for a recurring role in the prime time soap Dallas. After leaving acting as a full-time profession, he continued to mentor younger filmmakers, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The Flash: The Race Of His Life
The 46th episode of The Flash, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ superhero starring Grant Gustin, airs on the CW. This is the series’ second season finale.
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Joseph Pevney, Star Trek director, dies
Director and former actor Joseph Pevney, the man behind the camera for many of the original Star Trek‘s best-remembered segments, dies at the age of 96. A veteran of classic ’60s, ’70s and ’80s television, he also directed numerous episodes of Wagon Train, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Mission: Impossible, The Munsters, Bonanza, and The Incredible Hulk. Before embarking on his directing career in 1950, he also worked as an actor, with his first exposure to showbiz in a 1924 Vaudeville show.
Lost: Live Together, Die Alone
ABC airs the 47th episode of the J.J. Abrams-produced series Lost, bringing the second season to a cryptic close. Malcolm David Kelley, Michael Emerson, Clancy Brown, and Alan Dale (Angel, Torchwood) guest star.
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Lost now streaming on Amazon Prime
GOES-13 goes up
NOAA’s GOES-13 Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral into geosynchronous orbit to monitor weather patterns over the United States. It will be held in reserve until 2010, when it will be moved to the GOES-EAST position to replace GOES-12, which is suffering chronic attitude control thruster glitches. GOES-13 is yet another evolutionary step up in the GOES satellite hardware, but it will suffer its own share of hardware issues, including a series of inexplicable faults which will cause brief losses of weather coverage, and a later fault which disables infrared imaging capability. Some of these hardware failures will be attributed to micrometeoroid collisions.
Pay cable channel Showtime premieres Voyager: Unimatrix Zero
UPN airs the 145th episode of Star Trek: Voyager, ending the show’s sixth season. Susanna Thompson guest stars as the Borg Queen.
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Star Trek: Voyager now streaming on Paramount Plus
Star Trek: DS9: The Dogs Of War
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 172nd episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This episode concludes a tightly-serialized eight-episode run-up to the series finale. Wallace Shawn, Cecily Adams and Vaughn Armstrong guest star.
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine now streaming on Paramount Plus
Sliders: Obsession
Fox airs the 18th episode of Tracy Torme’s alternate-universe science fiction series Sliders, starring Jerry O’Connell, John Rhys Davies, Sabrina Lloyd, and Cleavant Derricks. Isaac Hayes (South Park) and Paul McGillion (Stargate Atlantis) guest star.
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Sliders now streaming on Amazon Prime
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Babylon 5: Confessions And Lamentations
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 40th episode of Babylon 5. The four remaining episodes of the series’ second season are held back to air in the fall, following the precedent set by the delay of the first season finale.
More about Babylon 5 in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
Babylon 5 now streaming on Amazon Prime
Magellan tests aerobraking at Venus
To increase the accuracy of its gravity map of the planet Venus, NASA’s unmanned space probe Magellan conducts the first experimental aerobraking maneuvers to alter the shape its orbit to a near-circular shape. By dipping Magellan into the upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere, the spacecraft is slowed and its orbit is changed, but it is kept far enough from the denser lower layers of the atmosphere to avoid re-entry. Aerobraking will become more commonly used by future space probes at the planet Mars.
Star Trek: TNG: Second Chances
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 149th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Space Shuttle astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison appears as a transporter chief.
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Star Trek: The Next Generation now streaming on Paramount Plus
Star Trek: DS9: Dramatis Personae
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 17th episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine now streaming on Paramount Plus
Robert Holmes, Doctor Who writer, dies
Robert Holmes, considered by many fans to be the definitive script editor and most influential writer of classic Doctor Who, dies at the age of 60. He was responsible for the Sontarans, the Autons, The Master, The Ark In Space, Pyramids Of Mars, and Caves Of Androzani; his scripts for the popular BBC space opera Blake’s 7 were also considered among that show’s best installments. He also bestowed the name Gallifrey upon the planet of the Time Lords and virtually created the entire Time Lord mythology in the acclaimed and controversial 1976 installment The Deadly Assassin. His untimely death cuts short his work on the final installments of The Trial Of A Time Lord and throws the scripting and production of those final two episodes into chaos.
Robin Of Sherwood: The Betrayal
The 21st episode of Richard Carpenter’s fanciful retelling of the Robin Hood legend, Robin Of Sherwood, airs on ITV, starring Jason Connery, Mark Ryan, Judi Trott, and Nickolas Grace. Matt Frewer (Max Headroom, Eureka, Orphan Black) guest stars.
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Robin Of Sherwood now streaming on Amazon Prime
Chopper Command
Activision releases the Chopper Command cartridge for the Atari VCS home video game system. Inspired by the arcade game Defender, complete with a “radar view” of areas of the playfield extending beyond the edges of the screen, Chopper Command proves to be graphically superior to Atari’s own home version of that game.
The disappearing moon of Neptune
A team of American astronomers discovers what they believe is a third moon of Neptune from ground-based telescope observations, but S/1981N1 isn’t seen again for several years, so the discovery is left in the “unconfirmed” category…until it is next seen by Voyager 2 in 1989, confirming the original sighting many years later. In 1991, the International Astronomical Union will name this moon Larissa. (Voyager 2 photo of Larissa shown)
Tales Of The Unexpected: Never Speak Ill Of The Dead
ITV airs the 42nd episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. Colin Blakely guest stars.
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Tales Of The Unexpected now streaming on Amazon Prime
Star Wars Radio: The Luke Skywalker Initiative
The tenth episode of Brian Daley’s radio drama adaptation of the science fiction blockbuster Star Wars airs on National Public Radio stations in the U.S. Mark Hamill stars as Luke Skywalker and Perry King stars as Han Solo.
Tales Of The Unexpected: Mr Botibol’s First Love
ITV airs the 22nd episode of Roald Dahl’s anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected, hosted by the author himself and adapted from his short stories. Jack Weston guest stars.
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Tales Of The Unexpected now streaming on Amazon Prime
Soyuz 18
Soyuz 18 is launched toward space station Salyut 4 by the Soviet Union. Cosmonauts Pyotr Klimuk and Vitali Sevastyanov set a new Soviet record for long-duration stays in space, remaining about Salyut 4 for two months. They are also aboard Salyut 4 during the entirety of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and are able to contact that international mission’s Soviet crew in another Soyuz vehicle. (Two mission control centers are used to prevent any confusion between the two Soyuz crews.) At the time the Soyuz 18 crew abandons Salyut 4 in July, the station’s environmental systems are failing, allowing the atmosphere inside the station to become humid enough for mold to begin growing on surfaces in the crew compartment; no further human crews will visit the station.
Chasing the storm
The 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.
Escape Into Night: Episode 6
ITV broadcasts the sixth and final episode of Escape Into Night, adapted by Ruth Boswell from the Catherine Storr novel Marianne Dreams. Originally shown in color, the color master tapes are lost over time, and the series survives only in black & white recordings. It is those recordings that will allow the series to resurface on DVD in the 21st century.
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Apollo-Soyuz agreement signed
After two years of hammering out details and wording, President Nixon and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin sign an international agreement to share science and technology between the United States and Soviet Union, including an agreement to mount a joint space mission culminating in the docking of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit in 1975. Both nations’ space agencies begin crew selection and technical preparations for a joint venture that seemed impossible during the Cold War-fueled race to the moon.
Doctor Who: The War Games, Part 6
The 249th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Jane Sherwin, David Savile and Philip Madoc guest star. This is Patrick Troughton’s final story as the incumbent Doctor, the final Doctor Who story of the 1960s, and the final story made in black & white.
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Mercury 7
The second American orbital flight is launched, with Scott Carpenter lifting off aboard Mercury 7 (nicknamed Aurora 7). Carpenter’s five-hour, three-orbit mission is almost a carbon copy of John Glenn’s orbital flight, the primary goal being to duplicate the flight and compare the two astronauts’ reports and reactions.
One Step Beyond: Contact
ABC airs the 57th episode of the supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Ron Randell guest stars.
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One Step Beyond now streaming on Amazon Prime
H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man: The Gun Runners
The 20th episode of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, based on Wells’ story, airs on ITV; this episode will air in November 1959 in the U.S. on CBS.
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