This Week in Television History: September 2026 PART III

 

September 15, 1986

NBC aired the pilot episode of L.A. Law.

Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features including an ensemble cast, large number of parallel storylines, social drama, and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as capital punishment, abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff.

In addition to its main cast, L.A. Law was also well known for featuring then relatively unknown actors and actresses in guest starring roles, who later went on to greater success in film and television including: Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Tambor, Kathy Bates, David Schwimmer, Jay O. Sanders, James Avery, Gates McFadden,Bryan Cranston, C.C.H. Pounder, Kevin Spacey, Richard Schiff, Carrie-Anne Moss, William H. Macy, Stephen Root, Christian Slater, and Lucy Liu. Several episodes of the show also included celebrities such as Vanna White,Buddy Hackett and Mamie Van Doren appearing as themselves in cameo roles.

The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.

September 17, 1951

Cassandra Peterson is born. 

The actress s best known for her on-screen horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ wearing a black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing gown as host of Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation. Her wickedly vampish appearance was offset by her comical character, quirky/quick-witted personality, and valley girl-type speech.

September 17, 1966

Mission: Impossible Premiered: 

Interesting that Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were Desilu productions premiering so close together, and today they both continue to be major Hollywood franchises for Bad Robot Productions. The pilot is of note because the self-destructing message was delivered on a vinyl LP, not a tape. It was also the only episode to be written by creator Bruce Geller. 

September 17, 1991

The first episode of "Home Improvement" aired on ABC. 

The series centers on the Taylor family, which consists of Tim (Tim Allen), his wife Jill (Patricia Richardson) and their three children: the oldest child, Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), the middle child Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and youngest child, Mark (Taran Noah Smith). The Taylors live in suburban Detroit, and have a neighbor named Wilson Wilson (Earl Hindman) who is often the go-to guy for solving the Taylors' problems.

Tim is a stereotypical American male, who loves power tools, cars and sports. In particular, he is an avid fan oflocal Detroit teams. In numerous instances Tim wears Lions, Pistons, and Tigers clothing, and many plots revolve around the teams. He is a former salesman for the fictional Binford Tool company, and is very much a cocky, overambitious, accident-prone know-it-all. Witty but flippant, Tim jokes around a lot, even at inappropriate times, much to the dismay of his wife. However, Tim can sometimes be serious when necessary. Jill, Tim's wife, is loving and sophisticated, but not exempt from dumb moves herself. in later seasons she returns to college to study psychology. Family life is boisterous for the Taylors with the two oldest children, Brad and Randy, tormenting the much younger Mark, all while continually testing and pestering each other. Such play happened especially throughout the first three seasons, and was revisited only occasionally until Jonathan Taylor Thomas left at the beginning of the eighth season. During the show's final season, Brad and Mark became much closer due to Randy's absence.

Brad, popular and athletic, was often the moving factor, who engaged before thinking, a tendency which regularly landed him in trouble. Randy, a year younger, was the comedian of the pack, known for his quick-thinking, wisecracks, and smart mouth. He had more common sense than Brad but was not immune to trouble. Mark was somewhat of a mama's boy, though later in the series (in the seventh season) he grew into a teenage outcast who dressed in black clothing. Meanwhile, Brad became interested in cars like his father and took up soccer. Randy joined the school drama club, and later the school newspaper; in the eighth season, he left for Costa Rica.

Each episode includes Tim's own Binford-sponsored home improvement show, called Tool Time, a "meta-program," or show-within-a-show. In hosting this show, Tim is joined by his friend and mild-mannered assistant Al Borland (Richard Karn), and a "Tool Time girl" — first Lisa (Pamela Anderson) and later Heidi (Debbe Dunning) — whose main duty is to introduce the pair at the beginning of the show with the line "Does everybody know what time it is?" The Tool Time girl also assists Tim and Al during the show by bringing them tools.

Although revealed to be an excellent salesman and TV personality, Tim is spectacularly accident prone as a handyman, often causing massive disasters on and off the set, to the consternation of his co-workers and family. Many Tool Time viewers assume that the accidents on the show are done on purpose, to demonstrate the consequences of using tools improperly. Many of Tim's accidents are caused by his devices being used in an unorthodox or overpowered manner, designed to illustrate his mantra "More power!". This popular catchphrase would not be uttered after Home Improvement's seventh season, until Tim's last line in the series finale.

Tool Time was conceived as a parody of the PBS home-improvement show This Old House. Tim and Al are caricatures of the two principal cast members ofThis Old House, host Bob Vila and master carpenter Norm Abram. Al Borland has a beard and always wears plaid shirts when taping an episode, reflecting Norm Abram's appearance on This Old House. Bob Vila appeared as a guest star on several episodes of Home Improvement, while Tim Allen and Pamela Anderson both appeared on Bob Vila's show Home Again.

The Tool Time theme music, an early 1960s-style saxophone-dominated instrumental rock tune, was sometimes used as the closing theme music for Home Improvement, especially when behind the credits were running the blooper scenes that took place during the taping of a Tool Time segment.

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Tony Figueroa

Billy Joel - America: A Tribute to Heroes (21 Sept 2001) - New York State of Mind

 

This Week in Television History: September 2026 PART II

 

September 8, 1966

Star Trek premieres. 

Although Star Trek ran for only three years and never placed better than No. 52 in the ratings, Gene Roddenberry's series became a cult classic and spawned four television series and ten movies.

The first Star Trek spin-off was a Saturday morning cartoon, The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, which ran from 1973 to 1975 (original cast members supplied the voices). The TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in 1987 and was set in the 24th century, starring the crew of the new, larger U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, captained by Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart). This series became the highest-rated syndicated drama on television and ran until 1994.

Another spin-off, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, premiered in 1992, featuring a 24th-century crew that lived in a space station rather than a starship. Star Trek: Voyager, which debuted in 1995 and ran until 2001, was the first to feature a female captain, Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew). In this series, the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager is stranded more than 70,000 light years from Federation space and is trying to find its way home. The final spin-off to air on TV was Enterprise, which premiered in the United States on September 26, 2001. The final two episodes of that show aired in May 2005.

September 8, 1966

That Girl primeried. 

The sitcom ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971 and starred Marlo Thomas as the title character Ann Marie, an aspiring (but only sporadically employed) actress, who moves from her hometown of Brewster, New York to try to make it big in New York City. Ann has to take a number of offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various auditions and bit parts. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend Donald Hollinger, a writer forNewsview Magazine; Lew Parker and Rosemary DeCamp played Lew Marie and Helen Marie, her concerned parents. Bernie Kopell, Ruth Buzzi and Reva Rose played Ann and Donald's friends. That Girl was developed by writers Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, who had served as head writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show (with which Thomas's father, Danny Thomas, was closely associated) earlier in the 1960s.

Each episode begins with a pre-credits teaser in which an odd incident occurs or a discussion foreshadows the episode's story. The scene almost always ends with someone exclaiming "...that girl!", just as Ann wanders into the shot or the character notices her. The words "That Girl" would appear over the freeze-frame shot of Ann. The opening credits during the first season featured Thomas, in character, strolling the streets of New York. From the second season forward, the opening shot was the view from a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train crossing the New Jersey Meadowlands between Newark andPenn Station near Laurel Hill Park, then Thomas flying a kite in Central Park, and seeing (and exchanging winks with) her double in a store window. Lyrics were added to the theme for the final season, written by series co-creator Sam Denoff, sung by Ron Hicklin.

That Girl was one of the first sitcoms to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or living with her parents. Some consider this show the forerunner of the highly successful Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, and Ally McBeal, and an early indication of the changing roles of American women in feminist-era America. Thomas's goofy charm, together with Bessell's dry wit, made That Girl a solid performer on the ABC Television Network, and while the series, in the overall ratings, never made the top thirty during its entire five-year run, the series did respectably well.

At the end of the 1969–1970 season, That Girl was still doing moderately well in the ratings; however, after four years, Thomas had grown tired of the series and wanted to move on. ABC convinced her to do one more year. In the beginning of the fifth season, Don and Ann became engaged, although they never actually married. The decision to leave the couple engaged at the end of the run was largely the idea of Thomas herself. She did not want to send a message to young women that marriage was the ultimate goal for them and she was worried that it would have defeated the somewhat feminist message of the show.

 

September 8, 1986

The Oprah Winfrey Show is broadcast nationally for the first time. 

A huge success, her daytime television talk show turns Winfrey into one of the most powerful, wealthy people in show business and, arguably, the most influential woman in America.

Winfrey, who was born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenage mother on January 24, 1954, began her TV career as a local news anchor in Nashville and Baltimore before moving to Chicago in 1984 to host a low-rated morning talk program. She quickly turned the show into a ratings winner, beating out a popular talk program hosted by Phil Donahue. At the urging of the Chicago-based movie critic Roger Ebert, Winfrey signed a syndication deal with King World and The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast nationally for the first time on September 8, 1986. It went on to become the highest-rated talk show in TV history.

Proving that talk-show host wasn’t the only role she could play, Winfrey made her big-screen debut as Sofia in director Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple(1985), based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and co-starring Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover. The film earned Winfrey a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, although she lost the gold statue to Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor). Winfrey went on to star in and produce in 1998’s Beloved, based on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and voice characters for 2006’s Charlotte’s Web and 2007’s Bee Movie, which co-starred and was co-written by Jerry Seinfeld. In addition to TV and film, Winfrey became a true media mogul, branching out to books and magazines, radio, musical theater and the Web. In 2008, she announced plans to launch her own network, named OWN, in 2009.

In 2008, The Oprah Winfrey Show had an estimated weekly audience of some 46 million viewers in the United States and was broadcast around the world in 134 countries. Winfrey wields enormous influence when it comes to promoting products: A recommendation on her show can turn a book, movie or just about anything else into a bestseller, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the “Oprah Effect.”

September 9, 1926

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was created by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). 

RCA chairman of the board Owen D. Young and president James G. Harbord announced the formation of the National Broadcasting Company, Inc., to begin broadcasting upon RCA's acquisition of WEAF on November 15. "The purpose of the National Broadcasting Company will be to provide the best programs available for broadcasting in the United States. ... It is hoped that arrangements may be made so that every event of national importance may be broadcast widely throughout the United States," announced M.H. Aylesworth, the first president of NBC, in the press release.Although RCA was identified as the creator of the network, NBC was actually owned 50% by RCA, 30% by General Electric, and 20% by Westinghouse.The network officially was launched at 8 p.m. ET on Monday, November 15, 1926.

 

September 9, 1966

The Green Hornet Premiered:

Though it followed and crossed over with Batman, The Green Hornet struck a much different tone than its vigilante peers. The action and plots were taken seriously, though remained a joyous thrill thanks to Kato. Though it lasted just a season, the series made Bruce Lee a household name. The debut outing, "The Silent Gun," also introduced America to the Black Beauty, which remains on of the coolest vehicles in screen history.

 

September 9, 1956

Elvis Presley sang "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog" on Ed Sullivan's show Toast of the Town. 

Presley scandalized audiences with his suggestive hip gyrations, and Sullivan swore he would never book the singer on his show. However, Presley's tremendous popularity and success on other shows changed Sullivan's mind. Although Elvis had appeared on a few other programs already, his appearance on Ed Sullivan's show made him a household name.

September 9, 1986

Ted Turner presented the first of his colorized films on WTBS in Atlanta, GA.

Ted Turner presented the first of his colorized films -- on his superstation WTBS in Atlanta, GA. The first Hollywood classic to get the new look was "Yankee Doodle Dandy". Some people were opposed to the colorization process, where color is added to black-and-white movies. They felt the originals should be pristine -- that any change interferes with the original creativity. 

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: September 2026 PART I

August 31, 1946

Foghorn J. Leghorn first appeared in Walky Talky Hawky

The character of Foghorn Leghorn was directly inspired by the popular character of Senator Claghorn, a blustery Southern politician played by Kenny Delmar who was a regular character onThe Fred Allen Show, a popular radio show of the 1940s. The rooster adopted many of Claghorn's catch phrases, such as "That's a joke, ah say, that's a joke, son." Delmar had based the character of Claghorn upon a Texas rancher who was fond of saying this.

September 3, 1966

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet airs its last episode. 

The sitcom focused on the comic antics of a young family based on the real-life family of show founders and stars Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. The show premiered as a radio comedy in 1944 and ran for 10 years. Even before the radio show ended, a TV version launched in 1952; the television show ran until 1966. The Nelson's two sons, Ricky and David, played themselves on the TV version.

September 3, 1991

It’s a Wonderful Life director Capra dies. 

On this day in 1991, Frank Capra, a leading Hollywood director in the 1930s and 1940s whose movies include the now-classic You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life, dies at the age of 94 at his home in La Quinta, California. According to his obituary in the New York Times: “Capra movies were idealistic, sentimental and patriotic. His major films embodied his flair for improvisation and spontaneity, buoyant humor and sympathy for the populist beliefs of the 1930s.”

Capra was born in Sicily, on May 18, 1897, and as a young boy sailed to America in steerage with his family, who settled in Los Angeles. After graduating from the California Institute of Technology and serving in the U.S. Army, Capra worked his way up through the movie industry; he had his first big success as a director with 1933’s Lady for a Day, which received a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. The following year, Capra helmed the comedy It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The film took home Oscars in five categories: Best Director, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor and Actress. Capra won a second Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), which starred Gary Cooper as a man who inherits a large fortune and wants to use it to help Depression-era families. Capra received a third Best Director Oscar for You Can’t Take It With You (1938), a movie about an eccentric family that starred James Stewart, Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore and was based on the Pulitzer prize-winning play of the same name by Moss Hart and George Kaufman.

In 1940, Capra took home a fourth Best Director Oscar for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which featured Stewart as an incorruptible U.S. senator. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Capra joined the Army again and during his time in the service made several well-received propaganda films, including Prelude to War (1943), which earned an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Capra went on to co-write and direct 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life, perhaps his best-known work. The film again starred Stewart, this time as George Bailey, a small-town man who is saved from suicide by a guardian angel. Although the film was considered a box-office disappointment when it was first released, it garnered five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, and eventually gained widespread appeal when it was broadcast annually on TV around Christmastime, starting in the 1970s.

Capra’s final film was Pocketful of Miracles (1961), a remake of Lady for a Day starring Bette Davis as a street vendor who needs to remake herself into a society dame in order not to disappoint her daughter.

September 4, 1951

President Harry S. Truman’s opening speech before a conference in San Francisco is broadcast across the nation, marking the first time a television program was broadcast from coast to coast.

The speech focused on Truman’s acceptance of a treaty that officially ended America’s post-World War II occupation of Japan.

The broadcast, via then-state-of-the-art microwave technology, was picked up by 87 stations in 47 cities, according to CBS. In his remarks, Truman lauded the treaty as one that would help “build a world in which the children of all nations can live together in peace.” As communism was threatening to spread throughout Pacific Rim nations such as Korea and Vietnam, the U.S. recognized the need to create an ally in a strong, democratic Japan.

Since the end of World War II in 1945, Japan had been occupied and closely monitored by the American military under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur. By 1951, six years later, Truman considered the task of rebuilding Japan complete. Truman praised the Japanese people’s willingness to go along with the plan and expressed his pride in having helped to rebuild Japan as a democracy. Gone was the old militaristic police state; in its place was a country with a new constitution, unions for protecting the rights of laborers and voting rights for women, among many other positive changes.

The Multilateral Treaty of Peace with Japan, as it was ultimately called, was ratified by the U.S. Congress on March 20, 1952.

September 4, 1966

The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon was an annual telethon held each Labor Day in the United States to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).

The show was founded and hosted by actor and comedian Jerry Lewis, who hosted the broadcast from its 1966 inception until 2010.  The history of MDA's telethon dated back to the 1950s, when the Jerry LewisThanksgiving Party for MDA raised funds for the organization's New York City area operations. The telethon was held annually on Labor Day weekend beginning in 1966, and would raise $2.45 billion for MDA from its inception through 2009.

The telethon aired up to 21½ hours, starting on the Sunday evening preceding Labor Day and continuing until late Monday afternoon on the holiday itself. MDA called its network of participating stations the "Love Network". The show originated from Las Vegas for 28 of the years it was broadcast.

Beginning in 2011, coinciding with Lewis's controversial departure, MDA radically reformatted and shortened the telethon's format into that of a benefit concert, shortening the length of the special each successive year. The 2011 edition was seen exclusively on the Sunday evening before Labor Day for six hours; This edition, syndicated to approximately 160 television stations throughout the United States on September 4, 2011, Nigel Lythgoe, Jann Carl, Alison Sweeney and Nancy O'Dell were brought on as co-hosts. shared hosting duties for the 2011 edition.

Successive telethons from 2012 to 2014 renamed the show as the MDA Show of Strength and further cut its airtime. The 2012 edition aired on Sunday, September 2, 2012; the job of renaming the new show was given to MDA's advertising agency E.B. Lane (now LaneTerralever). Mark Itkowitz, their Exec. Creative Director came up with the name MDA Show of Strength and it quickly gained internal approval. The 2012 edition was reduced to three hours as a primetime-only broadcast. The telethon aired at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, and was seen live in the Eastern and Central time zones.

The 2012 edition did not refer itself as a "telethon". The 2013 Show of Strength discontinued the long-standing format of being syndicated to individual stations of varying network affiliation and aired on a major national network instead of being syndicated to individual stations, airing on ABC on Sunday, September 1, 2013, and being reduced to two hours. While the 2012 edition did not refer itself as a "telethon", it referred itself as such for the 2013 edition.

The final edition, for 2014, aired on ABC on August 31, again as a two-hour special beginning at 9PM ET/PT. This was the final edition for the telethon, as it was announced on May 1, 2015 that the MDA would be discontinuing the annual event.

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Tony Figueroa

Peter Cullen

I enjoy dramatic narration, of course,

because I'm an actor and I started as an actor.

But I love things that are a challenge,

and I look forward to more work with that in the future.

So there's always a sun coming up the following day for me.

-Peter Cullen

Peter Claver Cullen

July 28, 1941 – August 26, 2026

 Good Night Sir

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Tony Figueroa

Dolly Parton's appearance on 'The Cas Walker Show'

We cannot direct the wind,

but we can adjust the sails.

-Dolly Parton

Dolly Rebecca Parton

January 19, 1946 – August 25, 2026

Good Night Dolly

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: August 2026 PART IV

July 24, 1956

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together at New York's Copacabana Club. 

Born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, Martin started a nightclub act after working as a prizefighter and a steelworker in the 1940s. Lewis, the son of performers, debuted in comedy acts with his parents at age five and was working steadily as a comic by 1946, when he met Dean Martin. The pair performed an act in which screwball Lewis constantly interrupted straight man Martin's singing. They made their first appearance in 1946 at a club in Atlantic City and were an instant hit, soon in demand for radio and movie performances. The pair made 16 movies together, starting with My Friend Irma in 1949. By 1956, though, the pair decided to call it quits.

After the duo split up, Martin launched his own TV variety show, which ran from 1965 to 1974. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin teamed up with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop to perform in Las Vegas. The group quickly became known as the Rat Pack, a suave group of young, fast-living entertainers. The group made several movies together in the early 1960s, including Ocean's Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven Hoods. Martin died in 1995.

Lewis went on to sign one of the most lucrative film contracts of the day, a $10 million deal for 14 films with Paramount. Lewis' films, including Cinderfella (1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963), failed to attract much praise from American critics but made him a star in France, where he has long been considered a comic genius. After a long absence from film, he gave an acclaimed performance in the 1986 film The King of Comedy, co-starring Robert De Niro.

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Tony Figueroa

Shelley Fabares

One can't change one's life experience,

but even if I could,

I wouldn't change it because of

all the wonderful things that have happened to me.

-Shelley Fabares

Michele Ann Marie "Shelley" Fabares

January 19, 1944 – August 22, 2026

Shelley Fabares was known for her television roles as Mary on the sitcom The Donna Reed Show (1958–1963), Francine Webster on One Day at a Time, and as Christine Armstrong on the sitcom Coach (1989–1997), the latter of which earned her two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations. After Coach ended in 1997, Fabares voiced the role of Martha Kent on Superman: The Animated Series.^[28] She reprised the role twice, once in Justice League and again for the direct-to-video film Superman: Brainiac Attacks (2006). Her film roles included playing the leading lady to Elvis Presley in Girl Happy (1965), Spinout (1966), and Clambake (1967). In 1962, her recording of "Johnny Angel" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Good Night Ms. Fabares

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: August 2026 PART III

  

August 19, 1981

Charlie's Angels aired its final episode. 

The detective series featured crime-solving beauties instructed by a mysterious voice on a speaker phone known only as Charlie. Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Farrah Fawcett played the original Angels. Fawcett's blown-dry, feathered hair launched a national fad, and the actress left the show after a year to pursue a career in movies. Subsequent Angels included Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack, and Tanya Roberts. In 2000, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu played the Angels in a movie version of the show.

 

August 19, 1921

TV producer Gene Roddenberry, best known as the creator of Star Trek, is born in El Paso, Texas. 

His family moved to Los Angeles when Roddenberry was a toddler, and his father became a police officer. Roddenberry also studied criminal justice at Los Angeles City College but became a pilot instead through the Civilian Pilot Training Program. During World War II, Roddenberry flew bombing missions in the South Pacific with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Shot down during a raid, he survived and won a medal. A second crash, when he was working as a Pan Am pilot after the war, killed 14 people and convinced Roddenberry to give up flying. Instead, Roddenberry became a police officer like his father. But before long, he discovered that living the police life paid less than writing about it for TV, so he began writing scripts for Dragnet and other police TV dramas. In 1963, he produced a short-lived NBC show, The Lieutenant, about life in the U.S. Marines.

A lifelong science-fiction fan, Roddenberry wanted to try his hand making a sci-fi TV program. He convinced superstar Lucille Ball to fund a pilot. Although the first pilot was rejected, a second take was picked up, and Star Trek premiered in 1966.

Although the show ran for only three years and never placed better than No. 52 in the ratings, Roddenberry's sci-fi series became a cult classic and spawned four television series and nine movies.

Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, and was one of the first people to be "buried" in space.

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Tony Figueroa