Streaming Finds: Tracking down sci fi and fantasy shows of interest available on the streaming services.
What Is It? This 1973 series follows a generational colony ship that is fleeing from a dying Earth but that goes off course from its mission to find a new world to inhabit. The ship consists of multiple domes that have been cut-off from each other after an accident that occurred 400 years prior, and the societies in each dome have mostly forgotten that they are travelling through space. Three people stumble upon the truth and the fact that this ship is on a collision course with a star and must find a way avert the impending disaster.
Starring: Keir Dullea, Gay Rowan, Robin Ward
The Skinny: This oddity from the 70’s is not well known, but some sci fi fans may be interested in checking it out. It was a Canadian production that was syndicated in the U.S. and that ran for only one season of sixteen episodes. It was created by Harlan Ellison and his script for the pilot even received the Best Original Screenplay award from the Writer’s Guild of America. But Ellison distanced himself from the show after growing disillusioned with the production direction (the studio made many changes and recorded the show on video tape like classic Doctor Who), and had his name removed from the credits (replaced with his usual protest moniker Cordwainer Bird). The resulting series was not great, but still of interest to fans of 70’s sci fi. 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s Keir Dullea was one of the leads in the series and Star Trek‘s Walker Koenig showed up in a couple of episodes as an alien.
Apparently this series has slipped into the public domain and a Roku channel titled–what else?–The Starlost has been set up with the entire sixteen episodes available for streaming. It runs a few ads, but not nearly as much as the other ad-supported streaming services. If you don’t have Roku (you should have Roku), the complete series is also available on YouTube at this link. This one definitely does not count as classic sci fi TV, but it is a curio of its era and worth a look.
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