Pioneers of Television: Science Fiction

Pioneers of Television goes where no man has gone before.

Storytellers Gene Roddenberry, Irwin Allen and Rod Serling created the storylines and characters behind the best-loved futuristic television of their time. But as Roddenberry’s Star Trek competed for ratings with Allen’s Lost in Space, each show’s creator aimed for a very different direction. This episode explores how Roddenberry and Serling (of The Twilight Zone) used the future as a stage for modern morality plays, and William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols and other science-fiction stars describe how they prepared to interact on-camera with a malevolent alien force … or, perhaps, a giant radish. Pioneers of Television: Science Fiction airs Saturday, March 30, 2013 at 11 p.m. on WXXI-TV/HD (DT 21.1/cable 1011 and 11).

Check out this clip profiling Star Trek: