Television was making its presence felt in the 1950s at the same time as science fiction was becoming a legitimate art form and the two seemed perfect partners. Yet the pair never embraced each other totally. The quality of television science fiction was as haphazard as its cinema equivalent and only rarely allowed a generous budget.
Depending on what one classes as science fiction, for it ranges from the most mind-stretching to the completely banal, the earliest on the television screen is generally reckoned to be the USAs CAPTAIN VIDEO (1949), which was in effect a children's show. Other notable early titles include: THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1959), THE OUTER LIMITS (1963), STAR TREK (1966) and THE INVADERS (1967) - all originating from America; and QUATERMASS (1953), DOCTOR WHO (1963) and THE PRISONER (1967) - from Britain. Other popular titles like THE MAN FROM UNCLE (1964) or THE AVENGERS (1961) cross over into different categories and have only been classed as science fiction in more recent years. In later decades MORK AND MINDY (1978), THE HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (1981), RED DWARF (1988) and THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN (1996) proved that comedy can also be one of the most successful outlets for science fiction on television.
Science fiction programmes develop strong cult followings, often years after their demise, with active fan clubs and conventions. So we step cautiously to boldly give the following astrological data and go into the untrod realms of science fiction television...

A FOR ANDROMEDA. October 3, 1961. 8.30pm. London.
ALF. September 22, 1986. 8pm. New York.
BAT MAN. January 12, 1966. 7.30pm. New York.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. September 17, 1978. 8pm. New York.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. September 25, 1987. 10pm. New York.
THE BIONIC WOMAN. January 14, 1976. 8pm. New York.
BLAKE'S 7. January 2, 1978. 6.30pm? London.
BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY. September 20, 1979. 8pm. New York.
DOCTOR WHO. November 23, 1963. 5.16pm. London.
HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN. September 19, 1984. 8pm. New York.
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. January 5, 1981. 9pm. London.
THE INCREDIBLE HULK. March 10, 1978. 9pm. New York.
THE INVADERS. January 10, 1967. 8.30pm. New York.
THE INVISIBLE MAN. November 4, 1958. 8pm. New York. - earlier in UK?
THE INVISIBLE MAN (in colour). September 8, 1975. 8pm. New York.
LAND OF THE GIANTS. September 22, 1968. 7pm. New York.
LOIS AND CLARK -THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN. September 12, 1993. 8pm. New York.
LOST IN SPACE. September 15, 1965. 7.30pm. New York.
MORK & MINDY. September 14, 1978. 8pm. New York.
MY FAVORITE MARTIAN. September 29, 1963. 7.30pm. New York.
THE OUTER LIMITS. September 16, 1963. 7.30pm. New York.
THE PRISONER. September 29, 1967. 7.30pm. London.
QUANTUM LEAP. March 26, 1989. 9pm. New York.
THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. July 18, 1953. 8.15pm. London.
RED DWARF. February 15, 1988. 9pm. London.
SLIDERS. March 22, 1995. 9pm. New York.
STAR TREK. September 8, 1966. 8.30pm. New York.
STAR TREK: VOYAGER. January 16, 1995. 8pm. New York.
3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN. January 9, 1996. 8.30pm. New York.
V. October 26, 1984. 8pm. New York.
VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. September 14, 1964. 7.30pm. New York.
WONDER WOMAN. December 18, 1976. 8pm. New York.
THE X FILES. September 10, 1993. 9pm. THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT
Saturday 18th July 1953. 8.15 pm London.

The first science fiction on British television
Cheap and cheerful is not quite the right phrase for the imaginative televisual dramas of the QUATERMASS series, but cheap and creepy might have been nearer the mark. In what may be categorised today as science-fiction/horror, this early television series was seriously worrying, and the cinema films that followed from it were 'X' rated.
QUATERMASS was an influential set of science fiction serials that first ran in the early 1950s. (THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT 1953, QUATERMASS II 1955, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 1958). Swiftly remade as films for cinema (The Quatermass Experiment 1955, Quatermass II 1957, and less successfully in colour Quatermass and the Pit 1967), the stories by Nigel Kneale revolved around the first British efforts at putting rockets into space, and the eerie things that were unexpectedly brought back to Earth. Its original working title was "Bring Something Back".
There's a monster behind you!
Rather in the mould of Frankenstein, the name "Quatermass" acquired a frightening ring to it at one time. British school children in the 1950s might have come up behind you and croaked "Quatermass!" with rolling eyes and quivering fingers, although they had really no idea what they were talking about. This was most likely because they had never been allowed to watch this adult television programme, or even more likely because (like the vast majority of people) their families did not yet possess a television set. Quatermass, like Frankenstein, was not the name of the monster in any case but of the story's main character, a Professor Bernard Quatermass, who was a benign bearded academic leading us through a war of nerves against alien forces. The black and white film noir approach of QUATERMASS heightened the atmosphere of impending menace and fuelled the fifties' obsession with unseen invasion or alien take-over.
In a darkened room
The first episode of the original six-week television series went out live at 8.15pm on Saturday evening 18th July 1953, only a month after the biggest boost to TV set ownership in Britain, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II that June. The little box that would soon form the focal point of every living-room was then giving out a barely recognisable television service by today's standards. With just the one channel (BBC) transmitting a handful of snowy black and white programmes interspersed with Interludes, close-downs, and of course no commercials, people treated it more as a kind of home cinema, dowsing lights and gathering around the screen in hushed anticipation.
As it could take up to five minutes for the valves in the set to warm up, television viewing was an event to be planned in advance, with excited relatives and neighbours swelling the crowd. Not surprisingly in this atmosphere a gripping half-hour thriller like QUATERMASS gained a strong reputation and enjoyed a weekly audience quite out of proportion to the relatively small number of television sets owned. These were still British television's early days with no budgets for spectacular scenes or special effects in televised drama. In QUATERMASS the suspense had to be built and maintained through a good story alone and a look at the chart of the programme's beginning shows how well it tapped into the collective mind of the 1950s to both excite and frighten its audience.
Unseen Enemies
Astrologically it was Saturn and Neptune that were partnering throughout 1952/53, and as can be seen on this chart the two planets were only minutes apart at the birth of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. Heightened here in their influence through an almost exact conjunction to the Moon, the underhand authority of Neptune/Saturn was drawn into a lunar atmosphere of morbid imagination. The fear of being out of control was the psychological consternation that hooked the audience. It was also the big issue in general in this Cold War period, exacerbating the mistrust between East and West on a global scale. The communist witch-hunts in the United States had as good as matched the Soviet Union's paranoid anti-capitalist propaganda in intensity. Unseen enemies could be imagined everywhere and the recent appearance of flying saucers only added to the jittery dilemma.
Movie films of the time reflected the unseen-invasion phobia, classically Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The next Saturn-Neptune conjunction 37 years later in 1989 actually finished off the Cold War once and for all when its "dissolution of barriers" saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of a world so ideologically divided.
Yet the UFOs persisted.
Aliens in Cancer
The transfixing triple conjunction of Moon, Saturn and Neptune on the QUATERMASS chart closely squared another powerful cluster, the Sun conjunct Mars conjunct Uranus in Cancer. Here the dynamism was not only alien, but defensively explosive. The sinister alien forces of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT had been brought back to Earth in the astronauts' rockets and were both moodily aggressive and full of violent surprises. And the effect was similarly immediate to the viewing audience too. The whole Sun-Mars-Uranus package hit them between the eyes quite unexpectedly.
The zodiac area of Cancer is an interesting one for extra-terrestrial activity as it appears on many UFO-related horoscopes and those of crop circle formations. And of course Cancer is a rare Sun sign for a television show as very few new television series begin in the summer evenings of July when more people are perceived to be out of doors. (Which may be another reason why more UFOs are observed). With its theme of alien invasion from the outside QUATERMASS has been likened more to American science fiction than British. But the worry of subversion from within is also a strong part of the plot, and the protection of homeland theme is very Cancerian of course.
The Ultimate Horror
The aliens in THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT were actually microbes intent on infesting humans from within and turning key characters into an unattractive-looking fungus. That has to be Moon-Neptune-Saturn in Libra on a bad day surely? With a special effects budget as microscopic as the aliens themselves, the resultant drama was all the more disturbing because you could not readily see these little horrors. At least not until the last episode when one's fears may have been assuaged slightly at the hair-raising sight of a bloated vegetable monster played by the author's hand in a rubber glove.
With the Sun, Mars, Uranus and Mercury all in the seventh house, the entire chart is oriented towards the Other or towards one-to-one confrontations (Sun-Mars), and this eventually happens between Professor Quatermass and the hapless human vegetable outside Westminster Abbey. (Or a photograph of Westminster Abbey to be precise). In fact had the Professor known a bit of astrology he might have guessed that Moon-Saturn-Neptune in the ninth meant that the Thing had been hiding for some while in a dark recess of the Abbey's famous "Poets Corner".
Quatermass persuades the monster to kill itself on compassionate grounds, (rulers of Ascendant and Descendant, 'Us' and 'Them', are conjunct in the same degree and both conjunct Neptune). Reginald Tate, the actor who played Professor Quatermass, died before the next series began two years later and John Robinson took the role in QUATERMASS II. For the third television series, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, Andre Morell played the Professor.
But the dynamics of what might have been seen as a difficult chart - explosive Solar stellium tightly square an imaginative Lunar stellium - produced excellent television and a series well deserved of its lasting reputation.
Notes:
To quote just one famous instance: The chart for the sighting of saucers by pilot Kenneth Arnold in Washington State in 1947, from which the term "flying saucers" was first coined, had the Sun and Mercury in Cancer.