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"...the final product was so against the plans of writer Harlan Ellison, it is said that he ended up disowning the show before it even began. He didn't even want 'Harlan Ellison' in the credits. Ouch."

---from the article

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It's saying something about the power of the original Star Trek series, when you consider all the sci-fi concepts it spawned. Forget the Trek clones; just about every individual episode spawned a series (or movie) of some kind. Remember "For the World Is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky?" Well, if you do, you're halfway to knowing the secret to Starlost. This is one of those series ideas that isn't one of the "Worst Blunders" because the concept sucked. It's just that every step of this series' execution was a totally inexcusable blunder of some kind.

Not that the series was one big Trek rip-off. Yes, just like the classic Trek episode: a ship of people are adrift in space, on a spaceship so huge, most of the passengers are totally oblivious to the fact that they aren't on an actual planet. Yet here's the twist: these aren't aliens, but humans, from a long forgotten Earth. Even worse for them: their ship is just blindy cruising through space, with its command deck destroyed long ago. The lead character of the series slowly discovers that he is on a spaceship, and what's more; they must soon reach their intended destination, of a "new" Earth. Our hero must find a way to control this ship, and prepare it for its arrival to "home."

While this all sounds like it might lead to a good sci-fi show; it didn't. Much like the ship itself, the actual series veered erratically from its original plan. It must be presumed that the original plan was for the lead characters to visit any of the dozens of biospheres seen on the ship miniature, and deal with their problems, one biosphere at a time. Yet an obscenely low budget meant that these bio-domes consisted of barebones props, with badly acted characters, played by barely paid actors. Don't believe me? The first biosphere shown is an "Amish" biosphere. The second biosphere visited was ---get this--- "The Dome of The Dead." Another dome was an anti-pollution parable, and yet the idea of some imbecile polluting a bio-dome, and living to tell the tale, is too inane to give the story any credible impact.

Oddly enough; we don't blame the writers here...or at least, we can't. The final series product was so against the plans of Harlan Ellison, he ended up disowning the show before it even began. Be this as it may; the original concept was enough to earn Ellison a Writers Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay, for the original, unaltered script he had written. Comparatively, one of the series' head writers, Ben Bova, would write a novel in 1975 called The Starcrossed, about a scientist who was taken on as "advisor" for a horrible science fiction series. Two guesses what real story this was referencing. As is hopefully clear: Starlost is #4 on this list not because it was a horrible idea, but because it was a really imaginative and inspired idea that was horribly wasted.

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