A Star Trek Veteran Helped Write The Short-Lived Logan's Run TV Series

Director Michael Anderson's 1976 film "Logan's Run," based on the 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, contained a dystopian future that all young people secretly dread. The movie is set in 2274, a time in which the environment has been ruined by overpopulation and humanity now lives in elaborate dome-like enclosures to protect itself. To ensure careful control of the population, all citizens are expected to volunteer for state-sanctioned execution the day they turn 30. A glowing crystal in their palms indicates when they've reached that age. This system, it seems, was invented by a computer.

If a 30-year-old does not volunteer for execution and instead runs away, they are chased by state cops who are allowed to murder them on sight. Before they turn 30, citizens are allowed to lead a sexually free, hedonistic existence. The cops are called Sandmen, and the titular Logan 5 (Michael York, who was ready to pass on the film at one point) is happy to be one of them. Jenny Agutter plays his potential love interest, Jessica 6, and the plot follows Logan after his palm crystal is activated prematurely. At least half of "Logan's Run" takes place outside the domes as Logan and Jessica re-discover the recovering Earth. The movie is a deathly warning for older members of Gen-X, although it looks and feels a little dated to anyone younger. It was a hit, though, and scored multiple Academy Awards nods.

Fewer people probably know about the "Logan's Run" TV series that ran for just 14 episodes from 1977-78, though. The show expanded upon the "outside the domes" sequences in the movie, casting Gregory Harrison as Logan and Heather Menzies as Jessica. Most notably, legendary "Star Trek" creative D.C. Fontana was a story editor/writer on the series.

Altogether, D.C. Fontana wrote 10 episodes of "Star Trek: The Original Series" and served as the show's story editor for its first two seasons. She also was a story editor and producer on "Star Trek: The Animated Series," wrote five early episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (although the character Q infamously wasn't part of her original the "Next Generation" pilot script), and penned an episode of "Deep Space Nine." Overall, she was an invaluable contributor to "Star Trek," and the franchise's fans deeply mourned her when she passed in 2019 at the age of 80. 

Fontana, however, also had a prolific TV writing career beyond "Star Trek," contributing to episodes of his shows like "Bonanza," "Lancer," "The Six Million Dollar Man," and "Kung Fu." She was additionally a producer on the Gene Roddenberry-created series "The Lieutenant" and would later write for animated shows like "ReBoot," the underrated 1990s "Silver Surfer" animated series, and "Transformers: Beast Wars." She even wrote three episodes of "Babylon 5." Truly, Fontana is one of the great sci-fi writers of her generation. 

For "Logan's Run," Fontana tapped into her many professional relationships established during her days working on "The Original Series," and her writing team included several other "Star Trek" veterans. "The Original Series" writer David Gerrold and producer John Meredyth Lucas each penned an episode of "Logan's Run," while Harlan Ellison — who wrote "The City on the Edge of Forever," one of the best "Star Trek" episodes ever — landed a story credit on an episode, as did "The Original Series" writer Shimon Wincelberg. These scribes were all sci-fi experts with common experience, so it's no wonder Fontana tapped into their talents.

The "Logan's Run" TV series, as mentioned, only lasted 14 episodes and is now something of an obscurity, even among "Logan's Run" movie fans. Its outdoorsy feel might have turned off some viewers. Indeed, a lot of its exteriors were clearly filmed in public parks in California, while the interiors, while nice to look at, didn't have the same oddball sweep as those in the film. Its writing, as one might guess, was fine, and D.C. Fontana and her team explored a few interesting new ideas embedded in "Logan's Run" that the movie didn't cover.

For instance, it seems that the recovering Earth was way more populous than the movie led viewers to believe, with scads of weird surviving cults, occasional humanoid androids, and even extraterrestrials lurking around. The show also introduced the notion that the domed city where the "Logan's Run" movie took place was secretly being run by a shadowy cabal of elderly people, with certain citizens being allowed to age past 30 and join their covert rulership. Be that as it may, most of the series was about exploring Earth while Logan's on the run. It was more like a sci-fi version of "The Fugitive" than anything.

Why was "Logan's Run" canceled? Heather Menzies was interviewed by Classic Film & TV Café back in 2017, and she speculated that "Logan's Run" was taken off the air because it wasn't flashy enough. "I think they needed to spend more money on the visuals. ['Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope'] came out around that time, and we couldn't really compete with that," Menzies noted. That's a fair observation.

"Logan's Run" is available for purchase on Prime Video and Apple TV.