The Martian Chronicles is a television miniseries based on Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and dealing with the exploration of Mars and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Roddy McDowall, Barry Morse, and Maria Schell. It was aired on NBC in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours . Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring". The script differs significantly from Bradbury's original novel from the 1940s, see episode summary below. The first episode starts at the Kennedy Space Center in... January 1999 when the first "Zeus I" manned spacecraft to Mars is carried into orbit by a Saturn V rocket. The Zeus project represents the beginning of a major effort by NASA and NATO to explore and eventually colonize the outer planets. On Mars, Ylla dreams of the coming astronauts through telepathy. Her husband, though he pretends to deny the reality of the dreams, becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife's inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts.
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| On the air: | January 27, 1980-January 29, 1980 |
| Genre: | Science Fiction |