Again, thanks to Dave for dvd news on the very zenith of science-fiction craptacularishness, and Canadian no less.  As bad as “Space: Above & Beyond” is good, ‘The Starlost’ was still for me a key sci-fi show when I was a kid.  “Star Trek” was in re-runs, we had “Space: 1999” and, for Canadians anyway, “The Starlost”.  Did I say the show was bad?  Bad but great.  Unlike Kirk and Spock who visited new planets each week, the main characters of Starlost travel throughout the spaceship Ark visiting new domed ‘worlds’ each week.  But it all happens with the driver of the main characters - Devon, Rachel and Garth - having to find a way to correct their starship’s course to avert disaster.

Oh, Cypress Corners, you knew Devon was never gonna stick around for long!

The home of Starlost on the web has long been this site.

1. In the year 2790 A.D., a giant Earthship, Ark, drifts through deep space, out of control, its crew having been killed five hundred years earlier.   When the accident that killed the crew occurred, the airlocks connecting the ship's domes that housed the last survivors of the dead planet, Earth, were sealed.   Cut off from the outside world, many communities simply forgot that they were on a spacecraft.   They accepted that their world was fifty miles in diameter and the sky was metal.   Content with their lot, no one knew that their world was in grave danger.   Without a crew at the helm, the Ark was on a collision course with a sun. [...]
   

2. The Starlost premiered on television loosely based on a concept created by Harlan Ellison.   Meticulously and lovingly devised by the brilliance of Harlan Ellison and thought out to perfection by Scientific Advisor Ben Bova, the series promised to be a monumental step for SF television.   Ellison had contracted great SF writers such as A.E. Van Vogt, Frank Herbert, Joanna Russ, Thomas M. Disch, Alexei Panshin, Phillip K. Dick, and Ursula K. Le Guin to write storylines that would be scripted by the best Canadian writers available.   Douglas Trumbull would be Executive Producer and create the special effects via the Magicam system.
   
   It looked good.   It sounded good.   It fell apart.   The Starlost regressed into a low-budget, syndicated show with all the SFX being accomplished ineffectively through chroma-key, the method used in TV newscasts to put pictures behind the commentators.   Trumbull left before production began as did Ellison, who used his pen name as series creator and writer of episode one.   Only Ursula K. Le Guin's storyline made it into production.   The end product was a dismal reflection of the glories promised.   After only 16 episodes, The Starlost vanished into the void.
   

LeGuin?  Cool.  And just check out the actors who appeared - a fine rota of ‘60s and ‘70s sci-fi actors.  John Colicos, Barry Morse, Lloyd Bochner, Percy Rodrigues, Walter Koenig, and even BSG’s Donnelly Rhodes.

Earthship Ark deserves attention from these excellent sci-fi vessel compendiums here and here.  Ark is one of the biggies - 200 miles long and built to hold 500,000 residents.

I’ve never forgotten the theme music, can’t wait to hear it again.