Enjoy two sci-fi episodes of X Minus One w/ Wendel Holmes

A) 5/8/55 Mars is Heaven

B) 3/28/56 A Pail of Air

By 1955, television had become the dominant home-entertainment medium and no one at the NBC network, nor the country’s leading writers of science-fiction, cared much about X Minus One because it was a radio series. But the producers, directors, writers, and cast felt differently and against all the odds, their skill and commitment resulted in critical acclaim for the series. It was the longest-running adult science-fiction program on network radio. Space travel and alien life were hot topics through the 1950s and intelligent science-fiction writing was full of predictions about the future of the human race. If any network could broadcast good quality dramatizations of such thought-provoking stories on radio, it would be NBC. Van Woodward, producer of Dimension X was brought on board to repurpose the program, which would go out under a different name. By the time X Minus One came along in 1955, “television was knocking radio out of the box, particularly where advertising revenues were concerned,” Woodward recalled. The network agreed to produce the show on condition the budget remained below costs. Radio actors were paid minimum scale; scriptwriters Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts devoted long hours to re-write without additional pay, and canned music was used instead of a live orchestra. Recycling and adapting 34 of the first 35 radio scripts from Dimension X helped to keep the budget down. After that, new stories from Galaxy Science-Fiction magazine were dramatized, under a special arrangement of $50 per story for the broadcast rights: one-fifth of the usual price. Executives at NBC never understood the popular fascination for science-fiction, believing that only juvenile listeners tuned in to hear the broadcasts -- but they were wrong. Sci-Fi fans of all ages were listening and the series enjoyed a successful radio run from 1955 until 1958.