Above: William Windom as Commodore Matt Decker in ‘The Doomsday Machine’ episode (1967) ofStar Trek
“I’m baffled by your continuing interest in ephemerality,” Hollywood writer Stephen Kandel told me in 1992. He couldn’t understand my queries about his work for such short-lived series as Man from Atlantis, The Immortal and The New People. “What other failed, faded snail tracks of television history are you going to drudge up next?