The Forgotten ‘Logan’s Run’ TV Show That CBS Canceled After Just 11 Episodes

Dave Sundstrom October 2, 2025

LOGAN'S RUN, Heather Menzies, Gregory Harrison, 1977-78 — Everett Collection

1977 was a pretty darn good year. If you’re a fan of science fiction, you’ll remember that a little indie film called Star Wars hit movie theaters hard in May of that year. Because of that movie’s success, TV networks were eager to entice viewers with a slice of their own sci-fi pie when that year’s fall season debuted.

One of the shows that I instantly fell in love with was Logan’s Run, starring Gregory Harrison, Heather Menzies, and Donald Moffitt. The series was based on the movie starring Michael York, which debuted a year earlier that had modest box office success.

The first episode of the TV series was kind of like a mini version of the film, although there were some major differences in the plot. In the movie, Logan’s friend and fellow Sandman, Francis, pursues Logan and Jessica because of a sense of duty, as well as a feeling of being betrayed by Logan. In the TV show, however, Francis becomes corrupt with the idea that he might be able to live beyond the age of 30 if he’s able to capture Logan and Jessica so that they can be reprogrammed.

For a 13-year-old kid, it seemed like Logan’s Run was going to be a bigger hit on TV than it had been on the silver screen. Everywhere I turned, it seemed like I was running across a magazine with the show on its cover. Even Dynamite Magazine had Logan’s Run on its cover—a sure sign of a show’s popularity. And it absolutely did not hurt that the show had a true beauty in it: Heather Menzies, who years earlier had played one of the Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music.

Anyway, Heather was amazing on this show. More specifically, regardless of what sort of peril that she and Logan might be facing, her hair was amazing. It never seemed to even get messed up in the slightest. Not a single strand out of place. And there were plenty of amazing adventures during the show’s one and only season. Actually, saying that the show had a full season is incorrect. Although 14 episodes were produced, only 11 were ever broadcast by CBS before they made the decision to pull the plug.

I completely agree with Shawn Watson over at Medium, who, in his review of the show, points out that it had some pretty great guest stars including Angela Cartwright, Dick Tufeld, Mariette Hartley, Kim Cattrall, William Smith, Nicholas Hammond and Mary Woronov.

While Ryan Britt at Inverse has called it “the most promising sci-fi show of all time”, I won’t go that far. However, it was solid…and it did have some pretty talented people involved. It featured stories by David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, and Harlan Ellison, who had all written scripts for the original version of Star Trek. As you might expect with these kinds of folks involved, there were some pretty darn interesting ideas that were conveyed over the relatively short lifespan of this show. It’s just too darn bad that, just like networks today, CBS didn’t have enough faith in this show to give it the time necessary to hit its stride.