Even as it was beginning to blow up at the box office, science fiction was still relatively rare on TV in the 1970s. That’s due in part to the budgets simply not being adequate enough to make the shows look convincing.

If you were really looking for it, though, there were some great 1970s sci-fi series that laid the groundwork for everything that would come in the decades that followed. These series helped establish a mold for what sci-fi storytelling could be like on TV, and many shows are still indebted to them today.