The show at hand is "Masters of Science Fiction," a limited series of adaptations of short stories, offered in August by ABC. In some ways, this is pretty amazing stuff: material from top-flight authors like Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, directed by well-known directors like Mark Rydell ("On Golden Pond") and Michael Tolkin ("The Player"), with actors like Sam Waterston, Judy Davis, Brian Dennehy, Anne Heche and Malcolm McDowell. On the other hand, the series will be broadcast in the dead of summer on Saturday nights, suggesting that the network sees its likely audience as pudgy misfits in "Star Trek" costumes, their vintage plastic phasars set for "stun."

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"Masters of Science Fiction" doesn't have Serling. Instead, it has renowned brainiac Stephen Hawking, whose machine-generated voice introduces and summarizes each episode with Delphic pronouncements and questions like "If necessity is the mother of invention, what will drive our ingenuity when our needs have been fulfilled?" This is just the kind of thing that charges the imaginations of 14-year-old boys, or of older boys who sit at home on Saturday nights, phasars at the ready.