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The Starlost was a short-lived television series (only 16 episodes) that aired in 1973 on NBC in the United States, and CTV in Canada, where it was produced. The series was based on a story idea by Harlan Ellison (later fashioned into the novel Phoenix without Ashes by Ellison and Edward Bryant). As production of the series went on, Ellison became dissatisfied with the series and eventually removed his name from the credits. Ellison used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird on The Starlost credits.

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The Starlost was set aboard a gigantic multigenerational starship called the Ark. The Ark was to be humanity's escape from the destruction of Earth by some unspecified catastrophe centuries ago. The ship itself suffered a disaster of its own some years after launch. With the crew dead, the ship drifted uncontrolled for hundreds of years while its passengers eventually forgot the original purpose of the Ark or even that they lived on a starship at all. Whole populations of people were born, lived, and died aboard the Ark in separate biosphere domes all around the central mass of the ship. When a resident (played by Keir Dullea of 2001: A Space Odyssey) of one of these domes discovers the "world" he has been living in is in fact a part of a giant starship, he tries to tell his village elders. No one will listen, so he sets out on a quest with two friends, Rachael (played by Gay Rowan) and Garth (played by Robin Ward), to find a way to put the wayward Ark back on course.

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