Erm, am I the only one to remember Gerry Anderson's UFO? Well, that was the 70s, guys, where the future looked like a future, where alien women had blue hair and tight bodysuits, and where the hero was allowed exactly two types of facial expressions (frown and smirk). Space battles were great too: Wobbling plastic models on a bluescreen background, with hand-drawn ray gun effects. A classic.
Space 1999 comes to mind too, but they didn't have lots of combat in space - but nice flying scenes (of the above FX kind), and some spectacular ground crashes (polystyrene boulders everywhere).
But don't get me started on the original Flash Gordon from the 30s - I'd more like to mention one more thing that I discovered a couple of years ago over here in Germany: The German television networks produced their own Star Trekky kind of series in the 60's , called Raumpatrouille Orion (Orion Space Patrol) with cool props and some nice FX work. Space combat too, but a bit static . Nonetheless, a great show, even if you don't know German.
I wonder if other countries had their own sixties/seventies sci-fi-miniseries - I suspect Italy (they always had something going for surrealism), and certainly Great Britain; and there must be some hidden coolness in the former Soviet states...
