I’d go with Stranded in Space myself.
(And I’m still so surprised that Master Ninja (aka The Master) wouldn’t qualify since somehow it got 13 episodes. How that got beyond a pilot I’ll never understand.)
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It’s Time of the Apes without the apes. And without Godo. But basically the same show.
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Except in 'Stranded in Space’s case, they are only in space for two minutes. The rest is him running around on ‘Not Earth’ which looks exactly like Earth. Also the lead is a charisma void, and they killed Lew Ayers.
Have to go with Code Name: Diamondhead. Not because it’s good, just because it sounds neater.
I’ll add in, ‘Series Pilot That Sold When the Pilot Should Have Sunk It’, with the others. San Francisco International? I mean it did die super quick, but still, who thought hanging out in an airport (in a series that is not a comedy) would be a good thing.
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I was reading your comment and having this cognitive dissonance about Thinnes which, once I sorted it out, kind of blew my mind.
Roy Thinnes was in Code Name: Diamondhead in 1977, right? But in 1969, he was in a little movie penned by Gerry & Sylvia called Journey to the Far Side of the Sun…where he plays an astronaut who ends up on a doppelgänger of Earth—The movie that became the (uncredited?) inspiration for The Stranger, aka “Stranded In Space”!
In fairness, I don’t think it was ever known by “Stranded In Space” prior to MST3K. Terrible title because I always think it’s “Marooned” a.k.a. “Space Travelers”.
“Stranded in Space” was my first MST3K episode and it provided some dearly needed laughs, so I am not unbiased toward it. And I always remember to pack more lifesaving liquid.
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Yup. I, in fact, have Journey to the Far Side of the Sun on blu-ray. It was a fond memory of childhood.
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Well if there’s no Godo I’m out.
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Stranded in Space: Let’s not forget the Chrysler vehicles that also exist on “other Earth”.
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“No Godo?
No go!”
All this makes me want to see the whole series Saru no Gundan (Army of the Apes) / Time of the Apes (which I kind of felt when I saw the MST3K version of the chopped up movie.
Cause I want to know what happens - dang it!
I did find the episode summary at the link and I found raws of the series but alas no complete sub of the series. Such a loss. 
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I’m perfectly ok with Diamond Head. I have to admit, to my shame… I have never seen Stranded in Space.
This may be related to why I never saw it. I need to add it to my “coming soon” list.
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I am so there with you. The more stills I see from this, the more I have to think it’s far cooler than the movie.
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I just hope there’s a twist where Godo and Johnny change places. I really, really, really hate Johnny.
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I don’t care!
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Whatever. Just please put on some long pants.
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Code Name: Diamondhead. Stranded from Space is one of the few episodes I cannot stand to sit through.
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Keep in mind the very similar Airport came out the same year. Apparently that sort of thing was popular in the early 1970s.
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Throughout the '70s, even, given that Airport had…three?..sequels, with the last one being in '79 (The Concorde!) and numerous, numerous ripoffs. And it was probably the genesis of the disaster genre.
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In their excitement, they forgot they only had a TV-scale budget to work with. So they’d never get to do the kind of stuff which made the disaster movies so exciting in the first place. 
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Ultimately I prefer sci-fi to spy-fi, so even though Stranded in Space barely qualifies I have to give it the edge. My main caveat is that the Sci-Fi Channel produced any number of those “dark future/sci-fi conspiracy” shows in the late '90s/early '00s (after the success of The X-Files) and most of them were terrible, and it feels like Stranded in Space: The Series would have been cut from the same cloth.
But on the other side of the coin, Magnum P.I. is probably already the best Hawaii-set action/crime TV show there ever was or will be, so Code Name: Diamond Head :: The Series doesn’t really have a reason to exist from where I sit. So I return to “a bad TV show is better than an unnecessary TV show” and that’s where I land.
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Stranded in Space by a wide margin. Once I realized Ian McShane wasn’t the hero in Diamondhead, I completely lost interest. Meanwhile Stranded feels like it could have been watchable enough and while very heavy handed, far less insufferable.
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I first saw ‘Marooned’ at a drive-in when I was a kid.
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