Although there is an 11-year difference between when TOS aired and when Star Wars premiered -both are sci-fi/fantasy ...
In 1977, Star ... serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, epic science fiction novels like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars and Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Japanese samurai films.
it was a different sort of drama that initially inspired Star Wars – the Saturday morning sci-fi serials of Lucas’s Modesto, California, childhood, such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.