The hour-long show adapts the plot of Verne's novel to comment satirically on the Moon race then underway between the United States and the Soviet Union, juxtaposing Victorian ideas and aesthetics with contemporary themes of space travel.

Criticizing the programming he saw as "shuddering fluorescent jelly," and inspired by Newton Minow's famous "Wasteland Speech" in 1961, Miller decided to move from reviewing into television production, hoping to provide innovative and intellectual content for the medium.

Chronicle, broadcast on Wednesday nights from October 1963 through April 1964 and hosted by Charles Collingwood, focused on modern culture and its historical origins, as a counterpoint to the "hard news" slant the CBS Reports emphasized.

[7] The syndicated TV Key column called the show "the kind of frolic you'd expect from one of the authors of Beyond the Fringe … Human beings are alternately lampooned and applauded for the faulty but imaginative creatures they are.

"[1] However, The New York Times panned it, calling it "a weird and stilted mélange" and commenting: "The difficulty for the players … was that Mr. Verne's imagination was infinitely more interesting than their labored attempts to make light of it.