However, the production that acted as a template for what would become Out of This World was "Murder Club", an adaptation of Robert Sheckley’s short story The Seventh Victim, starring Richard Briers, that aired under the Armchair Theatre banner on 3 December 1961.

Leonard found Out of This World a welcome antidote to The Avengers, which had proved a difficult production; he recalled, "It was a great pleasure to make, getting away from today and exploring the unrealities (or so we thought) of tomorrow.

Shubik soon ran into difficulties finding material suitable for adaptation, a problem that had plagued earlier aborted attempts to get a similar series off the ground.

When a strike by actor's union Equity hit production of Armchair Theatre, it bought Shubik the extra time she needed to find sufficient scripts.

This was an idea taken from such U.S. anthology series as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Thriller (which Karloff himself had hosted) and was in line with what had been done for Armchair Mystery Theatre, which was introduced by Donald Pleasence.

Three scripts for Out of This World, adaptations of Philip K. Dick's "Impostor" and Clifford D. Simak's "Immigrant" as well as an original story called "Botany Bay", were supplied by Terry Nation, who would, a short time after, create the Daleks for Doctor Who.

The first episode, "The Yellow Pill", attracted 11 million viewers, placing Out of This World eleventh in the television ratings for that week and beating the popular police drama series Z-Cars.

However, while at the BBC Shubik devised and initially produced Out of the Unknown, another science fiction anthology series that, like Out of This World, concentrated mainly on adaptations of short stories and novels and ran for four seasons between 1965 and 1971.

The Armchair Theatre presentation of "Dumb Martian" is also included in this list for completeness as it was originally intended to be part of Out of This World, in line with most episode guides published for this series.