The Arrival
- Episode aired Sep 22, 1961
- TV-PG
- 25m
Federal aviation investigator Grant Sheckly must deal with a mystery when a plane lands at an airport without pilots, passengers or luggage.Federal aviation investigator Grant Sheckly must deal with a mystery when a plane lands at an airport without pilots, passengers or luggage.Federal aviation investigator Grant Sheckly must deal with a mystery when a plane lands at an airport without pilots, passengers or luggage.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaA tragic coincidence connected with this episode: at one point Sheckly deliberately walks toward a moving propeller blade. The episode's director, Boris Sagal, would be killed in 1981 when he accidentally walked into a helicopter's moving blades.
- GoofsAfter Sheckly meets with the airline personnel in Bengston's office, he dismisses them saying "stay around where you can be reached". As the personnel file out the door, the studio lights cast their shadows on the backdrop outside the door of what is supposed to be the airport grounds.
- Quotes
[opening narration]
Narrator: This object, should any of you have lived underground for the better parts of your lives and never had occasion to look toward the sky, is an airplane. Its official designation: a DC-3. We offer this rather obvious comment because this particular airplane, the one you're looking at, is a freak. Now, most airplanes take off and land as per scheduled. On rare occasions, they crash. But all airplanes can be counted on doing one or the other. Now, yesterday morning this particular airplane ceased to be just a commercial carrier. As of its arrival, it became an enigma, a seven-ton puzzle made out of aluminum, steel, wire, and a few thousand other component parts, none of which add up to the right thing. In just a moment, we're going to show you the tail end of its history. We're going to give you ninety percent of the jigsaw pieces, and you and Mr. Sheckly, here of the Federal Aviation Agency, will assume the problem of putting them together, along with finding the missing pieces. This we offer as the evening's hobby, a little extracurricular diversion which is really the national pastime - in The Twilight Zone.
- ConnectionsEdited into Twilight-Tober-Zone: The Arrival (2022)
This episode is one of those ones that are simple, but it doesn't seem that way at first. I really like that we're all in the same plane as everyone else whom are all puzzled as their all investigating every inch of that plane. Your guess is about as good as theirs and mine as we have questions constantly buzzing around, like "what the heck happened to everyone, was it aliens that abducted them and were controlling that plane." There is a bit of a creep factor because of how enigmatic the whole thing is, even a little anticipatory dread as your feel like any precoordinated flight path this is all leading to a destination, but you don't know what.
The main protagonist is Sheckly whom isn't really likable but that's the point as you see there is this cocky arrogance about him. He practically bragged in a scene that he's always found the causes and has never been licked on one case. I guess he never known the scientific fact how sooner or later all winning streaks eventually come to an end.
We then see him come to a crazy conclusion about the plane, you can't help but think on one hand he could be on the right track but at the same time due to what he proposes to do to prove he's right we can't help but think he finally flown into some turbulence in the sanity department. You can kind of tell as the episode gets further, we see Sheckly stable demeanor is forming cracks; which in a way tell you a little about his troubled psyche. It really shows how deep down how his extremely stressful position has taken its toll on him but just like his winning streak has maintained an illusion of stability, which is now starting to break.
The final minutes are a real rug puller as it really hits up with a double whammy and though that we get down to what the episode in general is really about. No matter how good we can be at finding the causes there are always many more that will forever elude us.
Rating: 3 stars
- hellraiser7
- Jan 21, 2020
Details
- Runtime25 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1