The Arrival (The Twilight Zone)
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| “The Arrival” | |||||||
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| The Twilight Zone episode | |||||||
 Scene from "The Arrival" |
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| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 67 |
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| Written by | Rod Serling | ||||||
| Directed by | Boris Sagal | ||||||
| Guest stars | Harold J. Stone : Grant Sheckly Noah Keen : Bengston Fredd Wayne : Paul Malloy Bing Russell : Ramp attendant |
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| Featured music | Uncredited | ||||||
| Production no. | 4814 | ||||||
| Original airdate | September 22, 1961 | ||||||
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| List of Twilight Zone episodes | |||||||
"The Arrival" is the second episode to the third season of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Contents |
[edit] Opening Narration
| “ | 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 an evening's hobby, a little extracurricular diversion which is really the national pastime in the Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] Synopsis
After a plane arrives without a crew or passengers, Grant Sheckly, an FAA inspector, tries to solve the mystery. It suddenly occurs to him that the plane is just an illusion. After sticking his hand through the propellers, the plane disappears. Later, it appears that Sheckly imagined the entire scenario because of a similar case that had happened approximately seventeen years ago, in which a plane completely disappeared, and Sheckly was never able to determine its whereabouts.
[edit] Closing Narration
| “ | Picture of a man with an Achilles' heel, a mystery that landed in his life and then turned into a heavy weight, dragged across the years to ultimately take the form of an illusion. Now, that's the clinical answer that they put on the tag as they take him away. But if you choose to think that the explanation has to do with an airborne Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship on a fog-enshrouded night on a flight that never ends, then you're doing your business in an old stand in the Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] Critical response
“The show now seems to be feeding off itself. Last Friday’s episode, unless it proves to be an exception in the new skein, doesn’t augur well for the future of the series. Twilight Zone seems to be running dry of inspiration.” —from the Variety review.
[edit] References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
