The Odyssey of Flight 33

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“The Odyssey of Flight 33”
The Twilight Zone episode

Scene from "The Odyssey of Flight 33"
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 54
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Justus Addiss
Guest stars John Anderson: Captain Farver
Paul Comi: First Officer Craig
Sandy Kenyon: Navigator Hatch
Harp McGuire: Flight Engineer Purcell
Beverly Brown: Janie
Wayne Heffley: 2nd Officer Wyatt
Betty Garde: Passenger
Production no. 173-3651
Original airdate February 24, 1961
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List of Twilight Zone episodes

"The Odyssey of Flight 33" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Contents

[edit] Opening narration

“ You're riding on a jet airliner en route from London to New York. You're at 35,000 feet atop an overcast and roughly fifty-five minutes from Idlewild Airport. But what you've seen occur inside the cockpit of this plane is no reflection on the aircraft or the crew. It's a safe, well-engineered, perfectly designed machine, and the men you've just met are a trained, cool, highly efficient team. The problem is simply that the plane is going too fast and there is nothing within the realm of knowledge or at least logic to explain it. Unbeknownst to passenger and crew, this airplane is heading into an unchartered region well off the beaten track of commercial travelers. It's moving into the Twilight Zone. What you're about to see we call The Odyssey of Flight 33. ”

[edit] Synopsis

This episode takes place on Global Airlines Flight 33, en route from London to New York City. About fifty minutes from Idlewild Airport, Captain Farver and his crew notice that their Boeing 707 has crossed some kind of barrier. They soon realize they have been thrown back in time when they spot a plodding creature resembling a classic Brontosaurus. They try to get back to 1961, but arrive above the 1939 New York World's Fair instead. Low on fuel, the captain realizes that they have to keep trying to return home.

[edit] Closing narration

“ A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings fearful of what they'll find. But you and I know where she is, you and I know what's happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast, engines that sound searching and lost, engines that sound desperate, shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home from the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The dinosaur footage was created for this episode at a cost of $2,500. The work was done in the stop motion animation process by the effects crew of the 1960 film Dinosaurus!, using the brontosaurus model and miniature jungle set constructed for that production.
  • The plot of The Langoliers, a novella by Stephen King, bears a striking resemblance to that of "The Odyssey of Flight 33". In this novella, while the plane is in flight, many of the passengers and the entire air crew vanish (fortunately, one of the remaining passengers is actually a pilot,) and they can't reach anyone by radio, tipping them off before they land that something is wrong, and several of the passengers and the new pilot think about, and start talking with each other about, science fiction. When the new pilot wonders aloud what they might see if they take the plane below the cloud cover underneath them, perhaps even dinosaurs, the text mentions him thinking about "an old episode of The Twilight Zone" where something very similar happened (obviously this episode,) but he decides not to mention it aloud, as bringing up old science fiction television episodes probably wouldn't help his credibility under the circumstances.
  • Idlewild Airport, which opened in 1948, is the original name for what is now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was changed a month after President Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963.
  • LaGuardia Airport opened in October 1939, and at that time it was called New York Municipal Airport until 1947, unlike in the episode.
  • There is a major scientific inaccuracy in this episode. Shortly before they spot the brontosaurus, Flight 33's crew identify the contours of Manhattan island. But hundreds of millions of years ago, the world's geological landscape was vastly different than today because of continental drift and the action of plate tectonics (this episode was made before continental drift and plate tectonics became widely accepted).

[edit] References

At the end of the episode there is an error in referencing where the 1939 World's fair is, they are calling what's now called Flushing Meadows - Corona Park, Lake Success. Lake Success is actually miles away at the border of Queens and Nassau Counties, Lakeville Road. (HdPJr)

[edit] External links

[edit] Twilight Zone links

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