This one is a lot like the second season opener of The Twilight Zone - 'King Nine Will Not Return'. The deeper I get into the episodes in series order, the more it becomes apparent that Rod Serling repeatedly used the same basic plot ideas and reworked them from a different perspective. Harold J. Stone's character in 'The Arrival' is a Federal Aviation Agency inspector caught up in the intrigue of a passenger plane that lands with no one on board, including the pilots! Airport officials on the ground all appear to have a different perception of the aircraft, from the color of the seating to the call numbers on the tail fin. The viewer's sensibilities are jarred when Sheckly (Stone) insists on testing a theory he has by virtually walking into it's spinning propellers. I was curious why he wouldn't have used a long stick or pole instead, that way if he were wrong, he wouldn't have been turned into hamburger.
But not to worry. The success of Sheckly's experiment forces him to face his own past which includes the failure to uncover the disappearance of a similarly numbered Flight #107 from almost twenty years earlier. By that time though, it looks like he's ready for the loony bin. There's a disconnect near the end of the story when Sheckly makes his way back to Bengston's (Noah Keen) office, calling out for both Bengston and Molloy (Fredd Wayne). Curiously, Molloy didn't know him, why would that be? It seems to suggest that if Molloy hadn't yet met Sheckly, that Sheckley made him up in his imagination. What would be the odds of Sheckly conjuring up a Molloy to such an extent that he would turn out to be a real person?
I give Rod Serling a lot of credit for his creativity and imagination in punching out these stories, but continuity lapses like that appeared quite often. Twenty five minutes per episode wasn't enough time to cover all of those kinds of pitfalls I imagine. The easy answer I suppose is that this was The Twilight Zone, and anything was possible.
But not to worry. The success of Sheckly's experiment forces him to face his own past which includes the failure to uncover the disappearance of a similarly numbered Flight #107 from almost twenty years earlier. By that time though, it looks like he's ready for the loony bin. There's a disconnect near the end of the story when Sheckly makes his way back to Bengston's (Noah Keen) office, calling out for both Bengston and Molloy (Fredd Wayne). Curiously, Molloy didn't know him, why would that be? It seems to suggest that if Molloy hadn't yet met Sheckly, that Sheckley made him up in his imagination. What would be the odds of Sheckly conjuring up a Molloy to such an extent that he would turn out to be a real person?
I give Rod Serling a lot of credit for his creativity and imagination in punching out these stories, but continuity lapses like that appeared quite often. Twenty five minutes per episode wasn't enough time to cover all of those kinds of pitfalls I imagine. The easy answer I suppose is that this was The Twilight Zone, and anything was possible.