A DC-3 lands and taxis to a halt but the ground crew find that no one is aboard, not even the pilots. Harold J. Stone is called in to investigate. He hypothesizes that the airplane is only a mass illusion and, to prove it, he sticks his hand into the spinning propellers. At that point, the airplane and the three witnesses disappear. Rushing back to the office, Stone finds that the flight arrived on time, as scheduled. The problem is that the flight had the same number as another flight, seventeen years earlier, that disappeared without a trace. Stone, who prides himself on finding what happens in any accident and has been doing it for more than twenty years, becomes hysterical. The earlier flight was the only puzzle he was never able to solve.
It's an enjoyable episode, full of mystery, suspense, and airplanes, which I dearly love. But, if you're going to watch it, you must do more than merely suspend your disbelief. You have to wrench its head off.
There were several other episodes in which some sort of hallucination reflecting the past comes to haunt the hero -- "King Nine" is an example -- but the spook is prompted by a severe case of guilt every time, not by simple pride in one's skill.
It's a weakness in the script, and not the only one. Dozens of men and women on the ground saw the empty passenger airplane land and come to a halt. They all crawled in and out of it and examined it. But except for the three men who manage the airline, we see none of them again. And, when Stone proves the airplane is an illusion, the men, too, disappear, but why? Did they disappear seventeen years ago too? No, they didn't. They're still in their office, only now they don't know who Stone is.
The holes in the logic don't ruin the story. In an eerie scene, Stone has two or three other men read the number on the airplane's tail. They all read out loud different numbers.
The DC-3 was a great airplane, very "forgiving", as pilots say. Two careless pilots were flying one across Greenland when a terrible racket broke out and the airplane came to a complete halt. They had accidentally made a wheels-up landing on a glacier. "Forgiving," "reliable," "sturdy" -- my kind of airplane.
It's an enjoyable episode, full of mystery, suspense, and airplanes, which I dearly love. But, if you're going to watch it, you must do more than merely suspend your disbelief. You have to wrench its head off.
There were several other episodes in which some sort of hallucination reflecting the past comes to haunt the hero -- "King Nine" is an example -- but the spook is prompted by a severe case of guilt every time, not by simple pride in one's skill.
It's a weakness in the script, and not the only one. Dozens of men and women on the ground saw the empty passenger airplane land and come to a halt. They all crawled in and out of it and examined it. But except for the three men who manage the airline, we see none of them again. And, when Stone proves the airplane is an illusion, the men, too, disappear, but why? Did they disappear seventeen years ago too? No, they didn't. They're still in their office, only now they don't know who Stone is.
The holes in the logic don't ruin the story. In an eerie scene, Stone has two or three other men read the number on the airplane's tail. They all read out loud different numbers.
The DC-3 was a great airplane, very "forgiving", as pilots say. Two careless pilots were flying one across Greenland when a terrible racket broke out and the airplane came to a complete halt. They had accidentally made a wheels-up landing on a glacier. "Forgiving," "reliable," "sturdy" -- my kind of airplane.