The 25 Best Twilight Zone Episodes...#2 - "The Odyssey of Flight 33"

The line is uttered by co-pilot First Officer John Craig midway through the program as he peers through the cockpit window with relentless astonishment at the sight of a brontosaurus patrolling prehistoric Manhattan. It is most probable that the many who love this episode paused to reflect on the first time they watched The Odyssey of Flight 33...because it is the manner in which we all reacted to that scene, along with the crew and passengers on Flight 33, that led to its lofty #2 position on this "best-of" compilation.

Twilight Zone turned 50 this year, and to commemorate Rod Serling's masterpiece, the 25 best episodes are being chronicled here, the result of an unscientific poll of 250 people in the New York metropolitan area who were asked to rank their favorite episodes based on writing, performance, and compelling subject matter.

"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," narrated Mr. Serling, author of The Odyssey of Flight 33. "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 passengers and crew, this aeroplane is heading into an uncharted region well off the beaten track of commercial travelers. It's moving into the Twilight Zone."

Serling refers to the first few minutes of The Odyssey of Flight 33, in which we are witness to the jet's unnatural acceleration, and then the turbulence one might associate with traveling through the sound barrier. This is the second installment in the top five episodes as chronicled here that takes place exclusively on a jet aircraft. In #4's Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, a gremlin famously stars alongside William Shatner as the flight is imperiled by the mysterious traveler's tinkering in the engine. The fear in that episode, however, was restricted to only one passenger...that is, until he opens the emergency window, plays havoc with the cabin pressure, and fires shots at the gremlin on the wing. Flight 33's drama plays out in front of the entire crew and passengers. They are first unsettled by the jet's jolting increase in speed, then by the turbulence, and finally, later on, by the sight of a far different world below them.

As with all Twilight Zone fare, the implausibility of the events that occurred to Flight 33 is appropriately balanced by the urgency characterized by the actors playing the crew. John Anderson, as Captain Farver, is admittedly concerned and scared by the predicament at hand, but as poised as we would all like to be in similar circumstances. He hardly believes what has transpired, but action must be taken regardless of his incredulity

They hatch a plan to find the enormous tailwind again, return to that lightning speed, and slip through whatever portal that provoked this trip back in time. The result of this effort separates Twilight Zone from other dramatic television series through the years, and also distinguishes this episode from others in the brilliant five-year anthology. They pass through, alright, but as Navigator Hatch, played by long-time character actor Sandy Kenyon, intones after Flight 33 drops through the clouds above the 1939 New York World's Fair, "we came back...but dear God not far enough!"

Why the preoccupation with flight on Twilight Zone? The uncertainty of man traveling into unknown territory seems to have always piqued the curiosity of Mr. Serling and his fellow Zone writers. Both space travel and air travel represented quantum leaps for our society at the time...leaps of science and technology, and, of course, faith. Here we were, suddenly bolting through the air at unimaginable speeds, heading to places best described as undiscovered territory. So the question was posed. What would happen if the technology out-paced reality? What would happen if we traveled too fast, or too far? Were we meant to challenge the parameters of the existence we could see and feel, of the world as we knew it? And if the answer was "no," what happens next?

There is no resolution in The Odyssey of Flight 33. No happy ending. No explanation of events. We are left to wonder what happened to this wayward flight as Captain Farver tries again to return home. How many times must they attempt? Running low on fuel as they were, do they run out of attempts? Do they land eventually out of necessity? And if they do, is it 1958, three years short of the current date at the time, 1861 in the middle of the Civil War, during earth's ice age, or in the distant future? Or...are they still up there?

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