The Twilight Zone: “The Odyssey of Flight 33”

Anthologized is my semi-regular series looking at episodes of anthology science fiction TV series. Episodes are typically picked randomly from a massive selection of episodes over the years, but I might occasionally pick an episode to talk about.

Anthologized #3: The Twilight Zone (1960), “The Odyssey of Flight 33”

The Twilight Zone (1960), Season 2, Episode 18

The story

The crew of Global Airlines Flight 33 is nearing Idlewild Airport (now JFK International Airport) in New York City, but they suddenly start gaining massive amounts of speed, eventually breaking the sound barrier. They then discover that they’ve travelled back in time — the airport is gone, and they see a brontosaurus (or some other sort of sauropod) grazing on the ground below.

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The captain of the flight pulls them back up into the phenomena that led to their time traveling, launching them forward in time again — but they haven’t made it far enough, finding themselves in the year 1939, with the 1939 New York World’s Fair being visible below. They again pull back up, hoping to somehow make it back to their own time.

The moral?

This is the rare sort of Twilight Zone episode that feels like it could very well be an episode of The Outer Limits. There’s not a major moral perspective to be gleaned here.

The good

I didn’t have any trouble believing the flight crew, and I thought the dialogue was well-written.

There was also one particular shot in the cockpit that was exceptionally framed, which I’ve included above this section. I adore everything about this shot.

Also, there’s a great shot of a brontosaurus. It’s not particularly well lit, but I think it’s very funny, and I love it.

The bad

I do feel a bit like this episode was designed around the set, and I don’t know that it benefits from the restriction. The episode lacks much tension aside from the setting — I think there could have been something interesting to do with the passengers, but all we see are a few pensive shots.

I know this episode is supposed to be a modern retelling of the myth of the Flying Dutchman (thanks, Wikipedia), but by telling the story from an internal perspective and not an external one, I think it falls a little flat.