In one of the simplest and yet most effective twilight zones, a passenger jet full of people unexpectedly accelerates to unheard of speeds and suddenly finds itself transported into the distant past. Time travel is one of the few endlessly entertaining storytelling premises, and although this story is presented almost entirely through dialogue, it is still one of the more vintage twilight episodes that I've seen. The first half of the episode is a little too simplistic, if only because we are trying to believe an airplane is travelling at thousands of knots, and yet there is not the slightest bit of vibration or noise in the cockpit. It looks more like they're sitting on the ground on a movie set, which they are.
But when the time travel takes place, I have to think that it had some inspiration on some later time travel movies, most notably the Back to the Future films, given the acceleration to a certain speed and the rather violent shock that accompanies the, uh, temporal displacement, if you will.
The payoff of the show is nothing more than a primitive go-motion dinosaur and some stock footage of the World's Fair in New York (which gives it the feeling that the entire episode was made to fit around that aerial stock footage of the World's Fair like a raindrop around a bit of dust), but this is an excellent example of how a simple idea and some quality writing and performances can make for a highly entertaining half hour. Excellent!
