The Odyssey of Flight 33

Although there was a flaw that a geologist would have easily recognized in this Twilight Zone story, it still ranks for me as one of the scariest episodes ever done.

John Anderson is just about to head into American air space after captaining a transatlantic flight on a jet. Suddenly the crew is caught in some kind of maelstrom and they are over New York City but in prehistoric times. That brontosaurus on the ground was a convincer.

Back Anderson takes his plane into the maelstrom and at this point I say no more. But given the limiting fuel factor among others the passengers and crew on this airline face a most uncertain future in time and space.

Don't miss this one if broadcast.

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!

Great episode.

My dad was a flight engineer on 707's from Idlewild. He survived the Tenerife crash.

By the way, 3000 knots is 3450 statute miles per hour, not 2800 as someone wrote.

Interesting to note that La Guardia airport does have a runway 22 and I've landed on it (as the pilot). And thanks to the person who cleared up what the name of this airport would have been in 1939.

I really like the dialogue in the cockpit (rod's brother, robert serling wrote it...he wrote some excellent aviation books). Especially well done is the use of the "HORN" which stops the landing gear warning horn from sounding when pulling the throttles (thrust levers) back. nice to are nicknames like "magellan" for the navigator and "sparks" for the radio guy.

One of my favorite TZ eps. The other two are: I shot an arrow into the air. and , "Over the Rim".

And for anyone who cares, while JET FUEL would not have been available in 1939 to refuel the plane, a jet engine can actually use gasoline in a pinch with some restrictions like adding some oil to the gasoline to provide lubrication to fuel pumps.

"The Twilight Zone" is at its best when a whole bunch of respectable and professional actors/actresses, with straight faces and stern voices, talk dead-serious about the unbelievable supernatural phenomena that overcome them and remain unexplained! Prime example: five men in a cockpit who must acknowledge that their airplane is uncontrollably picking up immense speed while the rest of the flight data readings remain normal. I have very little knowledge about aerial terminology, but apparently Flight 33 goes so fast that it breaks through time barriers and bounces back and forth in history. Although high-rated, this isn't a personal favorite episode of mine, but it's most admirable to see how airline crew members remain calm and professional even during moments when all hope seems vanished and sheer disaster is upon them. I like to believe that this is a realist portrayal of what goes on during REAL crisis and emergency situations up there in the air. Quite recently, in 2014, there was the still unsolved disappearance of Flight MH370, and I imagine that the crew of that airplane was just as heroic and comforting to the passengers as the pilots and cabin crew of this fictional Sci-Fi tale.