The Arrival

Harold J. Stone portrays FAA investigator Grant Sheckly, who is called in on a most mysterious and perplexing case: a passenger airliner has seemingly landed without incident at an airport, but in reality, all the passengers and crew are missing, making it a ghost plane like the fabled Mary Celeste. Grant(who had one unsolved case on his resume) struggles to come to a logical explanation, along with the other airline personnel, until he hits upon a most fantastic possibility that he will risk all to prove... Uneven episode starts out most promisingly, but final outcome may be a big letdown to some, though this still remains an engrossing outing.

This isn't one of my favorite episodes but it's a good one and I feel one under the radar. The story is interesting as it was inspired obviously by the "Mary Celeste" case and a lot of other cases based on mysterious disappearances. Those cases I always find the most baffling and puzzling because there is not one clue or trace as to what happened to a huge sum of people.

This episode is one of those ones that are simple, but it doesn't seem that way at first. I really like that we're all in the same plane as everyone else whom are all puzzled as their all investigating every inch of that plane. Your guess is about as good as theirs and mine as we have questions constantly buzzing around, like "what the heck happened to everyone, was it aliens that abducted them and were controlling that plane." There is a bit of a creep factor because of how enigmatic the whole thing is, even a little anticipatory dread as your feel like any precoordinated flight path this is all leading to a destination, but you don't know what.

The main protagonist is Sheckly whom isn't really likable but that's the point as you see there is this cocky arrogance about him. He practically bragged in a scene that he's always found the causes and has never been licked on one case. I guess he never known the scientific fact how sooner or later all winning streaks eventually come to an end.

We then see him come to a crazy conclusion about the plane, you can't help but think on one hand he could be on the right track but at the same time due to what he proposes to do to prove he's right we can't help but think he finally flown into some turbulence in the sanity department. You can kind of tell as the episode gets further, we see Sheckly stable demeanor is forming cracks; which in a way tell you a little about his troubled psyche. It really shows how deep down how his extremely stressful position has taken its toll on him but just like his winning streak has maintained an illusion of stability, which is now starting to break.

The final minutes are a real rug puller as it really hits up with a double whammy and though that we get down to what the episode in general is really about. No matter how good we can be at finding the causes there are always many more that will forever elude us.

Rating: 3 stars

This episode is an excellent psychological horror drama and suspenseful exercise in existential story-telling. The improbability of an empty airliner arrival along with various interpretations of the meanings and causes adds to the tension throughout. The ending is completely unexpected but ultimately not surprising based on the unfolding mental state of the main character. "The Arrival" is often negatively reviewed and underrated mostly because it's not formulaic science fiction and not well understood. It's a superb drama revealing the deviations of the mental state of mind told in a well-written and acted horror story.

I think if you went back over the Twilight Zone canon, you would find considerable attention paid to airplanes. They seem to represent a mystery. I suppose the isolation of being off the ground, the passengers at the mercy of the fates. The lack of control from the ground. In this one an FAA representative comes to investigate the landing of a plane where the crew and passengers have totally disappeared. Nothing seems to make any sense until he comes up with a seemingly preposterous theory. Once he tests it out, the fun starts. The problem with this episode is that it's never clear why he is in the position he is and what exactly did happen a long time ago. In this incidence, I don't think the writers played fair with the viewer.

The other reviewers are spot-on when it comes to this flawed episode. Serling's self-admitted writing fatigue was definitely beginning to set in. Act One starts out with a great premise -- a plane lands with nobody on it -- but by Act Three the episode nearly collapses under the weight of its logical fallacies.

And yet...

Ever since I was 12 years old, every time my plane taxis up to the gate -- and the passengers stand up waiting for the jet bridge to connect and the door to open -- I wonder what would happen if they opened the door and found the plane to be completely empty.

Every single time.