User Reviews

After a rather hesitant start of the season, "The Twilight Zone" is back to its good-old reliable self again, with this moodily mysterious tale about a ghost-airplane arriving at an airport without a single passenger, crew member or piece of luggage on board. The very experienced Federal Aviation Inspector Grant Sheckly is brought in to investigate, but there just isn't any logical or even remotely plausible explanation. Particularly the first 10-15 minutes of "The Arrival" are dazzlingly brilliant. The disbelief on the airport personnel's faces, the grotesque theories they come up with, the increasing anxiety of having to face the press, etc., is very tense and absorbing. The unraveling of the mystery is slightly less impressive, but still solid "Twilight Zone" material.

There's a scene in which lead actor Harold J. Stone walks straight towards an active airplane propeller. It's too bad that director Boris Segal, during the filming of this, didn't get a vision or forewarning epiphany of his own unfortunate fate...

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.

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.

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.

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.

A passenger plane lands and taxis to the terminal. A routine event. Except when the compartment door is opened, there's no one aboard. Unusual entry in that it plays up mystery angle more than the occult. Despite the promising first half, the solution that turns up is difficult to swallow because of the way the story is filmed. To make it plausible, the FAA inspector Harold J. Stone should have appeared in the set-up shots of the plane landing and parking. But he is not. So if you think about the logic, then this first part becomes implausible and with it the solution as well. Nonetheless, the premise is fascinating, as is the central special effect that punctuates a nail-biting half-minute of anticipation. Fortunately for most viewers, Stone delivers the kind of performance that makes it seem believable. Still and all, I have problems with the logic.

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 had potential and some great moments, but ultimately goes down in flames. Flight 107 arrives at a major aiport (unspecified which) from Buffalo, NY but there's one snag. Flight 107, a DC-3, arrives with no one aboard yet mysteriously lands, taxis, and parks on it's own. Grant Scheckly of the FAA arrives to investigate. It's established that Sheckly has a formidable reputation during his twenty years with the FAA and openly speaks of his stellar track record solving plane crashes. But this one is a stumper. Sheckly confers with aiport PR man Malloy, AP Operations manager Bengston, and a handful of others to try to sort out the mystery of the self landing airliner, meanwhile expressing "something familiar" about the passenger and crew names. After exhausting any logical explanation Sheckly realizes the men have pointed out details about the plane that only they can see (different color seats, different tail numbers). Sheckly deduces this can mean only one thing, the plane is not real and sets off on an experiment to prove his point; theorizing the plane is only an illusion he walks directly into one of the spinning props and the plane vanishes, along with all the other men in the hangar. But this is where the episode loses me.

Sheckly finds his way back to the AP Operations office and confronts Bengston and Malloy about what had just happened to the plane. Neither of the men recognize Sheckly or know he's talking about. However Bengston does recall Scheckly is with the FAA it's soon realized that Scheckly was the investigator of the real flight 107 some 18 years earlier, a plane that vanished without a trace and ostensibly the only airline disaster Scheckly was never able to solve. Given this, we must assume Scheckly has just experienced some sort of alternate reality or grand delusion of which only he has memory of the events.

My problems are logic based. How does Scheckly remember Malloy and Bengston after the illusion vanishes but neither of them know Scheckly? All three met for the first time when Scheckly arrived. This doesn't make sense. Also, what was Sheckly even doing at the airport if all of this was a supernatural hoax? That's never really resolved. And neither is it ever established the timeline for this event, why an 18 year old plane crash matters at this point in time. Except that Sheckly has perhaps been obsessed with the "one crash he could never solve" all these years, still doesn't explain why now.

Rod Serling wrote most of the TZ episodes, some better than others. But he wrote enough that you can see patterns emerge in his plots, particularly airplanes and space travel. One of his favorite themes is time travel which he combined with airplanes in two other episodes (King Nine and The Odyssey of Flight). The Arrival also combines these elements but the purpose for which is unclear. It's part ghost story, part mystery, part cosmic lesson in redemption or maybe forgiveness or maybe torment, I'm not really sure. The ending is long and unsatisfactory and episode doesn't provide the viewer enough information to really understand the point of the tale. Overall The Arrival had some good ideas but I think it's also a sloppily written episode that leaves the viewer confused.

I love the mystery of the movie and his perfection to always solve a case

Hard to believe that Serling wrote this. Surely he must have lifted the premise from somewhere? (As he had, several times. Lawsuits included. It's all on record.) No moralizing, no dull speeches, every line serves the highly original plot which is full of interesting twists.

In any case, plagiarism or not, the best episode attributed to Serling. So the man did have some talent, after all.

Why this episode is so underrated here? I'd venture a guess that most people just didn't get it, despite the fact that the plot isn't difficult to follow. Or they simply couldn't wrap their heads around the bizarre story that explores reality in a very clever and fun way. People general don't like clever, and have fun mostly with nonsense.

When the Flight 107 from Buffalo lands perfectly at the airport, soon the airport responsible staff realizes that the plane has no pilots, crew, passengers or luggage. The experienced FAA inspector Grant Sheckly arrives at the airport to find out what might have happened. He discusses with the vice president Bengston, the public relations Malloy, the mechanic Robbins, and the attendant Cousins, but they do not come to a conclusion. Sheckly observes that each of them is seeing different color of the seats and plane numbers, so he affirms that the plane is an illusion, and is proposed to risk his life defending his theory.

"The Arrival" is an intriguing, but certainly not among the best episodes of "The Twilight Zone". The plot is intriguing most of the time, but when Sheckly proves his theory, the plot becomes a madness case of an experienced man that cannot admit his only failure in his successful career of FAA inspector. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): 'A Chegada" ("The Arrival")

Rod Serling "may" have based this dynamic story, at least in part, on the real life case of the MARIE CELESTE. Back in the 1800s, the ship was found floating in the middle of the ocean, fully intact, but without a single crew member or passengers. Pretty scary stuff.

More over, for all of us kids who grew up on the TWILIGHT ZONE, it's kind of a re-working of the first episode, "Where is Everybody?" That's the major question as FAA investigator Harold J. Stone (as Sheckly) has to figure out what happened when a plane mysteriously lands at the airport --without passengers and crew.

Could it have been a plane that disappeared 18 years earlier?

Fantastic mystery and Stone is the whole show, his character possibly on the brink of cracking up. Stone was popular in both movies and tv shows, usually playing mob bosses and tough guys. He works overtime in this one. Top direction from Boris Sagal, who directed one other TZ episode, and without too much surprise, also directed Alfred Hitchcock's tv show.

Look for Bing Russell as George, Kurt Russell's famous dad, who was a well known character actor for years. If you could figure this one out before the ending, you are a TZ master of masters.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 2 remastered CBS dvd box set.

I can't hardly wait when my schedule of series reach in The Twilight Zone, after all are sixty series properly interspersed with three movies, The Arrival starts auspicious about an old Airplane coming from Buffalo landing routinely, but somehow there no crew and passengers as well, so they calling a veteran agent of FAA Grant Sheckly (Harold J. Stone) to investigate the unusual and bizarre case unheard of in the annals of the business aviation.

After exhaustive eight hours of surveil and countless hypotheses and theories they reaching a dead end, although has many inconsistences on the reporting of each witness, one states the seats are red, another granted as blue, then Grant found a hint, the number of aircraft changes according the eyes of the viewers Grant starts figure out that this plane actually didn't exist indeed, most probably a state of mind or some psychologic matters.

I had to confess that expected something really great, wondering myself how Rod Sterling will get out of this spider net which he proposes, the outcome wasn't satisfactory, nonetheless intriguing tale that fits perfectly on premise of the The Twilight Zone's settings!!

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2021 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.5.

Not a strong episode in my opinion, the twist was interesting but in retrospect didn't explain all of what happened. The storyline was therefore anticlimactic and confusing. Acting was decent.

A Federal Aviation Inspector, Sheckley (Harold J Stone) tries to unravel a very mysterious landing. There are no people on board -so how did the aircraft land? There's a rushed and unsatisfactory ending to this one that will probably make you wish you had not bothered.

'The Arrival' has simply too much in common with the opener from series two, 'King Nine Will Not Return', also written by Rod Serling. The story demands a lot of patience for what is a waste of time whereas at least 'King Nine' seems to have something serious to say if you think about it after.

Fly from this, one of the very dullest of Zones.