The Twilight Zone - Starting the Second season

 King Nine Will Not Return

This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead, and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning, she took off from Tunisia to bomb the southern tip of Italy. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in the wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day.

Ahh, yes, now we are really tapping on the familiars that brought me to the dance and got me to get out there on the floor to sample the show's wares. I started with my DVD set for the second season because I wanted to watch the episode without commercial interruptions (on HULU, where I watched many of the first season episodes). This is one of my favorite "marathon episodes". I really love to kick off my New Year's marathons coming into this one first or second. Last year on December 31st, I watched this right after "The Mighty Casey" if my memory serves, the second episode of the 2020/2021 SYFY Twilight Zone marathon. I had finished work for the day and settling in for the marathon, I recall having a drink on hand and my interests ready for the remainder of the day. A lot of folks won't understand that energy and anticipation for some marathon on SYFY, but for those like me who grew up with these in the 90s, that time of the year is sacrosanct. So the right episodes to really get me that buzz of the slate cleared ahead of a big marathon were always important to me. "King Nine Will Not Return" just has that TZ personality that gives off the right vibe I really looked for when I was a teenager. I like to think that is the case for younger TZ fans just really getting into the series.

Robert Cummings in essentially a one-act showcase. So compelling as the pilot, Captain James Embry, Cummings ably convinces as this inquisitive officer trying to locate his missing crew. The reason they appear to him as ghosts is because his mind has a guilt that has been buried in his mind, reawakened by a newspaper article reminding him of his failure to go on a mission out of fear and cowardice, claiming he was ill. Staying behind meant he would live while they eventually died, the "flak" responsible for how they went down in their B-25 WWII bomber, in 1943, seemingly a lost artifact eventually found. In 1960, Embry sees that article, finding himself where the plane was... at home in the African desert seemingly waiting for him. I think what really grips me about the episode is how the Twilight Zone can carry someone away to a place he never would be otherwise. While the doctor believes it was Embry's mind that took him to that final resting place for the King 9, his shoe full of sand might indicate something else entirely...but how? Could Embry have been taken to the desert somehow in 1960? Did Embry's guilt become so strong, so potent, that some way he manifested the teleportation? All that doesn't matter really, as Embry had to address the torment of the past, face it, embrace what he buried, and admit to it. But he also needed to "relocate" if just for a little while to that plane, where his fellow officers died, in order to find some semblance of peace. Peace of mind and soul, courtesy of the Twilight Zone. To be spirited away in order to experience, if just for a little bit, what might have been felt by them. As I probably have written before, you can really feel that hot sun, taste the sand, feel the isolation. And Cummings' acting fills in a lot more.

Enigma buried in the sand, a question mark with broken wings that lies in silent grace as a marker in a desert shrine. Odd how the real consorts with the shadows, how the present fuses with the past. How does it happen? The question is on file in the silent desert, and the answer? The answer is waiting for us - in the Twilight Zone.

It was great to see Serling introduce the episode. And on the DVD, the feature of Serling preparing us for next week's episode is always a fun reminder of what audiences of the time were privy to. There was even a promotion for "The Andy Griffith Show", with Andy and Opie fishing in their boat, father and son.