King Nine Will Not Return

"King Nine Will Not Return"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 1
Directed by Buzz Kulik
Written by Rod Serling
Featured music Original score by Fred Steiner
Production code 173-3639
Original air date September 30, 1960
Guest appearance(s)

"King Nine Will Not Return" is the season two premiere episode, and 37th overall, of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on September 30, 1960 on CBS.

This was the first episode where Rod Serling appeared on camera at the beginning, rather than introducing the episode in a voice-over narration.

Plot

The World War II B-25 Mitchell bomber King Nine has crashed in the desert. Captain James Embry finds himself stranded, alone except for the wreckage and the mystery of what happened to his crew, all of whom have disappeared. The movement of the plane in the wind and his visions of the missing men serve to heighten Embry's disorientation.

Embry finds the grave of one of his crewmen and sees, in the sky, Navy F9F Cougar (Blue Angels) jets, impossible for the time. He collapses in the sand, and we discover that he is apparently suffering hallucinations from a hospital bed, 17 years after the crash.

Confident that Embry will recover, two doctors discuss that Embry's suffering has been triggered by a newspaper headline. The paper has reported the desert discovery of the long-lost King Nine, which had not returned to base from a mission during the war. Having come down with a fever just before he was to board the ill-fated flight, Embry had been replaced on the mission by another captain. Embry's sight of the headline has triggered survivor guilt, in which, we are to understand, he has imagined himself at the crash site.

The doctors assure Embry he has returned to the site only in his mind. However, a nurse, handling Embry's clothes for the doctors, discovers his shoes are mysteriously filled with sand.

Cast

Inspiration and production

The episode was based on the discovery of the B-24 Liberator bomber Lady Be Good and her crew's remains, which had crash-landed at night, deep in the Libyan desert after running out of fuel, while returning from a World War II bombing mission over Naples, Italy. In the episode, the marker of a grave of a member of the crew of King Nine is dated "5 April, 1943," the day on which the Lady Be Good was lost. Lady Be Good had been found in 1958, and the bodies of 8 of the 9-man crew were discovered between February and August 1960 the eight crewman being found just a few weeks before "King Nine Will Not Return" aired.

This was the first episode to feature the familiar Marius Constant Twilight Zone theme.

The score by Fred Steiner was later used in other Twilight Zone episodes.

The bomber aircraft used in this episode was a North American Aviation B-25C-10NA 42-32354, which still exists in storage with Aero Trader, Borrego Springs, California.

See also

Further reading

External links

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