King Nine Will Not Return

Dear All,

"King Nine Will Not Return" is one of the very best episodes of "The Twilight Zone." The lead is "Captain James Embry," played by Bob Cummings. Captain Embry is a U.S.A.A.F. aircraft commander who wakes up in his B-25, "King Nine," which has crashed somewhere in a desert. He cannot remember how he came to be there; neither, despite searching for them frantically, can he find his crew.

When this episode was filmed, one of the best flight academies in the country was the "Embry-Riddle School of Aviation."

For its commander, King Nine's post-crash status is certainly an "Embry riddle"!

Sincerely,

Gordon F. Corbett

The opener for the second season of The Twilight Zone features Robert Cummings usually in light comedy in a most serious role. Cummings a World War II flyer finds himself on the African desert in 1943 with the remains of his crashed B-25 and no one else. Briefly he spots one of the other crew, but that's only part of what is looking like a hallucination or one very vivid dream.

You be the judge of whether in 1960 Cummings who is alone on screen for most of the episode actually did return to World War II or not. I guarantee you will be scratching your head.

As for Cummings he does a fine job to carry this episode.

Kind Nine Will Not Return is one of the Twilight episodes of the genuinely paranormal variety, where something happens which seems that it can't possibly have a rational explanation. Bob Cummings plays Cpt. James Embry, a World War II pilot who awakens in the desert next to the crashed remains of his plane, and his entire crew mysteriously disappeared into the vast desert. Sadly, the show commits that distinctly "twilight-zone" sin of having the lone character constantly calling into emptiness, looking for his lost crew members, in this case.

You may remember this from the show's pilot episode, "Where is Everybody?" where a Mike Ferris walked around a town basically having a conversation at the top of his voice with no one. In this episode, Embry is also calling repeatedly into the emptiness of the desert for his lost crew, at one point even squeezed into the back of the plane, still calling their names as though they had somehow managed to squeeze themselves into the cracks in the instrument panels. Isn't the back compartment of an airplane small enough so that you can pretty much see right away whether or not anyone else is in there with you? I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and those planes are bigger than I think.

At any rate, this episode actually deals with much heavier material than many other twilight episodes, as it ultimately turns out to be a very real depiction of some of the effects that many soldiers and military personnel suffer after being involved in conflicts.

As it turns out, Embry (played by Cummings, who has very real military experience himself, as does Serling) has a very real reasons for experiencing what he experiences in the show, and a very real and very revealing reason is given for what happens to him in the show. Much more moving than your typical twilight episode...

In 1943, the B-25 bomber King Nine is crashed in the African desert. The pilot Captain James Embry awakes with amnesia on the desert and seeks out his crew that has disappeared. Now and then, Embry has visions of his men. When he sees jets in the sky, he questions how it could be possible in 1943. What happened to Captain James Embry?

"King Nine Will Not Return" is an intriguing episode of "The Twilight Zone". The storyline is based on a WWII bomber found in the desert entwined with the mystery of Captain James Embry. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Rei Nove Não Irá Voltar" ("King Nine Will Not Return")

In more ways than just one, the first episode of the second season of "The Twilight Zone" is very similar to the pilot episode of the first season entitled "Where is Everybody?" Both tales are centered on men that find themselves isolated from the rest of the world. In the middle of World War II, James Embry, the captain of the military aircraft King Nine, crash-lands on the Northern African coast, yet when he regains consciousness he finds his entire crew missing from the nearly intact aircraft. Embry is responsible for his people and desperately keeps waiting and searching in and around the plane. Director Buzz Kulik, a master professional ("Warning Shot", "Villa Rides") marvelously generates an atmosphere of mystery around the situation and the main character Embry. The plot, ambiance and build-up feel somewhat derivative and familiar, but eventually the denouement is fairly unique. And, moreover, the episode is ideally paranormal and clever to kick off the second season of "The Twilight zone". In the first episode of season two, writer/creator Rod Serling physically appears on- screen to narrate the intro to the story. This was never the case in the first season and I wonder if this will become a running trademark from now on.