“Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: the ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours… But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door.”
The eleventh episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone was a great episode. Three military pilots flew an experimental spaceship called the X-20. After disappearing for a 24-hour period, they crashed in the desert.
Major William Gart had a broken leg and had to stay in the hospital. When we ick it up, we see Colonel Clegg Forbes came back to the hospital to see Gart, and he was in a panic. It seemed as if his best friend, Colonel Ed Harrington, the third man of the pilots, was missing and no one remembered him.
Forbes told Gart about the trip to the bar the night before when Harrington disappeared. The people in the bar, who had been interacting with Harrington moments before, were now confused by Forbes’ behavior.
Watching Forbes try to wrap his mind around the fact that his longtime friend had been figuratively erased from existence was fascinating and the mystery of what was going on had me glued to the screen.
As the other two pilots eventually disappeared without a trace as well, I realized that there would not be any answers forthcoming, and it did not bother me at all. I liked how the episode left us uncertain about what was happening. We, the audience, were just like the three pilots. We knew that they were there, but we did not know what happened to them.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 