"''King Nine'' Will Not Return" is the season two premiere episode, and 37th overall, of the

American television Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. , household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, with approximately 114,200,000 American households owning at least one television set as of August 2013. ...

anthology series ''

The Twilight Zone ''The Twilight Zone'' is an American media franchise based on the anthology television series created by Rod Serling. The episodes are in various genres, including fantasy, science fiction, absurdism, dystopian fiction, suspense, horror, sup ...

''. It originally aired on September 30, 1960 on

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

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

Opening narration

Plot

It's World War II, and the ''King Nine'', a B-25 Mitchell bomber, 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. While searching for his crew, Embry finds the grave of one of his men, and recognizes in the sky Navy

F9F Cougar The Grumman F9F/F-9 Cougar is a carrier-based fighter aircraft for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. Based on Grumman's earlier F9F Panther, the Cougar replaced the Panther's straight wing with a more modern swept wing. Thr ...

jets, which are impossible for 1943. He is bewildered as to how he knows about jet aircraft and becomes increasingly distressed. Embry collapses in the sand, and it is revealed that he is apparently hospitalized and suffering hallucinations, 17 years after the crash. Confident that Embry will recover, two doctors discuss their speculation that his 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 wartime mission in 1943. 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. Seeing the headline has triggered

survivor guilt Survivor guilt (or survivor's guilt; also called survivor syndrome or survivor's syndrome and survivor disorder or survivor's disorder) is a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumati ...

, the intensity of which has caused him to imagine himself at the crash site. The doctors assure Embry he has returned to the site only in his mind. However, when a nurse handling his clothes accidentally turns one of his shoes on its side, sand spills out.

Closing narration

Cast

Bob Cummings Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings (June 9, 1910 – December 2, 1990) was an American film and television actor who appeared in roles in comedy films such as ''The Devil and Miss Jones'' (1941) and ''Princess O'Rourke'' (1943), and in d ...

as Captain James Embry * Gene Lyons as Psychiatrist *

Paul Lambert Paul Lambert (born 7 August 1969) is a Scottish professional football manager and former player, who was most recently the manager of Ipswich Town. Lambert played as a midfielder and won the Scottish Cup in 1987 with St Mirren as a 17-year-ol ...

as Doctor *

Jenna McMahon Mary Virginia Skinner (May 24, 1925 – March 2, 2015), known professionally as Jenna McMahon, was an American writer, producer, actress and comedian. She was best known for her Emmy Award-winning work as a writer on the variety/sketch comedy p ...

as Nurse

Production notes

This was the first episode to feature the familiar

Marius Constant Marius Constant (7 February 192515 May 2004) was a Romanian-born French composer and conductor. Although known in the classical world primarily for his ballet scores, his most widely known music was the iconic guitar theme for ''The Twilight Zon ...

''Twilight Zone'' theme. The score by Fred Steiner was later used in other ''Twilight Zone'' episodes. 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 Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. In the episode, the marker of a

grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grav ...

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 eighth crewman being found just a few weeks before "''King Nine'' Will Not Return" aired. 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.

Short story adaptation

"King Nine Will Not Return" was adapted into short story form by Walter B. Gibson in the 1963 collection ''Rod Serling's Twilight Zone'' as "Return From Oblivion". Despite the different title, it follows the plot of the television version precisely, with no significant changes.

References

External links

* {{The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series season 2) episodes Television episodes about World War II 1960 American television episodes Television episodes written by Rod Serling Fiction set in 1943 Television episodes set in Africa