Department S Reviews: 05: 'One Of Our Aircraft Is Empty'

Production order: 07 | ITC code: 5102 | Airdate order: 05 | DVD order: 05

Those Responsible

Writer: Tony Williamson

Director: Paul Dickson

Where & When

London Airport, England: April 30th

The Inexplicable Mystery

Flight Skytripper 190 from New York comes in to land at Heathrow – unusually, on autopilot the whole way. Once on the ground, the plane stops on the runway rather than taxiing to the terminal. When airport staff board it to investigate, they find the airliner completely empty of its crew and 130 passengers...

The Mystery Explained

The chairman of multinational corporation Voss Industries, Ralph Voss, died of a heart attack on Flight 190. Because news of his death would have crashed the company's share price, on which a vital bank loan depended, Voss's assistant Terrell and company accountant Finch bribed everyone aboard the plane to keep silent until the deal was completed, and arranged for the airliner to divert to Voss's Irish facility where they could be quickly let off before the flight continued to London. The pilot hid in a service duct beneath the cabin floor, then sneaked out once the plane had been taken to a hangar - only to be killed to keep his silence. Terrell had no intention of letting the passengers go, instead planning to fake his own death after gassing them and dumping them into the sea from another aircraft before disappearing with the millions of pounds he has embezzled.

Review

Last time it was a Marie Celeste village, this time it's a Marie Celeste airliner. That illustrates one of the peculiarities of Department S when viewed in DVD order (which doesn't necessarily match the broadcast order), in that similarly-themed episodes sometimes end up very close to each other, but the same is true of the production order. 'One Of Our Aircraft Is Empty' was filmed back-to-back with 'Six Days' in order to make the best use of access to location shooting at Heathrow and the expensive airliner set. Cost-effective it might have been, but it also had the unwanted side-effect of making it seem as though the show was running out of ideas very quickly; 'Six Days' and 'One Of Our Aircraft' were first aired in the UK barely a month apart.

Don't call me Shirley.

The episode also suffers from the truth behind the mystery being over-complicated, requiring a scene where one of the men behind it has to explain what happened to Jason (and the audience) at great length and in far too much detail about shares and loans and accounting practices, which despite the best efforts of the actors does not make for riveting television. The idea that the whole plan could have been improvised literally on the fly, and that everyone aboard would cheerfully let their loved ones live in panic and fear for their lives for a week (and that the pilots would willingly destroy their careers by colluding), stretches credibility to its limit - and beyond, when it turns out that both Terrell and his murderous sidekick Chalmers apparently have 'commercial jet pilot' on their CVs!

Stay away from that trapdoor, 'cause there's something down there.

Moreover, there's a major flaw in the conspirators' logic that shreds the last remaining strands of believability. Just as the strangeness of the situation on 'Six Days' would have ensured a full investigation of everyone on the flight, the very thing the plotters wanted to avoid, so too here would the media circus have revealed that Ralph Voss had been on the plane; he was well-known enough that airport staff in New York might still have recognised him travelling incognito (Annabelle identifies him instantly from a poor-quality photo where his face isn't fully visible), and Finch even points this out to Jason. Voss being reported missing would have been just as calamitous to the share price as his death, as for that matter would their backup plan of claiming he had been kidnapped, so it should have been lose-lose all round.

American Airlines unveiled their new super-economy class.

It's not entirely lose-lose for the episode as a whole, as there are some fun exchanges of dialogue between the three leads, and it's one of the rare occasions where we actually see Jason working as a writer. But it's still a misfire, and a rather boring one at that. Unlike 'The Trojan Tanker', it can't even fall back on pace and changes of glamorous stock footage - er, location every few minutes to disguise its flaws, as it takes place mostly in uninspiring offices and airport buildings. That's a message to all aspiring writers there: if your story is weak, at least set it on a tropical beach!

Fancy Quotes

[Stewart admires Jason's new miniskirted secretary]

Stewart: Writing can be fun...

Jason: She does one hundred and eighty words a minute!

Stewart: Among other things, no doubt.

Jason: What problem dominates your pristine thoughts today?

Annabelle: You don't seriously think Jason's right?

Stewart: No, but he has a very nasty habit of scoring near misses.

Annabelle: He has a very nasty habit of making wild generalisations that cover just about anything!

Jason: Ground hostess?

Stewardess: Grade one.

Jason: Do you occasionally fly?

Stewardess: Only after the fifth martini.

Jason: [to waiter] Large martini, bone dry!

[Jason walks in on Annabelle getting changed]

Jason: I always thought that nice girls wore pyjamas.

Annabelle: [annoyed] And gentlemen knock!

Jason: Do they?

Cheers!

• Jason has a glass of whisky with a sandwich as he dictates the latest Mark Caine opus to an awestruck secretary.

• And another as he talks to a member of the airline's staff. He orders her a large martini to go with it.

• He orders himself a large glass of what looks like brandy during his dinner date with Ralph Voss's secretary (in addition to the bottle of red wine already on the table).

• More whisky for Jason after he talks Annabelle out of Solid Snaking her way into Voss Industries to find out what has happened to Stewart.

Fight!

Stewart is found by two goons just after he discovers the pilot's body and tries to fight his way out. It does not go well. KO!

Jason 3, Stewart 1.

However, he gets his revenge aboard Terrell's planned death flight when goon Jackson is unsighted by condensation inside his gasmask, giving 'Iron Lungs' Sullivan the chance to judo-flip him and punch him hard in the face.

He then takes on Terrell and Chalmers, the brawl ending with Chalmers unconscious and Terrell taking the direct route to sea level after falling out of an open hatch.

Author! Author!

Jason's Parisian apartment, unsurprisingly, has plenty of his own books to hand. The only ones clearly visible are Identity, Mark Caine! and Index Finger Left Hand, but over the rest of the series we'll learn that some of the others are The Man Who Fell To Earth, Enough Is Enough Is Enough, From China Yours Sincerely and People Who Live In Glass Houses Should Not. Assuming no duplicates, we can deduce that his oeuvre includes at least a dozen other Mark Caine adventures.