For the Adherent of Pop Culture
Adventures of Jack Burton ] Back to the Future ] Battlestar Galactica ] Buckaroo Banzai ] Cliffhangers! ] Earth 2 ] The Expendables ] Firefly/Serenity ] The Fly ] Galaxy Quest ] Indiana Jones ] Jurassic Park ] Land of the Lost ] Lost in Space ] The Matrix ] The Mummy/The Scorpion King ] The Prisoner ] Sapphire & Steel ] Snake Plissken Chronicles ] Star Trek ] Terminator ] The Thing ] Total Recall ] Tron ] Twin Peaks ] UFO ] V the series ] Valley of the Dinosaurs ] Waterworld ] PopApostle Home ] Links ] Privacy ]


Episode Studies by Clayton Barr

enik1138
-at-popapostle-dot-com
Valley of the Dinosaurs: Test Flight Valley of the Dinosaurs
"Test Flight"

TV episode
Written by: Unknown
Directed by: Charles A. Nichols

 

John builds a full-size glider in an attempt to find a way out of the valley.

 

Didja Know?

 

The writers of each TV episode are not specifically revealed, but the end credits of every episode listed the series writers as: Peter Dixon, Peter Germano, James Henderson, Ernie Kahn, Ben Masselink, Dick Robbins, Henry Sharp, and Jerry Thomas.

 

Didja Notice?

 

An unidentified species of colorful bird is seen at the very beginning of the episode.

 

In this episode, Tana is wearing a blue lodestone necklace she does not normally wear (though it disappears and reappears in various scenes throughout the episode). Conveniently so, as Greg is able to make use of one of the stones late in the episode to make a compass to help him and Tana find their way out of the swamp.

 

Katie reminds her worried mother that her father built the very same kind of glider he's built now with the flying club back home.

 

John reassures his friends and family that he's logged 1500 hours in sailplanes (another term for glider).

 

As in "Pteranodon", the cave dwellers refer to a Pteranodon as ardok.

 

John performs an Immelmann in the glider, which he describes as a half-loop and a half-roll out of it at the top. This is an accurate description of the aerobatic maneuver, named for its inventor, Max Immelmann, a German WWI pilot.

 

The creature Tana refers to as a goko appears to be the extinct giant ground sloth.

 

At 11:40 on the DVD, the giant sloth appears to walk right on top of the glider's launching carriage without breaking it!

 

Greg, Tana, Digger, and Glump become lost in what the cave dwellers refer to as the Great Swamp.

 

The beast seen at 13:05 on the DVD may be a Megacerops, from the Late Eocene epoch.

 

It is true that lodestones are naturally magnetic and have been used since ancient times as compasses. Lodestones are normally black or brownish-black though, not blue as seen here.

 

The cave dwellers refer to east as the direction of morning and west as the direction of night. This is obviously because the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west.

 

John compares the Great Swamp to the Everglades. The Everglades are a large region of tropical wetlands on the southern tip of Florida.

 

At 16:30 on the DVD, we see what Katie later refers to as a mastodon. Mastodons are an extinct species, related to elephants, from the Miocene through Pleistocene epochs in North and Central America.

 

At 16:33 on the DVD, Katie's mouth disappears from her face!

mouthless Katie

 

Gara refers to mastodons as "longnose" and the particular individual that threatens the children as Gondo. 

 

Unanswered Questions

 

While flying in the glider, John and Gorok spotted a possible trail leading out of the valley. John later says it looks like a 60 or 70 mile trek. At the end of the episode, Gorok tells the Butlers his family will help them. So did they ever attempt the journey? Is it really a way out of the Valley of the Dinosaurs?

 

Memorable Dialog 

 

prophet of doom.wav

you express my sentiments thoroughly.wav

we are birds.wav

the wrong side of bed.wav

we may have to paddle something.wav

longnose Gondo.wav

 

Back to Valley of the Dinosaurs Episode Studies