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William Shatner's Seat
- golemotron 10y agoWouldn't this be better called 'The Shatbird Seat'?
- mxfh 10y agoJust for Reference: SNL's take on it feat. Jude Law's clearest view of Pearl Jam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_LSr7CwlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_LSr7CwlQ
- jwcacces 10y agoSNL Link for those in America https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/nightmare-at-20000-feet/n12760?snl=1 https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/nightmare-at-2...
- bhaavan 10y agoHoly shat!
- thehardsphere 10y agoI totally thought this was going to be about the Captain's chair on the USS Enterprise before I clicked it.
- cthulhujr 10y agoA view from Shatner's other other seat: https://youtu.be/Uyp8B8Vro-s?t=1m20s https://youtu.be/Uyp8B8Vro-s?t=1m20s
- dannylandau 10y agoA bit off topic... Was just watching the old episodes of Star Trek on Netflix, still classic and very entertaining.
- officelineback 10y agoThat's interesting, that also resembles the AA symbol.
- scott_s 10y agoThe second comment also mentions ashtrays, pointing them out as an example of a holdover from a previous time. But that's not true in the US. They're still required by the FAA because even though smoking is never allowed, the reasoning is that if someone smokes anyway, it's safer for them to have a proper place to put it out. See http://gizmodo.com/5912352/why-airplanes-still-have-ashtrays-in-the-bathrooms http://gizmodo.com/5912352/why-airplanes-still-have-ashtrays...
- vanattab 10y agoI am pretty sure I have been on planes without ashtray
- Rebelgecko 10y agoEven if the seats don't have ashtrays, there's usually (always?) one in each bathroom
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gcb0 10y agoabsolutely nobody in aviation ever called it that.
- stevefeinstein 10y agoStrictly speaking it'd be the "Shatner Seat", or the "Shatner Viewing Seat". Shatner's seat only works if Shatner owns it.
- valleyer 10y agoYou're right. Good thing Lou Gehrig owns ALS, and Duff owns Duff's device then.
- ouid 10y agono two answers agree, and they're all wildly different, and many of them seem to be from experts.
- jfoutz 10y agoPerhaps a relevant bit of trivia. William Shatner was on the tv series. John Lithgow remade the same scene for the twilight zone movie. i was never much of a fan of 3rd rock from the sun, but they did have this adorable little (20 second) callback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTNOihQnqVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTNOihQnqVQ
- chatwinra 10y agoCultural connoisseurs will also no doubt be aware that Johnny Bravo covered that episode the Twilight Zone too, except instead of Gremlins, it was Clowns.... https://youtu.be/W-oEQIiKx_U https://youtu.be/W-oEQIiKx_U
- js2 10y agoHaving seen both the tv episode and the movie episode, my recollection is that the tv episode was superior.
- soheil 10y agoJust watched the tv episode absolutely mind blown. Impossible to not notice these: - they could smoke in airplanes - anyone could just open the emergency door mid-flight - they had triangular paper cups for water - there were curtains running across the cabin on each side - all men were dressed in suit - you could carry guns on the airplane - he wasn't immediately declared a terrorist and shot after plane had landed but instead taken by an ambulance how civil!
- mc32 10y agoBy and large, it was middle-middle and upper middle and above who travelled by plane then. They tended to be the kinds of people who typically had some decorum (you mention the suits, so it's clear they are people of some higher status), so you didn't have your run of the mill middle-class and lower-middle class brats on the plane. And people hadn't thought of exploiting the system much --till the 70s when it became democratized and then you had highjackings every week practically and so now we get what we get. That's not a bad thing, but as things gain a wider audience and becomes less of a luxury item things change --kind of like what one sees in online discussion boards and their evaporative cooling effect.
- soheil 10y agoI know what I'm gonna watch tonight! ▲
- lovemenot 10y agoWilliam Shatner seat? No he didn't. Did you William?
- JshWright 10y agoHuh... I always assumed it was marking either the center of mass, or the center of lift...
- setheron 10y agoI know the episode from Simpsons. Never knew where it originated from.
- WalterGR 10y agoInterestingly, it's also referenced in Futurama.
- douche 10y agoMost of the same writers and producers, at least from the golden age of the Simpsons. I think this is one of those bits that every cartoon that goes on long enough has to do - I'd be amazed if there isn't a Family Guy cut-away, at least.
- Waterluvian 10y agoSo much of my knowledge of my dad's generation is from Simpsons references. "Who says 'SHAZAM!'?" "Ah yes, Gomer Pyle."
- 6stringmerc 10y ago...which got re-tread in Futurama when Fry goes back in time to become his own Grandpa by way of a nuclear weapon test - the doofy "Grandpa" Fry replaces is most definitely a pastiche of Gomer Pyle.
- jpmattia 10y ago> The Shatner reference is to one of the strangest Twilight Zone episodes, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, I don't know that earned a title for one of the strangest. There were lots of great episodes in the series, it would be hard to argue any of them were other than very strange. [Edited to address astrodust's comment.]
- astrodust 10y agoIt specifically says "one of".
- jpmattia 10y agoFair enough. Edited to reflect that.
- mirimir 10y ago> Part of the beauty of The Twilight Zone, as a science fiction show, was that Serling could get away with social commentary by disguising it as harmless fantasy. He was allowed to be critical if he was allegorical at the same time. As he himself put it, "You know, you can put these words into the mouth of a Martian and get away with it." http://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/brenner.html http://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/brenner.html
- phkahler 10y agoThat explains why there isn't anyone doing that today. Hollywood is too PC so there's nothing for them to "get away with".
- zeveb 10y agoPresumably someone who's not PC could use allegory to get away with being un-PC. Think of Joss Whedon's Firefly, in which the Alliance is a thinly-veiled allegory for the triumphant Union shortly after it destroyed the Confederate States.
- canada_dry 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbWJJj9uFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbWJJj9uFU
- Waterluvian 10y agoI'm so damn sick of that stupid song. Teens constantly ruin good content with it. I should know, I did the same thing with that song when I was a teen.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoYou think you're sick of it? Ha! Try being me watching a Lord of the Rings trailer on TV with that epic soundtrack underneath. It actually hurt my head. Still, nothing quite compares to Carnival Cruises thinking it was a great idea to mold a TV ad campaign around the Iggy Pop song "Lust For Life" which, for me, will forever be associated with the film Trainspotting, petty theft, and heroin addiction. I guess those are better than what I normally associate with most large cruise operators though, which is engine failure, diarrhea, and onion sandwiches.
- zw123456 10y agoI absolutely love these obscure pop sub-references. Thank you for the post, it tickled my funny bone.
- rbobby 10y agoGetting "The Shatner Seat": - On a plane... cool - On a toilet... a little too warm
- sand500 10y agoIs there really a window under the carpet the pilot can use to check if the landing gear is down?
- jcrawfordor 10y agoThe "landing gear viewer" is only required on older aircraft that do not have dual redundant electrical systems to report landing gear status. There are still some of these in service, the easy way to know on a Boeing is that one of the overhead bin doors will have a label "L/G VIEWER" on it.
- chrisper 10y agoIf you go to the link it says: >If the crew gets an unsafe light when putting down the landing gear, there is an alternate visual indicator on each wing in two locations. If you go to the triangle stickers and look out you'll see the small one inch diameter red post protruding up about 2.5 inches. This confirms the gear is down and locked over-center.
- sand500 10y agoI was referring to this comment at the link >Right below that mark will be a small window in the floor. >In case of a cockpit gear indication failure, one pilot goes back, peels back the carpet over the window, and checks the manual alignment indicator in the wheel well.
- colanderman 10y agoI know what I'm doing on my next flight.
- aaron695 10y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/2x29gv/inside_a_737300_main_gear_wheel_well/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/2x29gv/inside_a_7... or http://airplanereading.org/story/4/loss-of-blood-flow http://airplanereading.org/story/4/loss-of-blood-flow The co-pilot and flight attendants were trying to lift up the carpet in the exit row, apparently to find a floor window which would give a view into the cargo hold. No such luck. The carpet had recently been tacked down to the floor when this particular aircraft underwent some renovations. Unfortunately, no consideration had been made for the floor window in case of an emergency, such as we were presently experiencing.