When the Co-pilot is shot, the pilot refers to the co pilot using his own name (I mean the pilots name)
This is akin to Daivd shooting Fred, and Mark crying out 'Mark!' as Fred dies.

Very confusing, but I know what you mean.
I've never seen any Joe 90 episodes for nearly ten years but i'll watch out for that when it's on BBC.

Splashdown was on
The Amazing Adventures of Joe 90 wasn't it ?
Why was it a PG instead of a U like all the others ?

Er.... I dunno!
It was
The Most Special Agent
Splashdown
Attack of the Tiger
Arctic Adventure on The Amazing Adventures tape. But I don't have it. Or have ever seen any ep on it except for the Most Special Agent.

But now I HAVE seen this film.

Splashdown is quite a grim tale, as it mentions that 2 planes have previously been taken over by hijackers, their pilots knocked out and the plane allowed to crash into the sea (the second crash occurs at the start of the ep, though that scene is not in Amazing Adventures for some reason).

Arctic Adventure also has a plane in trouble at the start, as a transport plane with about half a dozen crew members on it runs into difficulties over Arctic, and the crew eject seeming to know that they've no chance of surviving if and when they land. A radio broadcast announces the crash as 'tragic' so that would seem to suggest that there were no survivors.

If I were an Evil Sinister Bad Guy, I would have killed Mac at the end anyway, even if there was no chance of escape.

And what happened to the other 2 scientists who were taken in the crashes? Were they on the Swordfish? Which was blown up?

This episode isn't that violent (Not violent enough to give "The Amazing Adventures of Joe 90" a PG certificate)
Well actually the Precision Video version of this film was a U but Channel 5 gave it a PG (don't know why) the same thing happened to the Invasion UFO movie, Precision Video gave it a 15 but Channel 5 gave it a PG.

I am probably wrong, but I think the explosion of the plane in the pre-credits sequence is taken from the Stingray episode Deep Heat.

A real newspaper of what Mac reads at the end was made for this ep but was not used.

With all due respect for futuristic airplane designs, that passenger plane looked pregnant!

As in the episode "Hi-Jacked", WIN is very casual about putting people at risk when they set Mac out as bait.

Since they were going to allow the plane to crash anyway, why waste time with tranquilizer bullets?

Actually, they must have had a number of people working on this caper. Otherwise, wouldn't the airline people say, "Weren't you the stewardess who was killed on the last two flights?"

That bearded hijacker/kidnapper bore an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Frakes.

I liked how Joe was babbling frantically to Sam, until Sam calmly persuaded him to get the glasses on. Then he was all business. I also liked his reaction when Sam told him to slow down the boat: "This is a passenger plane, not a jet fighter!"

The scene where the woman's nerve broke and she forced them to swerve (and stall, apparently) was quite realistic. The following scene, where she sat with her hands up to her head, shaking, was well done, too, although it's hard to say if she was trembling at the near miss or in anticipation of what boss man is going to do to her.

Hopefully the other two scientists were not on the sub--there's no real reason why they should be--and presumably they were able to persuade the bad guys to tell where the scientists were, but it would have been nice if they had said so at the end.

Joe doesn't really react much when Sam points out that, while WIN does the work, other people often get the credit.

>That bearded hijacker/kidnapper bore an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Frakes.

I haven't seen this, but I made the same observation on Captain Scarlet: Expo 2068. Could it be the same puppet?

>>I haven't seen this, but I made the same observation on Captain Scarlet: Expo 2068. Could it be the same puppet?<<

No, the puppet in Splashdown was never in Captain Scarlet