Flight 714
Encyclopedia
Flight 714, first published in 1968, is the 22nd and penultimate complete volume of The Adventures of Tintin
, a series of classic comic-strip albums by the Belgian
writer and illustrator Hergé
, featuring young reporter Tintin
as a hero. Its original French
title is Vol 714 pour Sydney ("Flight 714 to Sydney"). The title refers to a flight that the heroes fail to catch, as they become involved in a plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire involving a private jet and an Indonesia
n island.
This album is unusual in the Tintin series for its science fiction and paranormal influences. The central mystery is essentially left unresolved.
and Professor Calculus
are on their way to Sydney
for an international conference on space exploration. While their flight makes a refueling stop in Jakarta
's Kemayoran Airport
, they unexpectedly meet their old friend Piotr Skut (see The Red Sea Sharks
for backstory), who is now the chief pilot for eccentric millionaire Laszlo Carreidas. A short time earlier, the Captain had erroneously taken the somewhat dishevelled Carreidas for a tramp and surreptitiously slipped him a five-dollar bill, which later is taken by the oblivious Professor Calculus, making the millionaire laugh for the first time in years. When introduced to Carreidas, the Captain inadvertently shakes the hand of the millionaire's secretary, the tall, aloof Spalding.
Unable to politely refuse Carreidas's offer of a lift, Tintin and his friends join the millionaire on his prototype private jet. Unbeknownst to Carreidas and the others, Spalding and two of the pilots, Boehm and Colombani, have been recruited to hijack
the plane and bring it to a deserted volcanic island called Pulau-Pulau Bompa in the Lesser Sunda Islands
. Skut is not involved in this plot; therefore he becomes a prisoner too. After a rough landing, our friends are escorted out of the plane, and a terrified Snowy
breaks out of Tintin's arms and runs off. Armed guards shoot at him, and a horrified Tintin believes that he has died.
A moment or two later, to Tintin's further shock, it is shown that the mastermind of the plot is none other than the evil Rastapopoulos
, who declares on grounds that "it's a bore to stop being a millionaire" that it would be easier to simply take Carreidas' fortune. Accordingly, he has hatched an elaborate scheme to kidnap Carreidas and extract his Swiss bank account number. Captain Haddock's corrupt ex-shipmate, Allan, is present as well, working (as in earlier books) as Rastapopoulos's henchman.
The prisoners are thereafter bound and held in Japanese
World War II
-era bunkers. Meanwhile, Rastapopoulos takes the defiant Carreidas to another World War II-era bunker and has him strapped to a chair, to be interrogated by one Dr. Krollspell. This corrupt scientist injects the millionaire with a truth serum
, so as to enable Rastapopulos to learn Carreidas's Swiss bank account number. Unfortunately for Rastapopoulos, Carreidas becomes relentlessly eager to tell the truth about everything except the Swiss bank account, launching into long disquisitions about his life of greed, perfidy and corruption since his childhood. Furious, Rastapopulos lunges at Krollspell, who is still holding the truth-drug syringe, and is accidentally injected with the serum, becoming intoxicated
. He too recounts hideous deeds in a boasting manner, and he and Carreidas begin to quarrel over which is the more evil, during which it becomes evident that nearly all of the men recruited by Rastapopoulos, including Spalding, the aircraft pilots, and (the increasingly unnerved) Krollspell, are already marked to be killed by Rastapopoulos himself.
With the help of Snowy, who is not dead after all, Tintin and his friends manage to escape the bunker in which they were imprisoned and find the bunker where Carreidas is held prisoner. Tintin and Captain Haddock tie up and gag Krollspell, Rastapopulos, and even the irascible Carreidas, and escort them to lower ground, intending to use Rastapopulos as a hostage. However, the serum wears off and Rastapopulos escapes, while Allan also detects the escaping prisoners. However, Krollspell, in fear of Rastapopoulos, throws in his lot with Tintin and Haddock; he is subsequently released and continues to accompany Tintin and Haddock, watching the still irritable Carreidas.
Rastapopoulos, freed from his bonds, sends Allan and his Sondonesian henchmen to kill and capture the fugitives. Led by a telepathic
voice Tintin is hearing, the protagonists discover a hidden entrance to a statue-filled cave. They decide to enter the cave and discover a large hallway, leading to a temple hidden in the inside of the island's volcano. They enter the volcano's core by triggering a hidden mechanism. Rastapopulos and his cohorts are not far behind, but they fail to find out how to open the secret passage after realising the group went through there. Instead, they use explosives to make their own entrance.
Penetrating deeper into the volcano, Tintin and his friends meet a strange man, Mik Kanrokitoff, a writer for magazine Space Week, who reveals to them that his is the guiding voice that they have followed, having received it into their minds via a telepathic transmitter. This device was given to Kanrokitoff by a technologically advanced, extraterrestrial race of humanoids, who were formerly worshipped on the island as god
s and who use it as a landing-point to contact Earth's people. Kanrokitoff is one of the few people the aliens keep as familiars and contacts on Earth.
Because an earthquake and the explosion set off by Rastapopoulos and his men has triggered a volcanic eruption, it becomes imperative that all the characters leave the island. With major hindrances presented by the unreasonable Carreidas, getting to safety becomes unnecessarily hazardous for the protagonists, but finally they all arrive safe and sound inside the volcano's crater bowl. Meanwhile, Rastapopoulos and his henchmen flee the eruption by running down the outside of the volcano and go out to sea in a rubber dinghy from Carreidas' plane.
Once Tintin and his friends find their way out of the volcano, Kanrokitoff puts them all under telepathic hypnosis
. He uses his transmitter to summon a flying saucer
piloted by the extraterrestrials, whereupon the hypnotised group climb up a retractable ladder and board the saucer, narrowly escaping the volcano's dramatic eruption. Kanrokitoff spots the rubber dinghy and exchanges Tintin and his companions for Allan, Spalding, Rastapopulos, and the treacherous pilots, who are whisked away in the saucer to an unknown fate. The group — including Krollspell, who is later deposited by the saucer at his institute in Cairo
— awakes from hypnosis and cannot remember what happened to them. The party is eventually rescued, but no one has any recollection of the adventure. Professor Calculus
has a souvenir, though — a crafted rod of alloyed cobalt
, iron
, and nickel
, which he had found in the caves and forgotten in his pocket. Because the cobalt is of a state that does not occur on Earth, it is therefore clearly extraterrestrial and is the only evidence of a close encounter with its makers; only Snowy
, who cannot speak, remembers the hijacking and alien abduction.
The story ends with Tintin, Carreidas and companions resuming their journey to Australia on a public airline.
----
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
, a series of classic comic-strip albums by the Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
writer and illustrator Hergé
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...
, featuring young reporter Tintin
Tintin (character)
Tintin is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. Tintin is the protagonist of the series, a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy....
as a hero. Its original French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
title is Vol 714 pour Sydney ("Flight 714 to Sydney"). The title refers to a flight that the heroes fail to catch, as they become involved in a plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire involving a private jet and an Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n island.
This album is unusual in the Tintin series for its science fiction and paranormal influences. The central mystery is essentially left unresolved.
Storyline
Tintin, Captain HaddockCaptain Haddock
Captain Archibald Haddock is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
and Professor Calculus
Professor Calculus
Professor Cuthbert Calculus is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
are on their way to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
for an international conference on space exploration. While their flight makes a refueling stop in Jakarta
Jakarta
Jakarta is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Officially known as the Special Capital Territory of Jakarta, it is located on the northwest coast of Java, has an area of , and a population of 9,580,000. Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political centre...
's Kemayoran Airport
Kemayoran Airport
Kemayoran Airport, also spelled Kemajoran Airport, was the principal airport for Jakarta, Indonesia, from 8 July 1940 until March 31, 1985, when it was replaced by Soekarno-Hatta International Airport...
, they unexpectedly meet their old friend Piotr Skut (see The Red Sea Sharks
The Red Sea Sharks
The Red Sea Sharks is the nineteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero...
for backstory), who is now the chief pilot for eccentric millionaire Laszlo Carreidas. A short time earlier, the Captain had erroneously taken the somewhat dishevelled Carreidas for a tramp and surreptitiously slipped him a five-dollar bill, which later is taken by the oblivious Professor Calculus, making the millionaire laugh for the first time in years. When introduced to Carreidas, the Captain inadvertently shakes the hand of the millionaire's secretary, the tall, aloof Spalding.
Unable to politely refuse Carreidas's offer of a lift, Tintin and his friends join the millionaire on his prototype private jet. Unbeknownst to Carreidas and the others, Spalding and two of the pilots, Boehm and Colombani, have been recruited to hijack
Aircraft hijacking
Aircraft hijacking is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. In most cases, the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers. Occasionally, however, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves, such as the September 11 attacks of 2001...
the plane and bring it to a deserted volcanic island called Pulau-Pulau Bompa in the Lesser Sunda Islands
Lesser Sunda Islands
The Lesser Sunda Islands or Nusa Tenggara are a group of islands in the southern Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up the Sunda Islands...
. Skut is not involved in this plot; therefore he becomes a prisoner too. After a rough landing, our friends are escorted out of the plane, and a terrified Snowy
Snowy (character)
Snowy is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. He is a white Wire Fox Terrier and Tintin's four-legged companion who travels everywhere with him...
breaks out of Tintin's arms and runs off. Armed guards shoot at him, and a horrified Tintin believes that he has died.
A moment or two later, to Tintin's further shock, it is shown that the mastermind of the plot is none other than the evil Rastapopoulos
Rastapopoulos
Roberto Rastapopoulos is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. He is the antagonist in many of Tintin's adventures....
, who declares on grounds that "it's a bore to stop being a millionaire" that it would be easier to simply take Carreidas' fortune. Accordingly, he has hatched an elaborate scheme to kidnap Carreidas and extract his Swiss bank account number. Captain Haddock's corrupt ex-shipmate, Allan, is present as well, working (as in earlier books) as Rastapopoulos's henchman.
The prisoners are thereafter bound and held in Japanese
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-era bunkers. Meanwhile, Rastapopoulos takes the defiant Carreidas to another World War II-era bunker and has him strapped to a chair, to be interrogated by one Dr. Krollspell. This corrupt scientist injects the millionaire with a truth serum
Truth Serum
Truth Serum is an independent comic book series created, written and drawn by author Jon Adams.-Overview:Originally published as a mini comic in 2001 and given away for free, it appeared as a three-issue mini series published by Slave Labor Graphics in 2002...
, so as to enable Rastapopulos to learn Carreidas's Swiss bank account number. Unfortunately for Rastapopoulos, Carreidas becomes relentlessly eager to tell the truth about everything except the Swiss bank account, launching into long disquisitions about his life of greed, perfidy and corruption since his childhood. Furious, Rastapopulos lunges at Krollspell, who is still holding the truth-drug syringe, and is accidentally injected with the serum, becoming intoxicated
Toxicity
Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage a living or non-living organisms. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a substructure of the organism, such as a cell or an organ , such as the liver...
. He too recounts hideous deeds in a boasting manner, and he and Carreidas begin to quarrel over which is the more evil, during which it becomes evident that nearly all of the men recruited by Rastapopoulos, including Spalding, the aircraft pilots, and (the increasingly unnerved) Krollspell, are already marked to be killed by Rastapopoulos himself.
With the help of Snowy, who is not dead after all, Tintin and his friends manage to escape the bunker in which they were imprisoned and find the bunker where Carreidas is held prisoner. Tintin and Captain Haddock tie up and gag Krollspell, Rastapopulos, and even the irascible Carreidas, and escort them to lower ground, intending to use Rastapopulos as a hostage. However, the serum wears off and Rastapopulos escapes, while Allan also detects the escaping prisoners. However, Krollspell, in fear of Rastapopoulos, throws in his lot with Tintin and Haddock; he is subsequently released and continues to accompany Tintin and Haddock, watching the still irritable Carreidas.
Rastapopoulos, freed from his bonds, sends Allan and his Sondonesian henchmen to kill and capture the fugitives. Led by a telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
voice Tintin is hearing, the protagonists discover a hidden entrance to a statue-filled cave. They decide to enter the cave and discover a large hallway, leading to a temple hidden in the inside of the island's volcano. They enter the volcano's core by triggering a hidden mechanism. Rastapopulos and his cohorts are not far behind, but they fail to find out how to open the secret passage after realising the group went through there. Instead, they use explosives to make their own entrance.
Penetrating deeper into the volcano, Tintin and his friends meet a strange man, Mik Kanrokitoff, a writer for magazine Space Week, who reveals to them that his is the guiding voice that they have followed, having received it into their minds via a telepathic transmitter. This device was given to Kanrokitoff by a technologically advanced, extraterrestrial race of humanoids, who were formerly worshipped on the island as god
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
s and who use it as a landing-point to contact Earth's people. Kanrokitoff is one of the few people the aliens keep as familiars and contacts on Earth.
Because an earthquake and the explosion set off by Rastapopoulos and his men has triggered a volcanic eruption, it becomes imperative that all the characters leave the island. With major hindrances presented by the unreasonable Carreidas, getting to safety becomes unnecessarily hazardous for the protagonists, but finally they all arrive safe and sound inside the volcano's crater bowl. Meanwhile, Rastapopoulos and his henchmen flee the eruption by running down the outside of the volcano and go out to sea in a rubber dinghy from Carreidas' plane.
Once Tintin and his friends find their way out of the volcano, Kanrokitoff puts them all under telepathic hypnosis
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
. He uses his transmitter to summon a flying saucer
Flying saucer
A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
piloted by the extraterrestrials, whereupon the hypnotised group climb up a retractable ladder and board the saucer, narrowly escaping the volcano's dramatic eruption. Kanrokitoff spots the rubber dinghy and exchanges Tintin and his companions for Allan, Spalding, Rastapopulos, and the treacherous pilots, who are whisked away in the saucer to an unknown fate. The group — including Krollspell, who is later deposited by the saucer at his institute in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
— awakes from hypnosis and cannot remember what happened to them. The party is eventually rescued, but no one has any recollection of the adventure. Professor Calculus
Professor Calculus
Professor Cuthbert Calculus is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
has a souvenir, though — a crafted rod of alloyed cobalt
Cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
, iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
, and nickel
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
, which he had found in the caves and forgotten in his pocket. Because the cobalt is of a state that does not occur on Earth, it is therefore clearly extraterrestrial and is the only evidence of a close encounter with its makers; only Snowy
Snowy (character)
Snowy is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. He is a white Wire Fox Terrier and Tintin's four-legged companion who travels everywhere with him...
, who cannot speak, remembers the hijacking and alien abduction.
The story ends with Tintin, Carreidas and companions resuming their journey to Australia on a public airline.
Trivia
- The TV series LostLost (TV series)Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
plot has similarities to the story of this comic.
- The story is cited in chapter 4 of the novel The Reluctant FundamentalistThe Reluctant FundamentalistThe Reluctant Fundamentalist is a novel by Mohsin Hamid, published in 2007.The novel uses the technique of a frame story, which takes place during the course of a single evening in an outdoor Lahore cafe, where a bearded Pakistani man called Changez tells a nervous American stranger about his love...
by Mohsin HamidMohsin HamidMohsin Hamid is a Pakistani author best known for his novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist .- Biography :...
.
- Writer Hugo Frey argues that Rastapopoulos' appearance was an example of post-war anti-Semitism on Hergé's part, though other writers argue against this, pointing out that Rastapoppulos is not Jewish and surrounds himself with explicitly German-looking characters: Kurt, the submarine commander of The Red Sea SharksThe Red Sea SharksThe Red Sea Sharks is the nineteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero...
; Doctor Krollspell, whom Hergé himself referred to as a former concentration camp official; and Hans Boehm, the sinister-looking navigator and co-pilot, both from Flight 714.
- The statues on the island have eyes similar to the Japanese DogūDoguare small humanoid and animal figurines made during the late Jōmon period of prehistoric Japan. Dogū come entirely from the Jōmon period and do not continue into the Yayoi period. There are various styles of Dogū, depending on exhumation area and time period...
figurines.
- A use of the real Indonesian languageIndonesian languageIndonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
occurs here: while on duty, two of Tintin's captors talk about a particular Indonesian dish that originated in JavaJavaJava is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...
, sambel bajak (ground chilli sauce with shrimp paste).
External links
- Flight 714 at Tintinologist.org
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