I decided to take a couple of days off from the government office where I make the daily bread as a supervising government bureaucrat. A period of time to get away, just to get away. So the week was just filled with running errands and just relaxing, around the way. I guess this kind of thing is called a staycation.

While on my staycation, I browsed my Netflix account where I came across this series called “Manifest.” So at night I was binge watching this series, and it dawned on me that the synapse was not an original idea. In fact it seemed like a variation of a series that I had seen before. But before we get into that let’s just summarize what this series is all about.

It is about a plane load of people who (198) volunteered to take another flight because their original flight was over booked. The flight from Jamaica to New York City hit strong turbulence for a couple of minutes. Once the plane navigated the turbulence, and went on to JFK airport requesting permission to land, was instead diverted to Stewart Air Force base in upstate New York.

Upon landing, officials from the National Security Agency (NSA) and other Federal agencies  were there to greet them, and informed them that their plane had been lost for the past five and half years.

In five and half years, the passengers did not age and as far as their timeline was concerned, they were in the skies for the amount of time it took to travel from Jamaica to New York City, which is usually about two to three hours.

After physical exams, the passengers were cut loose to get back to the lives that they left. But as the days past on, some type of mental abilities started to manifest, thus the series various chronicles started from there.

Well, like I stated, this is not an original synapse, in fact, nowadays Hollywood have no creativity. OK, lets look at where the inspiration for this show might have came from.

The idea for the disappearance of the plane might have came from the disappearance of the Malaysia flight 370 which disappeared March 8^th 2014.

The reappearance of the flight mirrors the experience of Santiago flight 513, that took off from Germany on September 4^th 1954, flying to its destination in Brazil, the flight disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean, then on October 12, 1989 the plane reappeared in Brazil (click here for details).

Then there is this series that aired in the early 2000’s called the 4400. The synapse is eerily very similar. But instead of a plane load of people disappearing and reappearing, it was the returning of 4400 individuals that were abducted by extraterrestrials and returned many years later.

They have no knowledge as to what happened to them, and they did not age a day from the time they were abducted. Like what happened in “Manifest,” the returned abductee found that they have developed some type of mental or physical abilities.   

Well, if you look at the sagas of both series, you will see a pattern of stories with the same theme.

But overall, the series “Manifest,” gets interested, but unfortunately heard that the series was cancelled, as of right now, there won’t be a 5th season.