One thing we all knew beforehand about the closure of Kai Tak on July 5 and the overnight move to Chek Lap Kok was that it was going to be an incredibly complicated operation, requiring weeks of planning and military precision in its execution. What we did not know was that the powers in charge were so exhausted by this vast enterprise that chaos would ensue when all that hardware arrived on the far side of Lantau.
The result was easily the biggest balls-up of the year, no mean feat in a bumper year for them. We don't know yet who was most to blame and, since two inquiries struggled even to work out which of them Airport Authority supremo Dr Hank Townsend should talk to first, it is hard to imagine we ever will.
Tonight's Hong Kong Connection (Pearl, 6.50pm) shows in detail the work that went into the move. We can witness again footage of those few hours when all the things that made Kai Tak a small, efficient and conveniently located airport were transported to somewhere else to make a huge, distant, inefficient one.
ER (Pearl, 9.30pm) continues to stick out like a sore thumb in an evening otherwise dedicated to two of the most esoteric mainstream television series ever made. Tonight's episode of The X-Files (Pearl, 8.30pm) is probably one of the strangest yet. The show is already veering close to a parody of itself, so the writers decided to go the whole hog.
Mulder's appearance on a daytime talk show, boasting about his conspiracy theories, inspired a batty Indiana housewife to invite him and Scully over to explain all the strange goings-on in her little town. This place makes Twin Peaks seem wholesome. As Mulder and Scully investigate, they begin to realise there is a latter-day Dr Frankenstein at work, sticking bits of animals on to human beings.
It is all remarkably silly, and ends up with Cher singing her heart out to a mutant beastie in a nightclub.