The Last Flight

What a wonderful episode! A British fighter pilot passes through a white cloud. When he comes out the other side he has time traveled 42 years into the future. There he discovers that the choices he made in the past have effected hundreds of lives. The fighter pilot must also deal with the culture shock of modern jet fighters and helicopters while trying to prove he is who he says he is. In the end, "The Last Flight" relates a strong message of how one's actions can have unintended effects on lives of people you might never meet. The one lapse in this episode is the action sequences which are somewhat far fetched. Overall a great episode I'll award a mark of 9.3. Certainly one of the best of the season.

One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes was this one involving a rift in time. Some similar type plots were used to great effect in Star Trek and in Star Trek - The Next Generation.

A World War I pilot from the British Royal Flying Corps lands at his base after a sortie with some Germans. Kenneth Haigh pilots his ancient biplane for a landing and gets quite the surprise. It's 42 years later and what was his airfield is now an American NATO base with all kinds of airplanes with advances that his mind could barely conceive.

Of course the folks in charge of the base have a lot of trouble swallowing his story. And they've got a big VIP visiting the base shortly, a British Vice Air Marshal played by Robert Warwick who was a hero of World War II and who was learning his trade during the first World War who Haigh knew back in the day.

I can't say more, but a trip to The Twilight Zone has given Haigh a chance to fulfill his intended destiny. This episode was well written and acted and not a moment of film frame was spared in bringing a most engrossing story.

Kenneth Haigh plays a World War I fighter pilot named Decker who travels through a mysterious white cloud while flying in 1917 France, as he was running away from the Germans, and finds himself in the future on an American Air Force base in France. Both confused and guilt-stricken, Decker tries desperately to get back to his plane, and return to battle, in order to save the friend he deserted, especially when he learns that the man survived the war, and is on his way that day to inspect the base... Imaginative and exciting story deals with the complexities of time-travel in a most clever and effective way, leaving the viewer most satisfied by the result. Quite underrated.

This is wonderful television. Sometimes Serling got a little maudlin. In this, he cooks up a situation, puts his characters into play, and treats them with respect. We have the RAF with its codes of honor, its fighting spirit, suddenly thrust into the future. One can't help but say, "This is the way a British officer would act under these circumstances." Once he comes to realize that there is little hope for him in this world, he fights to return. There are elements of time travel that are tricky, but this episode deals with the real humanity of the characters. The modern brain trust is pretty much as we would imagine. They don't know what to do with this guy and they feel for him. It's a really good story.

A lesser known episode, surprisingly engrossing, that is generally overlooked among the many fabulous productions of the first series. There is little in the way of scene changes, but this drama really works. The character of the time traveling WW1 pilot Decker (Kenneth Haigh) is believable. His dialogue is natural and plausible for a British man from 1917. The extent of Decker's dialogue about bravery, and his lack of it, is interesting. The story he gives to the American Air Force changes somewhat to the point where he announces his cowardice. Great stuff.

Kenneth Haigh was the original Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court,London and on Broadway that same year.