The Last Flight

"The Last Flight" is Rod Serling at his very best, with an episode of "The Twilight Zone" that all millions of fans are guaranteed to list among their favorites or at least generously reward with a high score! It's a fantastic half hour of mysterious entertainment, with a compelling plot (from the pen of genius writer Richard Matheson), honest and identifiable characters and a denouement that – for once – isn't bleak and depressing, but comforting and hopeful. The story opens with the British World War I pilot William T. Decker searching for his base camp through a dense and cloudy sky after having narrowly escaped an air-attack of the German enemy. He lands at an American military airport in France but immediately notices that all the air crafts here look very futuristic. To everyone's amazement, Decker's but also the military staff at the camp; he discovers that the year is now 1959 and that he landed 42 years in the future. Whilst being held in custody, because obviously nobody believes his story, Lt. Decker reveals that he was a cowardly pilot and abandoned his partner right before the Germans ambushed them back in 1917. When he learns that his former partner is now an inspector on his way to the French camp, Decker realizes that he's been granted a unique opportunity to return back and correct his past mistakes. Matheson's terrific script deals with complex themes, like time loops and paradoxes, but serves them in the most straightforward way, so that the focus lies on the main character and his inner struggles. The episode is very talkative but never boring and brought to an even higher level thanks to Kenneth Haigh intense and sincere performance. William Claxton's direction is solid as well. He mainly did TV-work throughout his career, but also directed the offbeat creature-feature guilty pleasure "Night of the Lepus".

Granted, this episode was only the 18th in the first year of the Twilight Zone; but it is a classic in more ways than one, and one of the best Twilight Zone episodes I have ever seen, in terms of imagination and messages about human failings, human fears, and confronting those failings and fears, even when death is the obvious end result awaiting one.

Time travel has always made for a compelling, no-possibilities-barred sci- fi subject; the way it was handled in this episode was masterful and exceptionally thought provoking. My only regret about the episode is that it had to end at the point that it did.

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.

Cowardly World War I pilot Lt. William Terrance Decker (Kenneth Haigh) is lost, not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time. Having fled from a dogfight, leaving his friend Alexander 'Leadbottom' Mackaye seriously outnumbered, Decker loses his way in a strange white cloud, after which he lands his biplane—in Lafayette Air Base, 1959.

After a few rather weaker episodes, The Twilight Zone is back on form with a really great Richard Matheson story, a neat time-twister of a tale that not only smartly handles the paradoxical issues that go with the territory, but which also deals with the classic theme of redemption, Decker given a second chance to prove his worth and save the life of a pal.

Performances are strong, with a particularly fine turn from Haigh, and the pacing is superb, with not a dull moment despite this being quite a talky episode. All in all, a well-told story with a satisfying conclusion that ranks among the best of them.