Title: “The Last Flight”
Original transmission date: February 5 1960
Written by: Richard Matheson
Directed by: William F. Claxton
Starring: Kenneth Haigh as Flight Lt. Decker
Simon Scott as Major Wilson
Alexander Scourby as General Harper
Robert Warwick as Air Vice Marshal Alexander Mackaye
Harry Raybould as Corporal
Jerry Catron as Guard
Jack Perkins as Mechanic
Paul Baxley as Jeep driver
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Cowardice, bravery, second chance, time travel
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A
Serling’s opening monologue
Witness Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, Royal Flying Corps, returning from a patrol somewhere over France. The year is 1917. The problem is that the lieutenant is hopelessly lost. Lieutenant Decker will soon discover that a man can be lost not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time - and time in this case can be measured in eternities.
A British pilot from World War I lands at an American airfield in the present, and when taken to the commanding officer is told he is in 1959. Finding this hard to believe - duh - he mentions his friend “Mac”, Alexander McKay, and is told with extreme scepticism for his story by the base commander that Air Vice Marshall McKay is in fact due there to inspect the facility. The pilot believes this impossible, as he tells them McKay is dead. He tells them that when he last saw McKay he was encircled by seven German aircraft, and later confesses that he himself is a coward, afraid to engage the enemy. He says he has to put on a face, because to be a coward is bad enough, but admitting to, or even worse, being proven one is a fate worse than death.
He’s placed under “protective custody” while the base awaits the arrival of the Air Vice Marshall, though Decker is reluctant to meet his old friend, believing he will be recognised for what he is. Unable to understand how McKay can still be alive, when, as he tells the major, he left him to die, ran off, Decker suddenly gets it. The only reason Mac is alive has to be that he, Decker, changed his mind and went back to help him. He had to come 42 years into the future to learn the truth, that he could save him, but if he stays where he is then the chances are, the two men will never meet in 1959 because McKay will have died in 1917.
Desperate, he slugs the major and breaks out, racing to his aircraft. The major tries to detain him but he gets away, back up into the sky. A short while later, the major is being upbraided by the general for having let him escape when Air Vice Marshall McKay arrives. The major asks him about Decker, and McKay tells them the man saved his life back in World War I. Says he looked as if he was running out on him but then came back, took out three of the German fighters before they got him. In amazement, the general shows McKay the personal effects he had confiscated from Decker, and McKay, dumbfounded, confirms they belong to his old friend.
Serling's closing monologue
Dialog from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Dialog from a play written long before men took to the sky: There are more things in heaven and earth and in the sky than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, and the earth, lies the Twilight Zone.
The Resolution
A good one. A man who needs the courage to do what needs to be done finds it in the future, finding that his friend, who would otherwise be long dead, has distinguished himself in the next world war and risen in the ranks, and realises he has to go back to help him survive, facing his own cowardice and giving his life bravely.
The Moral
Everyone gets a second chance, it’s up to them how they use it?
Themes
Cowardice, bravery, being given a second chance. Time lines, which should, of course, have shifted when Decker came to the future, meaning McKay should have been dead. And maybe he was; until that helicopter bringing him to the air force base landed, who knew who would have stepped out of it, depending on what Decker did? It’s good to to see Matheson - this being entirely written by him - tackling the thorny idea of cowardice in the armed forces. It can’t be that every young man who went to war did so with no fear, and while cowardice would be liable to get you killed as much by your own side as that of the enemy, it was surely a constant threat to those who fought for liberty.
I believe this is also the first time travel story, if you don’t count “Walking Distance”.
The Times they are a Changin’
Decker mentions that he has often thought of allowing himself to be captured by the Germans, remarking that pilots get the best treatment. Yes, back in WW I they did, seen as some sort of knights of the sky, gentlemen flyers, worthy adversaries. By the time World War II came around though it was a very different matter!
Personal Notes
This is the very first Twilight Zone episode in which Serling basically has no input, the story having been written by Richard Matheson (whose stories had been adapted for two previous ones) from his own work, “Flight”.