The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Eighteen “The Last Flight”

Original Air Date: February 5, 1960
Writer: Richard Matheson (based on “Flight”)
Director: William F. Claxton

“Maybe it wasn’t an accident that I landed here. Maybe I was brought here for a purpose to find out that time was giving me a second chance. You’ve got to let me go!”

The script for “The Last Flight” was entirely written by Richard Matheson, it was initially titled “Flight,” and this wound up being the first non-Serling teleplay in the series (Matheson’s previous submissions were rewritten into teleplays by Rod Serling). This episode is a classic “man out of time” story that offers a rare opportunity for a lone World War I pilot to redeem himself in order to claim the mantle of heroism (see “King Nine Will Not Return” comparison). This is one of many classic time travel episodes of The Twilight Zone.

“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.”
-Rod Serling

It is March 5, 1917. British Royal Flying Corp Second Lieutenant William Terrance “Terry” Decker (played by Kenneth Haigh) flies his plane into a thick cloud before emerging and landing at an airport base. He lands at Lafayette Air Base, an American base in Reims, France many years later in the year 1959. Somehow he has traveled through time. The American military personnel at Lafayette are utterly baffled as to why a World War I era plane has just landed. When questioned, Lt. Decker explains both the time and the place from which he comes –he thought he was landing at 56th Squadron R.F.C. in 1917 (the real date is March 5, 1959). He provides documentation as to his identity.

Lt. Decker had just abandoned his flying partner, Alexander “Mac” Mackaye (pronounced “Muh-Kye”), as he were surrounded by seven German aircraft (Lt. Decker claims he was fleeing from three). Leaving his partner for dead, Lt. Decker veered into a cloud and disappeared into the future. Lt. Decker now believes himself to be a coward. He laments the loss of his old friend”Old Leadbottom” Mackaye. He learns that Mackaye is scheduled to arrive at Lafayette that same day and he begins to realize that time has offered him a second chance to save his friend. He springs back into his plane, assaulting several officers and overcoming his own cowardice in doing so.

When Mackaye arrives he is asked about Lt. Decker. To which he responds, “Terry Decker? Oh I should know him – he saved my life.” Mackaye describes how they were out on patrol when seven German planes surrounded them. Mackaye watched as Decker fled and disappeared into a cloud, returning moments later guns ablaze. Decker shot down three German aircraft before being shot down himself. Decker’s actions saved Mackaye’s life but Decker’s personal effects were never recovered. Mackaye is handed Decker’s identification and other personal items. In shock, Mackaye asks where they came from to which the American Major responds with a nickname only Decker would have known, “Maybe you’d better sit down, Old Leadbottom.”

“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, the earth, lies The Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “The Last Flight”

The writings of Plato and Aristotle are replete with examinations of the nature of courage, and it is precisely this question of courage that our British pilot must face in this episode of The Twilight Zone. Some supernatural force has granted Lt. Decker the chance to redeem himself and sacrifice his own life for a friend. However, courage is not easy. Many of us would like to think we would choose the higher path and fly back up into that cloud, but such passion does not waywardly come along among humans. The hero’s choice is presented to Achilles in The Iliad –to live a long, happy, quiet life or else die young in glorious battle and become a hero. In some ways, this is the same hero’s journey faced by Lt. Decker in “The Last Flight.”

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Credits

• Director: William F. Claxton
• Written by: Richard Matheson (based on his short story “Flight”)
• Music: Stock from “Where Is Everybody?” by Bernard Herrmann
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
• Film Editor: Joseph Gluck
• Assistant Director: Edward Denault
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
• Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
• Starring:
  • Kenneth Haigh…..Flight Lt. Decker
    • Kenneth Haigh (1931-2018) was an English actor who was known for playing the role of Jimmy Porter in the play Look Back in Anger in 1956 opposite Mary Ure in London’s West End theatre. He also made a brief uncredited appearance in the Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Haigh married the West Indies model Myrna Stephens in 1974, they divorced in 1985, but remained good friends; she nursed him through his final years of ill-health after he accidentally swallowed a bone in a restaurant in Soho causing brain damage due to lack of oxygen to the brain. He died in 2018 at the age of 86. He was paid $2,000 for this episode (a far cry from the $5,000 paid to Ida Lupino and Ed Wynn for their respective appearances).
  • Simon Scott…..Major Wilson
    • Simon Scott (1920-1991) was an American character actor from Monterey Park, California. He was best known for his role as Arnold Slocum on the television series Trapper John M.D. He made appearances on Perry Mason, Bonanza, and The Munsters among other shows. He died of Alzheimer’s in 1991 at the age of 71.
  • Alexander Scourby…..Major General Harper
    • Alexander Scourby (1913-1985) was an American film, television, and voice actor and narrator known for his deep and resonant voice and Mid-Atlantic accent. He is best known for his film role as the mob boss Mike Lagana in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), and he is also well-remembered in the English-speaking world for his numerous landmark audio recordings for the blind, particularly of the entire King James Version audio Bible, which have been released in numerous editions. He started his career in radio before moving to theater and television. He married Lori von Eltz in 1943 (also known as the actress “Lori March,” daughter of motion-picture actor Theodor von Eltz). The couple had one daughter, Alexandra, born in March 1944.
  • Robert Warwick…..Air Vice Marshal Alexander Mackaye (pronounced “Muh-Kye”)
    • Robert Warwick (1878-1964) was an American stage, film, and television actor –a matinee idol during the silent film era who later developed into a aristocratic character actor for the “talkies.” He was married three times, had two daughters, and died in June 1964.
  • Harry Raybould…..Corporal
    • Harry Raybould (1932-1997) made appearances in shows like Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, Daniel Boone and others.
  • Jerry Catron…..Guard
    • Jerry Catron (1932-2017) appeared in shows like Lost in Space and The Green Hornet. He appeared in three Star Trek episodes –“Operation – Annihilate,” “The Doomsday Machine,” and “Journey to Babel.”
  • Jack Perkins…..Mechanic
    • Jack Perkins (1921-1998) was an American film and television actor who was perhaps best known for his many appearances on TV as a comic drunk. He appeared in films like Blazing Saddles and television shows like Star Trek (“Bread and Circuses”).
  • Paul Baxley…..Jeep driver
    • Paul Baxley (1923-2011) was an American actor and stunt coordinator best known for his work as a stunt coordinator on Star Trek –he was a stunt double for William Shatner. Baxley doubled for several important Hollywood actors, such as Marlon Brando, Alan Ladd, and James Dean. He played an uncredited role as a CIA Agent in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
  • Paul Mantz…..the stunt pilot
    • Paul Mantz (1903-1965) was a stunt flier and former member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. The following year, he began collaborated with Frank Gifford Tallman.

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• The vintage Nieuport airplane for this episode was brought in and flown by its owner Frank Gifford Tallman, a veteran motion picture pilot. The plane had been used in a variety of Hollywood World War I productions. George T. Clemens’s cinematography in this episode wonderfully captures the distinctions between old and new aviation as this vintage 1917 war plane lands alongside a more advanced military jet aircraft in 1959.
• Matheson claimed that he sold Serling and Houghton on the idea for “The Last Flight” with a mere one sentence synopsis: a British World War I pilot gets lost and lands on an American base in 1959.
• Buck Houghton and Rod Serling loved the idea for this story so Leo Lefcourt contacted Gordon Levey of the Preminger-Stuart Agency to negotiate a deal for Matheson to write the full outline of this story with the possibility of composing the teleplay. Matheson was later paid $1,750 for his teleplay (the lowest fee for his services on The Twilight Zone). Matheson and Beaumont shared the same agent and were often paid $2,000.
• Rod Serling noted there was a similar radio script that was aired on Quiet, Please called “One for the Book.” He and Matheson briefly considered tracking down Wyllis Cooper to purchase the rights.
• This episode was filmed at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California. Norton AFB was decommissioned and closed in 1994. The site is now San Bernardino International Airport.
• The rank of Air Vice Marshall (AVM) in the R.A.F. is roughly equivalent to the rank of Major General in the U.S.A.F. Therefore, officers Harper and Mackaye are of equal rank.
• The helicopter in the hangar and later seen taking off is a Sikorsky H-5. The first flight of this model was on August 18, 1943 before it was retired in 1957. Over 300 helicopters of this type were built.
• Other military aircraft visible in this episode include: a C-124 Globemaster (the first aircraft Lt. Decker passes when he is taxied off the runway), several USAF F-100 Super Sabre jets, a C-47 Skytrain, an F-104 Starfighter model on Major General Harper’s desk, and F-102 Delta Dagger jets.
• This episode acknowledged assistance from the Department of Defense and the Department of the Air Force.
• Three pictures of jets are hung on the walls of Major General Harper’s office –the first appears to be a US Navy F-9F Cougar, the second photo appears to be an A-4 Skyhawk, the third appears to be a C-124 Globemaster.
• Buck Houghton forwarded two copies of the revised script to Captain Damon Eckles of the Air Force hoping he might act as a consultant and offer feedback (which he did).
• In his narration, Rod Serling pronounces Lieutenant in the British fashion as “leftenant” in this episode.
• This episode takes place in Reims, France on March 5, 1959.
• The serial number on the American military vehicle reads: “20979954.”
• Lt. Decker references another pilot, a Frenchman named “Guimerd” who also disappeared into a similar cloud.
• Richard Matheson later praised this story; he liked using titles with double-meanings –“it was his flight from his cowardice, and a flight from the past to the future, and so on.”

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