The Last Flight (Twilight Zone)
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“The Last Flight” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
[edit] Details
- Episode number: 18
- Season: 1
- Original air date: February 5, 1960
- Writer: Richard Matheson
- Director: William Claxton
[edit] Cast
[edit] Synopsis
[edit] Opening narration
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.
[edit] Main story
A British World War I fighter pilot (Decker) lands his Nieuport biplane on a 1960s American airbase after flying through a strange cloud. He is immediately taken into custody and questioned. After some prodding, he recounts how he was on patrol with his friend Alexander Mackaye, who was set upon by seven German aircraft. Instead of staying to help, Decker fled into the clouds, leaving him to die. He learns that Mackaye survived and went on to become a great hero in World War II, saving many lives in the Blitz. In fact, Air Vice-Marshal Mackaye is on his way to inspect the base.
Decker can't see how Mackaye could have survived the dogfight, until one of his interrogators suggests he got help. Since there were no other friendly fighters in the sector, Decker figures that it had to have been him who saved Mackaye, so he escapes to his plane and flies back through the cloud. Later, when Mackaye arrives, he is stunned when he is shown Decker's identification card. He reveals Decker did in fact save his life—at the cost of his own.
[edit] Closing narration
Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Dialogue 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. The amazing quality that the unfortunate young British officer learned was that of courage. He was by many regards a prisoner of his own fear of death, but finally found himself set free by the sacrifice he made in order to save his comrade. To be willing to go back into certain death is a quality beyond admiration. To possess it is what makes those who die in war worthy of eternal praise for their sense of selflessness. He surely found himself amongst those he so adamantly admired, those of a virtuous courage, not here in this mortal plane of existence, but in the hereafter, perhaps in the Twilight Zone...
[edit] Trivia
- Filmed on location at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California.
- The vintage 1918 Nieuport biplane was both owned and flown by Frank Gifford Tallman, and had previously appeared in many World War I motion pictures.
