Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree Page A

Driver: Jack Perkins
    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
    While on a World War I flying mission, Decker experiences a fit of cowardice and deserts his best friend, who is surrounded by enemy planes. In his panic, he flies through a strange white cloudand lands at a modern-day American air base in France. He is immediately taken into custody by a major and led into the office of the bases commanding general. At first, both officers doubt Deckers authenticity, but slowly the major comes to believe his story. In turn, Decker discovers that the man he left to die survived, went on to become a hero in World War II, and is due to inspect the base that very day. Realizing that his trip in time has been for a purposeto give him a second chanceDecker overpowers the major, escapes to his plane and takes off, disappearing into the same white cloud. Later that day, Deckers former friend, now a flight marshal in the RAF, arrives at the base. From him we learn that Decker did return to save himat the cost of his own life.
    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, andin the sky, that perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone.
    The first non-Serling script to go into production was Richard Mathesons The Last Flight. While the episode is thoroughly as effective as anything Serling wrote for the series, it is totally different in its emphasis. Matheson had none of Serlings sentimentality or nostalgia and none of his affection for the little people, those insignificant, slightly eccentric characters so in evidence in many of Serlings scripts. Rather, his strength lay in the power of his plotting, the inexorable way in which his stories unfold. This is particularly evident in such episodes as The Invaders (Agnes Moorhead menaced by tiny spacemen) and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (the gremlin on the wing), but it holds true for The Last Flight, as well. We watch not because of any particular warmth we feel for the characters but because the story is so interesting.
    This strength in plotting not only helped Matheson sell the concept of The Last Flight to the viewers, but to Serling and Houghton as well. Normally, the procedure for a first-time contributor to the show would have been to write an outline before going to script, but in this case, Matheson just told them the idea. That was one of those cases, he explains, where the idea is so vivida World War I pilot lands and hes on a modern airbaseit gives you a vision so immediately that they responded to it.
    The Last Flight was filmed on location at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California. Director William Claxton sent actors Kenneth Haigh, Simon Scott, Alexander Scourby, arid Robert Warwick through the motions with as little trickery and embroidery as possible, with the result that the drama of the piece emerges out of its utter straightforwardness. The vintage 1918 Nieuport biplane used in the episode was both owned and flown by Frank Gifford Tallman, a veteran motion picture pilot. As for the plane, it too had been previously before the cameras in such films as The Dawn Patrol, Lafayette Escadrille, Men with Wings, and The Lost Squadron. As a matter of fact, Tallman remarked in 1959, this particular airplane has appeared in more World War I motion pictures than any other plane.
    When Tallman landed the biplane at Norton Air Force Base, he discovered that the allure resulting from the juxtaposition of two time-frames extended