Twilight Zone: The Long Haul - The Last Flight

 ...and somewhere between heaven, sky, and the earth lies The Twilight Zone.

There are times when characters take unexpected, life-altering trips in time, either forward or back. Sometimes because of the time travel, how events happen results from someone passing through some sort of "rift", and often there is no explanation given. Such as Richard Matheson's penned "The Last Flight" about a WWI British pilot of the 56th Squadron landing 42 years into the future while "lighting out" of a fight with German planes, leaving his teammate "Old Leadbottom" behind to be surrounded (and possibly killed). Because he moved through some rift within a mysterious white cloud, Terry Becker (Haigh) is informed by American officers on a base stationed in France that Old Leadbottom, Mackaye, is not dead. Becker wonders if this whole chance travel forward encounter in time to meet the likes of Major Wilson (Simon Scott), and Wilson's commanding officer, Major General Harper (Alexander Scourby) was specifically designed somehow for him to realize his destiny...to return to WWI and make sure Mackaye does live through that big fight in the sky. That ending where Old Leadbottom (Robert Warwick) meets Harper and Wilson once Becker is able to escape confinement and get back to his plane so he could fly off (and back) to where he belongs in 1917 still leaves this chill. I'm impressed that effect can still be left on me despite all the many times I have watched this episode. If you had asked me what my Top 10 favorite TZ episodes were back around 1996, "The Last Flight" would have surely been among that list. Obviously since then I've watched the series over and over, so many others have surpassed it, but this episode was one of the first real signs that TZ could play around with time travel and tell one hell of an absorbing story about how a group of characters are impacted by such a historic event. How officers of 1959 could inspire a pilot from 1917 to return to his own time and make sure his friend got out alive so he could in turn save possibly thousands through his heroism during the Blitz in WWII is quite a story developed by the brilliant Matheson. This is why TZ is my favorite show. I can watch an episode countless times and yet return to it and find myself right wrapped up in it yet again.

[SYFY, 4:31 AM, November 15]