Flight
Entry updated 2 March 2026. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (1958-1959). California National Productions. Producers: Al Simon and Robert Stillman. Directors: Maurice Geraghty, Gerry Morton, Val Raset, Boris Sagal and Jean Yarbrough. Writers included Tony Barrett, Antony Ellis, Leonard Heideman, Jack Laird and John Meredyth Lucas. 38 30-minute episodes. Black and white.
This Television Anthology Series, generally dedicated to realistic stories about past and present aviators, is of sf interest solely because of its final episode, "Outpost in Space" (1959), a space adventure. In the Near Future, a planetary outpost receives a distress call from an aging pilot, who subsequently must be rescued after he crash-lands on an Alien planet. The episode is one of the few sf dramas to raise the issue of the dangers of obsolescence in space, in two ways: the pilot has reached retirement age but insisted upon continuing to fly, perhaps contributing to his crisis, and his Spaceship is said to be antiquated and should have been put out of service, suggesting that the expense of Space Flight might become a problem. The episode can be interpreted either as a signal of a projected shift in focus to sf in a second season of Flight that never materialized, or as a pilot for a separate sf series. 1959, of course, was a banner year for Spacesuit Films on television, as interest in the emerging Mercury programme also inspired the failed pilot Destination Space (1959), the series Men into Space (1959-1960), and several episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). [GW]
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