The Lonely (The Twilight Zone)

"The Lonely"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 7
Directed by	Jack Smight
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Bernard Herrmann
Production code	173-3602
Original air date	November 13, 1959
Guest actors
Jack Warden Jean Marsh John Dehner Ted Knight James Turley

"The Lonely" is episode seven of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on November 13, 1959 on CBS.

Plot summary

In 2046, an inmate named Corry is sentenced to solitary confinement on a distant asteroid for 50 years. In his fourth year of confinement, he is visited by a spacecraft that regularly brings him supplies and news from the Earth four times a year. The ship and crew can stay for only a few minutes each visit, as the asteroid's orbit and the ship's fuel consumption rate make longer visits impossible.

Captain Allenby has been trying to make Corry's stay humanely tolerable by bringing him things to take his mind off the loneliness. On this trip on the 15th day of the 6th month of the fourth year, however, Allenby tells Corry not to open a certain crate that has just been delivered until after the transport crew leaves. Upon opening the special container, Corry discovers that Allenby has left him with a feminine robot, named Alicia, to keep him company. At first, Corry detests it, rejecting Alicia as a mere machine; synthetic skin and wires inside. However, when Corry sees that Alicia is in fact capable of crying, he begins to fall in love with it.

When the ship returns, Captain Allenby brings news that Corry has been pardoned after a review of past murder cases, but they only have 20 minutes to leave. Corry, it seems, can return home to Earth immediately. Corry is delighted, until he learns that there is only room for 15 pounds of luggage, far too little for his robot companion, as there are seven other passengers on the ship from other asteroids. He frantically tries to find some way to take Alicia with him, arguing that it is not a robot, but a woman, and insisting that Allenby simply does not know it as he does. At that point, just as the rest of the transport crew is surprised at the sight of Alicia, Allenby suddenly draws his gun and shoots the robot in the face. The robot breaks down, malfunctioning, its face a mass of wire and broken circuitry which repeats the word "Corry". He then takes Corry back to the ship, assuring him he will only be leaving behind loneliness. "I must remember that", Corry says tonelessly. "I must remember to keep that in mind".

Cast

• Jack Warden as James A. Corry
• Jean Marsh as Alicia
• John Dehner as Allenby
• Ted Knight as Adams
• James Turley as Carstairs

Quotations

Opening narration

Witness if you will, a dungeon, made out of mountains, salt flats, and sand that stretch to infinity. The dungeon has an inmate: James A. Corry. And this is his residence: a metal shack. An old touring car that squats in the sun and goes nowhere - for there is nowhere to go. For the record, let it be known that James A. Corry is a convicted criminal placed in solitary confinement. Confinement in this case stretches as far as the eye can see, because this particular dungeon is on an asteroid nine-million miles from the Earth. Now witness, if you will, a man's mind and body shriveling in the sun, a man dying of loneliness.

Closing narration

On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man's life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them. All of Mr. Corry's machines, including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete - in The Twilight Zone.

Other media

An audio adaptation of "The Lonely", featuring Mike Starr as Corry, was produced for radio in the mid-2000s; it was released on CD by CBS Consumer Products in 2007 as part of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas Vol. 4.

In 2007, "The Lonely" was produced for the stage by 4 Letter Entertainment.

Production information

This was the first regular episode to enter production following the success of the pilot episode, "Where Is Everybody?" in selling the series.

This was the first of several episodes (including "I Shot an Arrow Into the Air", "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" and "The Rip Van Winkle Caper") to be filmed on location in Death Valley. Unprepared for the terrible conditions they would face, the crew suffered extreme dehydration and heat exhaustion and director of photography George Clemens even collapsed, falling from a camera crane while filming continued.

Jack Warden would star in another episode of this season featuring a robot, "The Mighty Casey", also written by Rod Serling.

Further reading

• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

• "The Lonely" at IMDb