The Lonely

"**The Lonely**"
"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 appearances
	Jack Warden; Jean Marsh; John Dehner; Ted Knight; James Turley;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Escape Clause"	Next →; "Time Enough at Last"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 1)
	List of episodes

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

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.

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 (flown by a Captain Allenby) 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, lest the space-traveling delivery crew would be stuck for 2 weeks or more, awaiting favorable orbit conditions to depart.

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".

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.

Cast

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

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 T. 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.

Science

In 2016 H.E., asteroid (469219) 2016 HO₃ was discovered, whose closest approach is nine million miles from Earth. However, its estimated size of 130–330 feet would not produce the gravity or atmosphere shown in the episode.

External links

"The Lonely" at IMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"