The Lonely (The Twilight Zone)

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“The Lonely” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 7
Season: 1
Production code: 173-3602
Original air date: November 13, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Jack Smight

[edit] Cast

James Corry: Jack Warden
Alicia: Jean Marsh
Captain Allenby: John Dehner
Adams: Ted Knight

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An inmate alone on a prison asteroid receives a feminine robot to keep him company. At first, he detests her, rejecting her as a mere machine. In time, however, he learns to love her.

When a ship brings the news that he has been pardoned after a review of past cases and that he can go home immediately, he is delighted...until he learns that there is only room for 15 pounds of luggage, far too little for his robot. The man frantically tries to find some way to take her with him, but there is no solution. When he decides to stay on the asteroid instead, the captain of the ship finally shoots it in the face and drags him aboard.

[edit] Trivia

The first of many 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.

The following is an excerpt from Rod Serling’s pitch to potential sponsors of his new show, The Twilight Zone. It was included as an extra on Twilight Zone's DVD release, and was transcribed by Matthew Cregg.

“This is sand. It represents desert, the desert that you’ll see on your screen in a story we call ‘The Lonely.’ ‘The Lonely’ is about a man sentenced to a lifetime of solitary confinement. The confinement takes place on a sandy asteroid far out in space. It’s the story about a man slowly succumbing to a kind of nightmarish loneliness. A gradual disintegration of mind and body because human beings have that palpable need for companionship. A most benevolent and compassionate official sends the prisoner a long, rectangular box containing, well, a machine. A machine inside of a robot built in the form of a woman. It’s a robot that talks and acts like a human being. A robot that thinks like a human being. Gentlemen, I can only tell you that ‘The Lonely,’ which involves a man and a woman made out of plastic and wires with a machine for a heart, will provide a most bizarre experience. As to the physiological extensions of their relationship, that is man and female machine and what they do in their spare time, we’re leaving this wide open.