The Lonely (The Twilight Zone)

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The Twilight Zone original series Season one (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1959 – Summer 1960 List of The Twilight Zone episodes

Episodes: 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

“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

An inmate sentenced to solitary confinement on the desert planet Ceres-XIV receives a feminine robot to keep him company. At first, he detests her, rejecting her as a mere machine. However, when he sees she is capable of crying, in time 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 Ceres-XIV instead, the captain of the ship finally shoots it in the face and takes him aboard, assuring him he will be leaving behind loneliness.

[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 planet called Ceres, 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.

”

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

[edit] References

• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

[edit] External links

• TV Tome episode page