The Lonely (The Twilight Zone)

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.

”

[edit] Synopsis

In 2046, an inmate sentenced to solitary confinement on the desert planet Ceres-XIV is visited by a spacecraft that regularly brings him supplies and news from the Earth. 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, 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 her, 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 her (and presumably, she with him).

When the ship returns, Captain Allenby brings news that Corry has been pardoned after a review of past murder cases. 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. He frantically tries to find some way to take Alicia with him, arguing that she is not a robot, but a woman, and insisting that Allenby simply does not know her 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 dies, malfunctioning, her face a mass of wire and broken circuitry, and Corry's illusion is presumably broken. He then takes Corry back to the ship, assuring him he will only be leaving behind loneliness.

[edit] 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.

”

[edit] Radio adaptation

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.

[edit] Trivia

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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.

”