The Long Morrow
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| “The Long Morrow” | |||||||
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| The Twilight Zone episode | |||||||
 Stansfield, returning to Earth after 40 years, without the use of suspended animation. |
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| Episode no. | Season 5 Episode 135 |
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| Written by | Rod Serling | ||||||
| Directed by | Robert Florey | ||||||
| Guest stars | Robert Lansing : Commander Douglas Stansfield Mariette Hartley : Sandra Horn George Macready : Dr. Bixler Ed Binns : General Walters William Swan : Technician |
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| Featured music | Stock | ||||||
| Production no. | 2624 | ||||||
| Original airdate | January 10, 1964 | ||||||
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| List of Twilight Zone episodes | |||||||
"The Long Morrow" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Contents |
[edit] Opening narration
| “ | It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears. Case in point: the scene you're watching. This is not a hospital, not a morgue, not a mausoleum, not an undertaker's parlor of the future. What it is is the belly of a spaceship. It is en route to another planetary system an incredible distance from the Earth. This is the crux of our story, a flight into space. It is also the story of the things that might happen to human beings who take a step beyond, unable to anticipate everything that might await them out there... Commander Douglas Stansfield, astronaut, a man about to embark on one of history's longest journeys--forty years out into endless space and hopefully back again. This is the beginning, the first step toward man's longest leap into the unknown. Science has solved the mechanical details, and now it's up to one human being to breathe life into blueprints and computers, to prove once and for all that man can live half a lifetime in the total void of outer space, forty years alone in the unknown. This is Earth. Ahead lies a planetary system. The vast region in between is the Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] Synopsis
Stansfield, an astronaut, is sent to a planetary system 141 light-years from Earth. The trip will take 20 years each way. To save him the ordeal of forty years of loneliness, he is to be placed in (newly-developed) suspended animation. Before leaving, he meets and becomes enchanted by his colleague Sandra Horn in just one evening, but by the time he returned, Horn would be 40 years older and Stansfield would still be young because of the suspended animation.
Stansfield goes on his mission and 40 years later he returns (tragically, the job he was sent to do was already completed, using technology developed after he left). He thus returns a forgotten pioneer. It is revealed on his arrival that he voluntarily disabled the suspended animation system about six months into his journey so that he would be Horn's age. Shortly after he left however, Horn had herself placed in suspended animation so that she would be his age. In the tragic end, an aged Stansfield sadly urges Horn to live her new life without him.
[edit] Closing narration
| “ | Commander Douglas Stansfield, one of the forgotten pioneers of the space age. He's been pushed aside by the flow of progress and the passage of years--and the ferocious travesty of fate. Tonight's tale of the ionosphere and irony, delivered from--the Twilight Zone. | ” |
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- Stansfield was originally slated to have spent his entire spaceflight in suspended animation. Therefore he could not have spent that time in consciousness and consuming food, oxygen, and other expendables for which he was never provisioned.
- Before Stansfield's voyage, Dr. Bixler states that the ship can go 70 times the speed of light. A round-trip to a system 141 light-years away and back should take about 4 years and not 40.
