This is an episode that I've come to feel is one of the best, more for presentation than originality. It's almost a shame it's only a half-hour TV show. Most of the 'Twilight Zone' episodes were perfectly suited for that length and to have made them any longer would have meant excessive padding. In fact, some of them seemed padded at thirty-minutes. But 'The Lonely' could easily have been an hour in length, and might well have worked better had it been. Jack Warden stars as Corry, a convict serving a fifty-year sentence at some point in the future on a barren but liveable asteroid somewhere out in the galaxy. He is given a metal shack to live in and every three months a ship from Earth brings him supplies. Aside from the brief visits though, he is completely alone, and we see that it is driving him to the brink of madness, perhaps suicide. The captain of the supply ship tries to help Corry stave off those feelings to the extent he can, by bringing him books and things to occupy his time... even an old car to work on. Corry is grateful to the man but still is slowly succumbing to loneliness. One day the supply ship brings him a lifelike female robot, one that is programmed to feel and react just like a human. At first Corry rejects it, then comes to accept and finally even fall in love with Alecia, which is the robot's name. When the supply ship returns, the captain has, he thinks, great news... Corry has been pardoned and he is to return to Earth with them. One catch- he can only take 15 pounds of baggage with him, which means Alicia can't go. Corry pleads with the captain that she is real, but there is precious little time and finally, in a typical though brutal Twilight Zone twist, the captain shoots Alecia in the face, revealing her wires and circuitry, in effect 'killing' her to prove she isn't human. Then he takes Corry with him. There are a number of nice touches in 'The Lonely.' The old jalopy that Corry has worked on to alleviate his boredom, the empty landscape, the metal shack itself. Jack Warden gives a wonderful performance as Corry, as does Jean Marsh as Alecia, though she has very few lines of dialogue. It is more her presence than anything. Rod Serling's writing is some of his best, spare yet evocative... particularly Corry's line at the end when the ship captain reminds him Alecia was only a machine... "I must try to remember that." A very powerful and sad episode of the classic series.
Review of The Lonely
