My friend Mike told me that he and his wife Betsy were watching The Twilight Zone, one episode each evening. I told him I would do the same. We’ve been texting every morning about the previous night’s episode. Day before yesterday we watched “The Lonely,” from season one, episode seven. I think I’ve seen this episode three times over the last sixty-plus years, but this time I thought more about the story. I think texting with Mike is pushing me to analyze the story in ways that casual watching never did.

The Twilight Zone tended to set its audience up for a surprise ending, often ignoring logic, or even other possibilities for how the story might go. Rod Serling wanted us to get involve and then surprise or shock us – but do it quickly. He treated his stories like a magic trick, and I don’t think he expected us to ask too many questions.

In “The Lonely,” Corry (Jack Warden), convicted of murder, has been sentence to solitary confinement on a deserted asteroid. He is visited four times a year by a supply rocket. The captain of the supply ship, Allenby (John Dehner), has taken pity on Corry and tries to bring him something each time to occupy his mind because he knows Corry is going crazy with loneliness. This time he brings him a large box. Allenby tells Corry not to open until he leaves. It turns out its a robot that looks, acts, and talks just like a beautiful woman. (It’s Jean Marsh who will star in Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1971.)

The robot is named Alicia. At first Corry is offended by thinking his loneliness could be eliminated by the companionship of a machine. But, Alicia is hurt by his rejection, and Corry takes pity on her. They become close.

Then Captain Allenby shows up again and tells Corry he’s been giving a pardon and has twenty minutes to get ready to leave. Corry assumes he can bring Alicia, but Allenby says there’s a weight limit because of limited fuel and he only has room for Corry. Corry can’t believe Allenby could be so cruel as to leave Allicia. To quickly convince Corry he is serious, Allenby shoots Alicia in the face, revealing all her mechanical parts.

This makes “The Lonely” a cold equations story. “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin was a controversial story from 1954. It set up a problem where the only solution was killing a teenage girl. A lot of readers hated “The Cold Equations” and over the decades they have protested that the author should have found a way to save her. They completely missed the point of the story. Godwin set up the story so the girl had to die. And that’s what Serling did in “The Lonely.”

Not only that, but they solved the plot quickly by having Captain Alleby shoot Alicia. I accept all that. That’s the point of the story. But here is where in 2024 I took a different path thinking about the story.

Why didn’t people talk about Corry falling in love with Alicia? In 1959, I wonder if the audience assumed Alicia was just a machine, and that Corry’s loneliness overcame the fact, that his love was a delusion. That when we see the mechanical parts of Alicia that we undertand why Alleby shoots her.

Over the decades, we’ve had a lot of stories that might be called robot liberation stories where many readers believe that a machine that looks and acts like a human is just as human as a biological person. I wonder if the ending shocks modern readers who have come to love robots. If someone shot C-3PO in the face and killed him, wouldn’t we be shocked and mourn his death?

If I remember right, there were a couple of Asimov robot stories where Susan Calvin kills a robot. I was always shocked by that.

In 2024 we don’t want robots murdered. Accepting the logic of the story that Alleby can only take one person back, how could we change it to work with modern audiences?

Rod Serling wrote this episode. He didn’t give the audience or Corry a chance to think about the options. His stories are setup to only work one way. When I was watching the episode I had forgotten the ending, and I wondered how Serling was going to solve the problem. Having Allenby shoot Alicia was a tidy way to end the story. After he shoots Alicia Alleby tells Corry that the only thing he’s leaving behind is his loneliness. Corry says, “I must remember that,” and “I must remember to keep that in mind.”

There’s a problem. We don’t get to decide and neither does Corry. I wish Serling had ended the story differently. I wish Allenby had handed Corry the gun and said, “I can take one person back, the ship leaves in fifteen minutes no matter what,” and then walks off.

The story could end there. We don’t really need to know the ending, because the story has shifted to thinking about all the possibilities. We should accept that the rocket only has fuel for one person. We should also assume there will be no future supply runs so if Corry stays, he will eventually die. We might also assume Alicia runs on radioactive pellets and will live a long time.

But let’s say the TV show had to reveal an ending. The camera in the very last scene could be aimed at the rocket’s hatch from the inside waiting to see who shows up. We could see Corry’s face climb into view, Alicia’s face climb into view, or Allenby say, “Time to go, shut the door.”

Each possible ending would imply so much still.

• Corry shows up and we think he shot Alicia
• Corry shows up and we think he didn’t shoot Alicia but left her to be lonely
• Alicia shows up and we think Corry shot himself
• Alicia shows up and we think Corry volunteered to die alone
• Neither show up and we think Corry decided to stay with Alicia
• Neither show up and we think Corry decided to stay with Alicia but kills her before he dies so she won’t be alone
• Neither show up and we think Corry decided to stay with Alicia but gives her the gun to make her own decision when he dies

It’s unfair to change an author’s story after the fact. But in this case, I’m suggesting my idea because it illuminates how people might have thought about the story in 1959 would be different from how we like to think about stories in 2024.

James Wallace Harris, 10/27/24