Review of The Long Morrow

There are times when the Twilight Zone can reward those who have taken it on the chin by life, but sometimes the show can be awfully tough on its protagonists. Almost none the more so than with "The Long Morrow" with Robert Lansing, playing a space astronaut pioneer to be sent into space to another solar system, in suspended animation, not to age but remain away from Earth for forty years. Before leaving Lansing meets a Space Agency beauty played by Mariette Hartley in the hall and immediate chemistry urges the two of them to meet for a date that night which results in eventual love. The tragedy of this is that she'll be forty years older and he will remain in his early thirties upon return. The episode has us returning to Lansing asleep on his ship waxing poetic, alternating back and forth in time, cluing us in to why he's in space travel and what drives him to make a life-altering decision for the woman in love that backfires tragically. While the dialogue is romantic gobbledygook, both leads are really good, but the sci-fi plot of the episode takes a back seat to the love story. George Macready is Lansing's mission colleague, given a rather small part but he makes the most of his limited time. Sadly their mission was a waste due to resulting technological advances during Lansing's tenure in space…it is learned by Ed Binns' General Walters forty years in the future that the mission was deemed unnecessary. So Lansing lost forty years for nothing that wasn't discovered sooner. He returns much to the surprise of Walters at headquarters who have all but forgotten about him! Hartley's decision once Lansing left into space and Lansing's own decision regarding suspended animation makes for such a devastating conclusion…a twist quite cruel to the episode's hero. The old age makeup has been under a lot of scrutiny, but the pained expression all the same delivers the needed results. Hartley is absolutely stunning. Lansing was always a fine actor of subtlety.