User Reviews

"The Long Morrow" often gets dismissed as one of several late-series misfires in TWILIGHT ZONE. This is more a science-fiction parable than a thriller. It's a subtle tale, aimed at an adult audience. The basic premise, incorporating a tragic dramatic irony, would seem silly in other hands, but Serling's writing and Robert Florey's directing give the dialog-driven story proper weight and it never drags. Most important of all, however, are the actors. Young Mariette Hartley shows more than just promise in her performance here. She seems to believe what she says and feels. The surprise of this romantic encounter is utterly real from her point of view. Opposite her is the great, nearly forgotten Robert Lansing. Lansing was a perfect actor for the TV medium. Never overly expressive of face or voice, he always maintains a truth in his playing, bringing out a deeper humanity underneath it all. When the horrible realization of what has happened strikes both these people, the viewer can feel it almost as strongly. There is a sadness about life in this episode, along with an invitation to ponder the unthinkable: spending forty years alone and awake in a spaceship.

This episode of the Twilight Zone is one of my favorites. Robert Lansing plays an experienced astronaut chosen by George Macready to explore a distant planet. For the trip, he is placed in suspended animation for the 40-year round-trip to the planet and back to Earth. Before takeoff, Lansing falls in love with Mariette Hartley's character, who works at the space base. Ms. Hartley is in one of her first science fiction roles on film, which later led to other roles in Star Trek and Genesis II, both created by the late Gene Roddenberry. The Long Morrow is a well-written, well-acted love story with a surprise ending characteristic of many Twilight Zone episodes. This classic episode is a must-see for science fiction enthusiasts and for the romantic at heart.

Many years ago a comedian told of a place where people reached a certain age and then began to get younger and move back toward birth. It was extremely sad when two twenty-year-olds met and fell in love, only to find they were moving in different directions. Here we have the astronaut who forsakes his ability to stay in suspended animation so he can meet the one he loves when he returns. This is a story of ultimate sacrifice and true love. The sad denouement is gut wrenching. Kudos to the creator of this story. It pulls at the heartstrings. The acting and pacing are very good and it has both elements of the Twilight Zone and a broader, more poetic drama.

Directed by veteran Robert Florey and written by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, "The Long Morrow" is one of the better last season entries in the series and features a very young Mariette Hartley in one of her earliest roles. The plot evolves around an astronaut (Robert Lansing at his subtle best) who is about to take a long journey through space, mostly in a suspended state of animation where his body and mind will not age like a normal person. To complicate his mission (and only a few weeks before takeoff), he meets the very attractive Ms. Hartley and immediately falls in love with her. She feels the same way about him, so Lansing decides on a highly unusual course of action. Instead of walking away from the mission (which would have been the logical thing to do) he takes a far different approach to his dilemma. He decides to let himself age inside the animation chamber so that he'll be forty years older when he returns (like his newfound lover). Since this is the Twilight Zone, something is bound to go wrong, and does with the usual disastrous effects.

The late Robert Lansing was one of those under-stated actors who never had to raise his voice nor so much as lift an eyebrow to make his feelings known on screen. He also never took roles that were beyond his range and this one suited him perfectly. Of course, Mariette Hartley went on to a long and distinguished career in television and is still a working actress to this day. Rounding out the cast are George Macready, best known for his ruthless French general in Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," and veteran character actor Edward Binns. Binns is well-remembered for playing the beleaguered Boston diocese cardinal in "The Verdict" who tries to buy off Paul Newman. The entire cast of "The Long Morrow" all contribute excellent work in making it one of the more riveting and powerful entries in Serling's great series.

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.

I was a teenager when the TZ originally aired and have seen just about all of the episodes, most many times. I am a fan and think that I appreciate just about all of them as small masterpieces, each in its own way. This episode may be appreciated for its irony, for its tricky ending, for its cleverness even though there are some plot holes (especially the lack of even short term communications) but what makes it perhaps the one I recall most often is the sadness. It is purely a story of love, love without reason and without end. It is the end of an episode but not the end of the love. The hero is able to do the heroic, unthinkable thing and sacrifice himself not once but twice. Even though one can rewrite the ending by letting him sleep while his love ages, that would not linger as bitterly. There is a similarity to Forever Young, the Mel Gibson movie about cryogenics,but here the sadness is even greater because of what the hero knowingly sacrifices to be with his love rather than to avoid experiencing his loss. A keeper.

It's the far far future -- 1988 -- and Robert Lansing is the astronaut selected to spend forty years in hibernation traveling to and from a distant planet. When he returns he'll be only a few weeks older than when he left. That notion of time slowing down with speed comes from Einstein. I know he's a Big Man in the physics business, but that's a lot of baloney. I know people who break speed limits all the time and they're getting old like everybody else.

In any case, Lansing suffers the misfortune of falling in love with Mariette Hartley in the short time before he's scheduled to leave. It's easy to see why. Hartley is not only attractive and nicely assembled, she's the granddaughter of John B. Watson, one of the founders of the behavioral school of psychology. She was also the granddaughter of Harold Ickes. (Kids: You'll have to look those two up. And look up Einstein while you're at it.)

See, the difficulty that Lansing and Hartley are faced with is this. During the long journey through space, Lansing will be in a state of hibernation and when he returns he'll be only thirty-one years old, whereas Hartley, not having such an advantage, will be in her seventies, "an old lady in a lace shawl." But, as someone put it, technology is in the driver's seat, not the humans who are supposed to control it. After Lansing shoves off, a method of suspended animation is invented on earth and Hartley puts herself into it, so that when he returns at the age of thirty one, she'll still be only twenty six.

I don't want to give away the ending but something goes awry. When Lansing returns to earth, having emerged from hibernation, he has turned into a grizzly bear and Hartley's aestivation has morphed her into a Malagasy fat-tailed dwarf lemur . Well, not really.

It's a neat story, though, and it's nicely, if inexpensively, packaged. Good cast. Not just Lansing and Hartley but George MacReady and Edward Binns, both sterling utility players. But Rod Serling must have thrown the script together in a hurry because much of the dialog sounds more stylized than usual. "I shall take your love with me," etc. And the aged Lansing's make up looks pretty bad, so he appears not to be old but to have been dead for the last three days.

Still, it's poignant, with a melancholy, ironic, and quite touching O. Henry sort of ending.

The Twilight Zone has been one of my favorite TV shows of all time and this episode reminds me why I love the show so much. I'll try my best not to give anything away in my review.

The story revolves around an astronaut (Doug) and a girl (Sandy). Doug is very experienced, motivated, and above all else Smart. Sandy is a beautiful woman working at the agency. After they bump into each other, they flirt, go out, and they ultimately fall in love. The space agency Doug works for assign's him to go on a space mission hundreds of light years away into another solar system in an attempt to find alien life forms. Doug and Sandy love each other very much and its heartbreaking for them, knowing that they are going to be separated. According to plan Doug's entire trip will take approximately 40 years to complete. However, his ship will allow Doug to remain in cryostasis for the majority of the time so that he'll hardly age during the entire trip. When Doug returns to Earth, Sandy will have aged 40 years while Doug will have remained a young man. As I said earlier, this will have all been according to plan. When to things ever go off without a hitch in the Twilight Zone? Well quite frankly, they never do.

Doug reaches the solar system, returns to earth, and meets Sandy 40 years later. Sounds simple, well not exactly. Not to spoil anything, but I will say that things go horribly wrong for everyone, especially Doug. There is one basic thing which causes everything to fall apart for Doug and Sandy. That one thing is simply "Love". Love is not rational, controllable, or predictable.

"The Long Morrow" shows us that Love is something that can take control over the strongest of all people such as Douglas Stansfield and in this case is his ultimate undoing.

In short, this episode shows us the extreme lengths that Doug goes thru in the name of love. Its a very sad and haunting episode that your sure to remember for a long time after you've seen it; and yet its bitter sweet. Its so hard to choose a favorite episode from this series since there were so many great ones, but "The Long Morrow" takes its place in my book as one of my top 3. I hope that you enjoyed my review. Take care.

P.S. Don't fall in love. That's what I learned from this episode.

Commander Stansfield left his suspended animation after (a short while). How could the food supply on board for a few weeks (not stated), last for an extended length of time?

This episode perhaps confirmed to me why TZ ranks up there as one of the best things I've ever watched, let alone TV shows. A perfect blend of heart-wrenching, haunting, bittersweet, without ever being overly sappy or predictable. Episodes involving journeys into outer space tend to make it into my Twilight Zone favorites (The Parallel from Season 4 for example), but what elevates this above the standard is the delicate and believable romantic connection that (almost) transcends time and space.

As a romantic at heart it came as a chilling warning about the sacrifices one makes for love. Of course for someone like Mariette Hartley, it would seem worth it!

The Long Morrow (1964) This episode of the original Twilight Zone series had to be one of the dumbest that aired and for both story and logical reasons. Commander Douglas Stansfield (Robert Lansing) is to go on a deep space mission that will return him to Earth in 40 years, but he won't age as he'll be in space-hibernation. Now just before he lifts off he meets Sandra Horna (Mariette Hartley) and after one date they are madly in love, but their romance is doomed because when he returns from his mission she'll be an old crone. This is when things get stupid; the ship returns and the New Space Agency finds a note in his file to notify Sandra Horn who the old Space Agency had put into hibernation shortly after Stansfield ship had left. Due to communication problems they were never able to notify him of the fact that his girlfriend is doing the "big sleep" as well. So what did Stansfield do? Six months after launching he took himself out of hibernation so that when he returned to Earth he and his true love would be the same age. So when craggy Stansfield sees still hot Sandra he nobly tells her to go on with her life. What an idiot!

The stupidity factor: * Deep space travel that planned on having it's passenger in hibernation would not have packed 40 years of extra food. * 40 years alone in a tiny space capsule would probably turn your brain into grape jelly. * Stansfield never considered that in the 40 years he was in space that Sandra may have gone on with her life and got married to some one else, or even die.

This episode was written by Rod Serling and is probably the worst of his sci-fi stories and a really lame re-telling of the classic O. Henry story "The Gift of the Magi" lame because Serling forgot the actual point of that story that at the end the couples sacrifices proved how much they truly loved each other. It didn't end with the husband nobly telling his wife to go on with her short haired life without him.

Another reviewer mentioned the dubious mathematical calculations used in the story's main plot, requiring a forty year round trip to a distant galaxy. To that I would add the conjecture of space travel seventy times faster than the speed of light. I don't think so.

It didn't surprise me so much that Commander Stansfield actually got older during the long flight, but that Sandra Horn (Mariette Hartley) put herself into a state of suspended animation. My question though, is how Stansfield pulled off that trick once he was launched into space. How did he manage to nullify the hibernation pod, and at the same time avoid appearing older to the viewer in repeated flashbacks during the flight. A lot of liberty was taken here with the concept to pull off the story.

But in typical Twilight Zone fashion, the episode makes one think about human values and the extent to which Man (and Woman) will go to realize an ultimate ambition. That it didn't work out here is another one of those Rod Serling twists that provides just enough irony to ingrain it into our memories forever.

It's somewhat entertaining but it will make you angry.

If she knew she could freeze herself when he launches into space WHY didn't they just discuss doing that in the first place? I don't recall the episode explaining properly a good excuse for that so it didn't seem very reasonable.

I also doubt on a mission designed to keep him frozen for soo long would have packed enough food for that length of time. You could argue its a backup measure but... yeah...

Ultimately I just feel like they tried to force this plot in too much and it's kinda weak because of that if not annoying.

If the man REALLY loved that women at the start, he never woulda gone into space on the condition she ages 40 years but he doesn't. No amount of fame is worth it. So I also take issue with that part.

Common ROD you can write better then that! (or whoever wrote this one) =)

While the actors were fine, the episode was poorly written. When the writer tells you the planetary system is 140 light years away and that your ship travels at 70 times the speed of light, the whole voyage should take 4 years, not 40. That's just sloppy, unless I mis-heard.

But what really bothers me, and yet is fascinating at the same time, is not the intended re-rendering of O. Henry's Gift of The Magi, instead it's the total focus of the script on the sacrifice Robert Lansing's character made for "love", with Edward Binns at his side, singing his hosannas.

Stunning.

First of all, the Mariette Hartley character sacrificed equally: losing her world, everyone she ever knew dead or 40 years older; and yet she was just dismissed, and then the script had her walk away without a comment.

And secondly, if he could just dismiss her like that, it wasn't love he felt for her, it was probably just narcissism; she actually wasn't real to him, he showed no empathy for her or her situation, his concerns were all about his precious feelings.

Finally, I know this episode was made in the mid 60s, but the cultural construct revealed is totally a 50's pre-woman's liberation mentality where woman's lives were totally marginalized, and like planetoids they only glowed by reflected light (at least in the 40s women were equal partners in the war effort i.e. Rosie the Riveter).

A fascinating and unconscious cultural artifact.