The Devil in the Dark

[Wingsley]

I just watched "The Devil in the Dark". This is the first time I've seen it in quite a while.

At first, when I started watching TOS in the '70's when I was a kid, I had mixed feelings about this episode. I found the Horta cheesy, especially during Spock's mind-melds. My feelings have evolved.

My attention refocused on the attitudes of the pergium miners and regarding the Horta as a character. The boys have to make a living, but they were not a good commentary on human nature. Too often people will turn a blind eye to negative personal and environmental impacts in pursuit of profit, and too often things can get reckless. The aging and dangerous pergium reactor scenario rings true. Sometimes to save on expenditures, natural resources extraction operators will keep using aging equipment past its viability, even when it is obvious that the old junk is no longer serviceable or safe. Whether this little bit of commentary was intentional on the part of TOS' makers is not clear to me, but it rings true and I am impressed with it.

The following little quote comes from Memory Alpha's article on this episode:

• Gene Roddenberry was impressed with the way this episode explains the behavior of a Star Trek "monster," citing the installment as "a classic example of doing this right" as well as "one of our most popular episodes." He went on to say, "The Horta suddenly became understandable [....] It wasn't just a monster–it was someone. And the audience could put themselves in the place of the Horta... identify... feel! That's what drama is all about. And that's it's importance, too... if you can learn to feel for a Horta, you may also be learning to understand and feel for other Humans of different colors, ways, and beliefs." (The Making of Star Trek, pp. 35 & 36)

This strikes me as a very Star Trek sentiment, and that this episode served very well as a vehicle to deliver that sentiment. Unfortunately, this kind of story was all too rare in TOS.

TNG tried, and, in my opinion, failed to do something (annoyingly) similar in its first-year ep "Home Soil". It was very disappointing to see the Enterprise-D's officers stumble onto what was clearly another silicon-based life form when it was obvious the idea was already part of a memorable TOS story almost exactly 20 year before. (This observation applies both in terms of the well-worn anti-TNG criticism about "retreads" and in-universe as well.) And since Starfleet already knew about the Crystalline Entity, the Enterprise-D's crew's surprise was all the more ridiculous.

Was "The Devil in the Dark" ahead of its time? Was it, at its heart, an environmental story? Was it not just about human diplomacy, but also about the notion that we as humans do not always command and control nature and dominate the landscape as competently as we wish to believe?

And wasn't the Horta, as both a character and a prop, an excellent example of how Star Trek could come up with a truly alien lifeform that is intelligent and ready to defend its own society's interests, without it appearing too "human"?

 

[2takesfrakes]

This episode is classic: True Yesterday. True Today. True Tomorrow. It also offers some novelties that later episodes do not, particularly what seems to be a rather large - and highly detailed (!!!) - matte painting, representing the mine structure. I'm not sure which came first, whether it was the suit (which I believe someone showed to Gene, suggesting it might be useable as a creature, some way) or if the story came first. Either way, a lot of care went into it and you can see that. And for a show that had no budget, the show benefitted from what seems to be an active interest in the concept.

 

[Warped9]

As I inderstand it the costume existed first for an Outer Limits episode called "Probe." Someone showed and demonstrated the costume to Roddenberry and the idea was planted to somehow create a story around it.

So the costume came first and the story second.

 

[RAMA]

I thought Home Soil was very successful. They aliens are more complex than in Devil in the Dark. It's a planet-wide sentient computer network (years before Avatar) and therefore very hard to put the pieces of the puzzle together to see it for what it was. To me the Star Trek message rings loud and clear, and unlike Devil in the Dark, there was never any knee jerk reaction to kill the life form, despite a whole planetary engineering project being put on hold.

The other difference is STNG was more consistent with it's POV..TOS continually had Kirk destroying ways of life and life forms all over the galaxy.

To be fair, Devil in the Dark is a better overall episode, but to me Home Soil is no also-ran.

RAMA

I just watched "The Devil in the Dark". This is the first time I've seen it in quite a while.

At first, when I started watching TOS in the '70's when I was a kid, I had mixed feelings about this episode. I found the Horta cheesy, especially during Spock's mind-melds. My feelings have evolved.

My attention refocused on the attitudes of the pergium miners and regarding the Horta as a character. The boys have to make a living, but they were not a good commentary on human nature. Too often people will turn a blind eye to negative personal and environmental impacts in pursuit of profit, and too often things can get reckless. The aging and dangerous pergium reactor scenario rings true. Sometimes to save on expenditures, natural resources extraction operators will keep using aging equipment past its viability, even when it is obvious that the old junk is no longer serviceable or safe. Whether this little bit of commentary was intentional on the part of TOS' makers is not clear to me, but it rings true and I am impressed with it.

The following little quote comes from Memory Alpha's article on this episode:

• Gene Roddenberry was impressed with the way this episode explains the behavior of a Star Trek "monster," citing the installment as "a classic example of doing this right" as well as "one of our most popular episodes." He went on to say, "The Horta suddenly became understandable [....] It wasn't just a monster–it was someone. And the audience could put themselves in the place of the Horta... identify... feel! That's what drama is all about. And that's it's importance, too... if you can learn to feel for a Horta, you may also be learning to understand and feel for other Humans of different colors, ways, and beliefs." (The Making of Star Trek, pp. 35 & 36)

This strikes me as a very Star Trek sentiment, and that this episode served very well as a vehicle to deliver that sentiment. Unfortunately, this kind of story was all too rare in TOS.

TNG tried, and, in my opinion, failed to do something (annoyingly) similar in its first-year ep "Home Soil". It was very disappointing to see the Enterprise-D's officers stumble onto what was clearly another silicon-based life form when it was obvious the idea was already part of a memorable TOS story almost exactly 20 year before. (This observation applies both in terms of the well-worn anti-TNG criticism about "retreads" and in-universe as well.) And since Starfleet already knew about the Crystalline Entity, the Enterprise-D's crew's surprise was all the more ridiculous.

Was "The Devil in the Dark" ahead of its time? Was it, at its heart, an environmental story? Was it not just about human diplomacy, but also about the notion that we as humans do not always command and control nature and dominate the landscape as competently as we wish to believe?

And wasn't the Horta, as both a character and a prop, an excellent example of how Star Trek could come up with a truly alien lifeform that is intelligent and ready to defend its own society's interests, without it appearing too "human"?

 

[3D ChessMaster]

The story I read somewhere, perhaps apocryphal, was Janos Prohaska did a trick with moving the costume over a cooked chicken then shuffling off to leave a chicken carcass behind and Gene Coon was so impressed he wrote the story in a few days.

It's my favourite episode, didn't William Shatner say it was his and give more background and anecdotes in Startrek Memories?
It has the best Mind Meld scene in all TOS. IMHO

 

[Push The Button]

Shatner's father had passed away while they were filming it. Think about that the next time you watch it, what a gifted and dedicated professional that man really is.

 

[Tracy Trek]

I felt it was a commentary on how so often we end up destroying the habitats of other forms of life to make room for human activities like growing crops, building houses, mining, etc.

The miners in this episode destroyed some of her eggs in their mining operation. She was just a mother defending her young.

 

[Green Shirt]

And for a show that had no budget

I don't recall Bob Justman being fired that week.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Quite so ... but you know what I mean!!! And Bob was COOL!

 

[Wingsley]

I have no idea how much the Horta costume would cost, or the pulsating "piece of Horta" prop used after Kirk and Spock shot Mama Horta, but if that cost was negligible it doesn't bother me. The only thing that still (slightly) irritates me are the recycled sound effects for the Horta. They turned up the "cheesy" to 11 for those sounds.

You can look at "The Devil in the Dark" and call it the ultimate "bottle show" (a TNG term for episodes that used interior sets) if you like, and the perfectly flat cave floors were also pretty cheesy, but the show still worked very well. It was actually a shining example of how TOS made an action show effective on very little money.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Regarding "the perfectly flat cave floors," I noticed a similar problem with the Borg vessel, when that species was first introduced in TNG. The cheap flooring tiles looked like something you'd find in a small office setting, It should've been straight black. But I'm sure STAR TREK interior designers get shafted the most, when it comes to the budget and it's not just a TNG thing, either. I guess we're just not supposed to notice ...

 

[Wingsley]

It's easy enough to retcon the Janus VI mines' floors as being filled with some kind of uber-high-tech self-leveling flooring compound. The thing that was really interesting was that a Horta, a creature that can supposedly win through solid subterranean rock, always seems to approach its victims at floor level, not dropping out of a wall or cave-ceiling. But we'll give that one a pass. If Mama Horta descended from above and went ker-plop on James T. Kirk, it would've made for a very unfortunate anti-climax, right?

 

[Trekfan12]

it's one of my fave eps. I love how Spock wants to save the Horta and Kirk says to shoot it on sight because it's a proven killer. Then later when they try to find the Horta Kirk find her and Spock tells him to shoot it cause his life is in danger.
Love the mind meld scene.
isn't that the scene they shot while Bill was at his father's funeral. It's amazing how he got through those scenes while waiting for when he had to leave for his flight (I think he wanted something else to think about than the lose of his father. He says Leonard stayed pretty close to him. I thought that was touching)

 

[3D ChessMaster]

It's nice how the sensibilities of the show have developed during season 1. In the Man Trap they just want to kill the 'Monster of the Week ' Salt Vampire but here they take considerable risks to save the Horta and benefit from that.

I believe some of the shots for the Mind Meld scene go over the shoulder of a double for Shatner. And there is a funny story when William Shatner came back from his father's funeral and asks Leonard Nimoy to show him how the Mind Meld scene went.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

It's an excellent story about encountering people of a culture that behaves differently from yours, assuming at first that they are simply murdering monsters, and then coming to a true understanding of the situation and realizing that from their perspective your own people were the murdering monsters. Fine example of what we think of as a Star Trek message, useful even for today's times when the political and social environment is so polarized.

Great double-meaning title for this purpose, since it turns out the humans were the "devils" who were "in the dark" about what they were doing to the eggs.

 

[Timo]

The aging and dangerous pergium reactor scenario rings true.

...Note that it's not just the mine that is using a pergium reactor - a dozen planets depend on those. Or at least they depend on Janusian pergium for their reactors, which they for some reason are not willing to replace with other reactor types.

The technology on Janus may be old, but the reactor as such isn't said to be aging, nor is it dangerous when not sabotaged. It's simply too old for Scotty to carry spares for it, is all - that's the plot complication for which the reactor exists in the first place.

In-universe, though, it seems the Federation just follows its standard pattern: whenever a resource is rare enough that only a single known commercially viable source for it exists, entire planets will build their infrastructures to be absolutely dependent on that resource. At least this time the single source is in UFP hands to start with, rather than something they need to conquer or otherwise secure from aliens!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

In an time when you can replicate antique flintlock guns it seems silly you can't replicate parts for a much more contemporary piece of machinery.

 

[Timo]

It's also a matter of a poor choice of technobabble: if it's a "pump", why can't it be a black box with a hole in, a hole out, and throughput specs? Surely Scotty has all sorts of pumps in stock, and bolting them on should only be a matter of finding the right pieces of piping - something even easier to replicate than flintlock mechanisms. Unless pergium is something that damages most pumps, of course: a fission reactor cooled by liquid sodium today does require pretty special pumps...

Of course, if the heroes can't catch the thief, no attempt at repairs is gonna help any: the enemy will simply strike again, probably more destructively. So not installing a substitute for the missing pump may actually be tactically wise. But that's not the rationale our heroes quote.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Marsden]

It's nice how the sensibilities of the show have developed during season 1. In the Man Trap they just want to kill the 'Monster of the Week ' Salt Vampire but here they take considerable risks to save the Horta and benefit from that.

I agree, but I always thought the Salt Monster had it coming even though it kills less people, it's the way that it does it.
It's hard to explain, but the Salt Monster is intelligently luring people in to prey on them and the Horta is ambushing them to kill them.
Sounds about the same, but the biggest difference is when intelligence is established and possibility of communication is there, the Horta is able to come to an agreement with a legitimate list of grievances against the Federation, the Salt Monster chooses to murder the only person that was actually on it's side just to shut it up.

 

[Wingsley]

In an time when you can replicate antique flintlock guns it seems silly you can't replicate parts for a much more contemporary piece of machinery.

Yes, this also seemed silly.

Kirk would later tell Korob and Sylvia that Enterprise "could manufacture a ton" of precious stones, but there's something about a Pergium PXK reactor that makes it problematic. It's like dilithium, I guess. Used all over the place, but suddenly very rare when Kryton sabotages the ship.