(by Collin R. Skocik, adapted for this article)
There’s a monster on the loose in the mines of Janus VI! An isolated colony, a network of underground tunnels on an uninhabitable planet, kept pressurized and heated by an antiquated pergium reactor. And the miners are being killed, their bodies found burned into steaming marks on the floor, as if doused with highly corrosive acid. The creature responsible has been sighted, but the miners’ phasers do no good. So the Enterprise is called in to assist.
At first, “The Devil in the Dark” seems like a sci-fi monster story, much like the abundance of horror movies to come out of the 1950s—and not entirely unlike the movie Alien which would come out twelve years later. The reason the creature is unaffected by the miners’ phasers is because, unlike all other known life forms, its DNA is based not on carbon, but silicon. It is, essentially, a living rock.
The possibility of silicon-based life is often discussed by scientists, and is now a well-worn science fiction trope. Silicon, like carbon, bonds with itself and forms chains. Today scientists don’t believe silicon-based life is possible because silicon chains are only a few atoms long—just not long enough to contain the information of a DNA strand, compared to the millions of atoms in a carbon chain. And the temperature has to be so cold for silicon atoms to form those chains that it would take forever for life forms to emerge. Still, the universe has a lot of surprises for us; maybe silicon-based life is out there somewhere.
But the twist in this story—so utterly, typically Star Trek—is that this is no ferocious beast stalking and killing humans just to be scary. The miners have inadvertently broken into its nest and have been destroying its eggs. The creature, called a Horta, is actually a highly intelligent and entirely friendly creature. But when her eggs are destroyed, she lashes out in grief and fury. This strange, inhuman, ghastly monster that looks like a pulsating blob of pizza becomes a character, a totally understandable person with identifiable motivations.
Watching the Horta always puts me in mind of highly intelligent animals on Earth, such as dolphins, whales, elephants, gorillas, who humans hunt and kill for whatever reason, and I always ask, “Aren’t we better than this?” If we can make a TV show that understands respect for all life forms, why can’t we do it in real life? Why do we assume that we have the right? It grieves me to think of the animals suffering and dying as a result of human cruelty or carelessness.
The Horta—like the dolphins murdered annually in Taiji, Japan—is an intelligent creature. It might not look remotely human, but it has a mind and it has a heart and it feels pain.
This is one of the few times we see Spock perform a mind meld without actually touching the subject. A few episodes ago he managed a mind meld with an Eminian guard in “A Taste of Armageddon” through the wall, and in this episode he stands a short distance from the Horta and holds up his hands. Later he’ll perform a mind meld with V’Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in a similar way. This differs from his description in “Dagger of the Mind” of how the mind meld works— “by making pressure changes in your nerves, your blood vessels.” But we’ll learn in “The Immunity Syndrome” that Spock is apparently in some degree of telepathic contact with all Vulcans all the time. Evidently cursory communication is possible without physical contact. When Kirk asks for specific information, Spock tells him, “To achieve that kind of communication, it will be necessary to touch it.”
This is the first episode to specifically address the difference between the two types of phasers, phaser I and phaser II. Phaser I is a small, communicator-shaped weapon which is enhanced when attached to the larger, pistol-shaped phaser II. And that, my dear readers, is what I refer to as cool. Phaser I is ineffective against the Horta, but Kirk manages to take a bite out of the creature by using his much more powerful phaser II.
Even before it’s known, or even suspected, that the Horta is intelligent and reasonable, and has good reason for attacking the miners, Spock does not want it killed. He has almost the same argument with Kirk that he had in “Arena” about killing the Gorns. Spock feels that killing a life form that may be the last of its kind would be a crime against science. “I will lose no more men,” Kirk tells him angrily. But when Kirk is face-to-face with the creature, and it makes no hostile move, he is the one inclined to open a dialogue—and Spock, logical, unemotional Spock, is nearly frantic with worry for his friend, telling him over the communicator, “Your life is in danger! Kill it!” It’s another interesting moment in the Kirk-Spock friendship.
When Kirk orders McCoy to treat the Horta, Spock correctly points out that McCoy’s medical knowledge is totally useless in this case. Kirk’s reply, “He’s a healer, let him heal,” is nonsensical. You might as well ask an electrician to remove an appendix. Surely the Enterprise has xenobiologists. Fortunately, McCoy is clever enough to improvise a concrete “bandage” for the Horta’s wound.
(Collin R. Skocik is a fan of the Star Trek franchise and has written synopses of all 79 episodes of Star Trek’s original series and the first six Star Trek films.)
Principled Thoughts 