"The Devil in the Dark" - Season 1, Episode 25
Star Trek remixes its best elements into a great episode.
Twenty-four episodes in and Star Trek has had plenty of monsters. The first episode, “The Man Trap,” pit the crew against a “salt vampire” disguised as an old flame of McCoy’s. Trek’s gone underground too; “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” sent Kirk into an ancient alien research facility to confront the idea of artificial personhood. Real personhood’s been a recurring theme as well, with “Arena” throwing Kirk into mortal combat with a (seemingly) big dumb lizard, only to learn that the “monster” is an intelligent, moral agent responding to human aggression. In short, “The Devil in the Dark” is not breaking new ground. But what’s impressive about the episode is how it takes pieces of what Trek has done before and reconstitutes them into one of its best episodes yet.
It begins with an excellent innovation though: an opening stinger where none of the regular cast appears. A group of miners discuss recent deaths to an unknown monster as the unluckiest among them draw the short straw of nightly guard duty. The unlucky guard has a four hour shift, but knows help from the Enterprise is on its way. He hopes, out loud, that they’ll arrive before his shift is done. Before opening credits roll, he’s already dead. It’s a brilliant opening that Trek should take structural inspiration from more often: our heroes are famous enough to be prayed for. When the crew does finally arrive, they’re responding to a threat the audience already understands, and understands as dangerous. Trek often likes to hide the ball with its premises, only revealing what’s really going on as a mid-episode twist. “Devil” is playing ball from minute one.
The unfortunate miner who draws the short straw, minutes before his death. The opening here is a good example of how technical limitations can somehow improve a work. The budget for and ability to show the monster here is limited, which means all of the tension is developed through a fun, active camera and sparse sound editing.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are the first to beam down, where Chief Engineer Vanderberg briefs them on the problem. An unseen monster has killed 50 of his men, workers crucial to an extractive mineral mining operation on Janus VI. It destroys, and kills, with a strong corrosive that can eat through any substance. During the briefing, Spock’s attention is drawn to an odd silicon sphere resting on Vanderberg’s desk, an odd but common geological formation that Vanderberg says were discovered deep in the planet. But the briefing is cut short when the creature attacks the facility’s reactor, stealing a crucial part necessary to keep the reactor stable. Scotty tells the landing party they they've only got ten hours to find it before the whole operation, and an integral part of the sector’s energy supply chain, goes up in nuclear fire.
From here, the episode settles into a cat-and-mouse middle act that sets up its practical and moral stakes. Practically, Spock hypothesizes that the monster may be a silicon-based lifeform resistant to the crew’s regular weapons, requiring a retooling of their most powerful phasers. Morally, he eventually establishes evidence that the creature may be the last of its kind, making killing it a “crime against science.” Kirk dismisses this concern as irrelevant; it’s killing and must be stopped.
The miners line up to hunt the creature, including Chief Engineer Vanderberg on the front right. Vanderberg was portrayed by Ken Lynch, whose career peak was leading the conceptually odd “The Lieutenant,” a television series that aired from 1949-1954. The Lieutenant’s gimmick was that every episode was shot entirely in the first person, meaning Lynch’s face was never shown. Most of the series is now lost media, but a few episodes survived and can be viewed on Youtube.
But the twist comes anyway. After wounding and cornering the creature, Kirk finds it reluctant to hurt him. With its newfound docility, Kirk asks McCoy to heal it and Spock to mind meld with it as a crowd of angry miners grows outside the tunnel. The whole sequence is well-directed, with the creature’s intelligence established through a wordless staredown with Kirk during which it recoils from his phaser. It understands pain. And when Spock communicates with it, pain is all he finds too.
The creature, self-described as a “Horta”, is indeed the last of its kind, but a future remains in the silicon spheres Spock noticed earlier: Horta eggs. The mining crew had inadvertently stumbled upon the Horta hatchery and destroyed thousands of the spheres. As the miners’ rage reaches a fever pitch they barge in for revenge, but Kirk and Spock advocate for the Horta. A truce, whereby the Hortas will dig the tunnels and the miners will extract the minerals needed from them. Horta’s move through and eat rock naturally, it’s no skin, or stone, off their back. The miners agree. A peaceful compromise wins the day. Everyone learns to not judge a book by its cover, or life by the element it’s made of.
Kirk and the Horta have a stare down. Janos Prohaska, an acrobat and stuntman, both designed and portrayed the creature. Prohaska appeared as a different monster in every season of The Original Series.
“The Devil in the Dark” is widely considered one of the best episodes of The Original Series and it’s easy to see why; it’s a greatest hits album of the first season. “The Man Trap” features a “last of its kind” salt vampire threatening the crew, but where that episode ended with the monster dad due to its somewhat illogical behavior, “Devil” ends in the optimistic, cooperative spirit Trek established in “The Corbomite Manuever.” Similarly, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” isolated Kirk underground with threats around all corners, but “Devil” wisely pairs him with Spock and McCoy to add the character dynamics that make the show special. Spock’s “crime against science” objection only lasts until Kirk himself is in danger; their friendship will always come first. And the ending is pulled straight from “Arena,” with a previous threat recontextualized as a victim responding with proportionate, retaliatory violence.
Perhaps Trek’s most consistently surprising viewpoint is the justification it offers violent responses to violent actions, while nevertheless always advocating for forgiveness and cooperation going forward. It is deeply humanistic; refreshing and unique.
“Devil” is perhaps the platonic ideal of a Trek episode then, including the way in which its humanistic perspective still rests on assumptions and premises that are clearly Western, if post-colonial. For example, the Horta’s voice no objection to the miners’ presence. Spock is quick to point out that they are hospitable and welcoming despite their completely alien appearance; they are nice persons, deferential and non-territorial, despite not even being carbon based. The miners too are merely ignorant and reactive. They are unaware the Hortas even exist, and their violence is at first accidental and later defensive. But of course, the actual history of colonial mining operations is one of horrible violence by invaders towards an unwilling, oft exploited native population. By presenting the problem in this way, Trek is arguably presenting an “enlightened” solution to a situation that simply never occurred. Motives were never so innocent; it’s a corrective solution simply inapplicable to a real crime.
This could be viewed as naïve, or paternalistic, but the optimistic read is to view it as prescriptive. The Hortas and the miners aren’t monsters, and in Trek’s utopian future, are seemingly freed from the incentives and structures that makes monsters in the real world. IF first contact is ever to happen, if new life is ever found, I hope we’ll have left those things far in the past too. But to do so will require a different approach than “Devil” can think of or recommend, and more than any great episode of television could accomplish.
And this is a great episode of television regardless.
Stray Thoughts
Kirk playing dumb with Spock is always a fun dynamic. Here, the two debate the odds they’ll both be killed if they split up versus staying together. Shatner has a great sort of voice raise he does when he knows Spock is dressing up an emotional concern in logical reasoning, and Kirk never truly calls his friend on his contradictions. It’s an observant touch that sells Kirk’s emotional intelligence.
Silicon-based life is longstanding scientific hypothesis that has never been found or proven, but I was surprised to hear it talked about so early as 1967.
This was one of William Shatner’s favorite episodes to film. He thought it posed interesting questions about man’s feat of the unknown, and filmed it soon after his father died. He credited the cast with being supportive and making the experience routine. Nimoy too often mentions the episode as a personal favorite!
Photo Credits
Unlucky guard: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epsd-TOS1-25.php
All of the miners: https://www.tor.com/2015/09/10/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-the-devil-in-the-dark/
Kirk and the Horta: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/news/1007524/star-trek-discovery-writers-pick-their-favorite-classic-trek-episodes/