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The Devil in the Dark (episode)edit

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(written from a Production point of view)
"The Devil in the Dark"
TOS, Episode 1x26
Production number: 6149-26
First aired: 9 March 1967
Remastered version aired: 23 September 2006
← 27th of 80 produced in TOS →
← 25th of 80 released in TOS →
← 3rd of 80 released in TOS Remastered →
← 25th of 727 released in all →
Written By
Gene L. Coon

Directed By
Joseph Pevney
3196.1 (2267)
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The Enterprise arrives at Janus VI, where an unknown monster is destroying machinery and killing the miners, threatening the entire mining operation.

Contents

[edit] Summary

Kirk and Spock fire phasers on Horta
Spock, Kirk, and Security Chief Giotto examine piece of Horta
Murderers!
Vengeful miners attack security team

On Janus VI, a miner named Schmitter replaces Sam at his guard post. Moments after Chief Vanderberg and the other guards move on, they hear a scream and return to find Schmitter reduced to a crisp and a pile of black ashes.

Two days later, the Enterprise arrives at Janus VI in response to a distress call. For the past three months, a mysterious creature has been terrorizing the mining colony there, resulting in the deaths of over fifty people. Pergium production has come to a halt, and it is the Enterprise crew's job to get it back on track. The deaths have all been caused by a mysterious corrosive acid of an unknown type; this acid has also been used to sabotage machinery on the lower levels. Only one man saw the creature and lived: Ed Appel, who shot it with his phaser type-1 with no effect.

As Kirk, Spock, and McCoy discuss possibilities in Vanderberg's office, they are summoned to the colony's nuclear reactor by an alarm. The creature has killed the guard outside, burned its way in, and stolen the reactor's main circulating pump. Scotty says he can rig up a replacement that will last a little while, but without that pump the reactor will go super-critical and irradiate half the planet.

Kirk and Spock deduce that they may be dealing with a silicon-based lifeform, rather than the normal carbon-based found throughout the galaxy. This would explain why the creature does not show up on sensors and why it was impervious to Appel's phaser. Kirk summons Giotto and a security team, and has Spock adjust their type 2 phasers to be more effective against silicon. The security team is dispatched to level 23, which was opened just before the attacks began.

A security man is killed by the creature, bringing Kirk and Spock to the scene. They see the creature, and fire on it, damaging it, but it gets away, tunneling through the rock with its acid. The search teams focus in on where the creature was seen, Attit-26, and Kirk runs into it again. It does not attack him, however, and soon Spock arrives and initiates a Vulcan mind meld with it. He learns that it is a sentient being of a race called the Horta, and was murdering the miners because they were inadvertently killing her children by destroying "useless" silicon nodules that were actually Horta eggs. McCoy manages to cure the Horta's wound with thermal concrete, and she returns the pump. Spock negotiates an agreement between the miners and the Horta; the miners will leave the Horta alone and the baby Horta, soon to begin hatching, will help the miners locate new sources of mineral in the planet.

[edit] Log entries

[edit] Memorable quotes

" 'No kill I'. What is that, a plea for us not to kill it or a promise that it won't kill us?"

- Kirk, reading the Horta's message


"PAIN! AAAAAIGH! PAIN! (breaks the mind meld)That's all I got, captain... waves and waves of searing pain – it's in agony!"

- Spock


"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!"
"You're a healer, there's a patient – that's an order."

- McCoy and Kirk


"That's right, lieutenant, just beam it down to me immediately, and never mind what I want it for – I just want it!"

- McCoy to an unnamed lieutenant


"The odds against you and I both being killed are two-thousand two-hundred and twenty-eight point seven to one."
"Two-thousand two-hundred and twenty-eight point seven to one? Those are pretty good odds Mr. Spock"
"And they are of course accurate, Captain."
"Of course."

- Spock and Kirk


"That thing's killed fifty of my men!"
"And you've killed thousands of her children!"
"What?"
"Those silicon nodules you've been collecting and destroying... those are her eggs."

- Chief Vanderberg and Kirk


"The Horta is intelligent, peaceful... mild. She had no objections to sharing this planet with you – until you broke into her nursery and started destroying her children. When you did, she reacted the only way she knew how; as any mother would, when her children are in danger."

- Kirk


"It won't die! By golly, Jim, I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!"
"Can you help it?"
"Help it? I cured it! I had the ship beam down about a hundred pounds of that thermal concrete we use to make emergency shelters out of; it's mostly silicon. So, I just troweled it into the wound, and it'll act like a bandage until it heals. Take a look – it's as good as new!"

- McCoy and Kirk


"Really, sir, my modesty –"
"Does not bear close examination, Mr. Spock; I suspect you're becoming more and more Human all the time."
"You – sir, I see no reason to stand here and be insulted."

- Spock and Kirk

[edit] Background information

[edit] Story and production

[edit] Performers

  • George Takei (Sulu) and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) do not appear in this episode.
  • William Shatner's father died during the filming of this episode. Episode stand-in and background actor Eddie Paskey recalled shooting certain scenes in this episode and had high praise for Shatner during this time, stating, "as soon as we wrapped with that show, Bill left. We came to find out that as he shot all day long, he was preparing to get on an airplane to go home — his father just passed away. No one knew until he was actually gone. And, y'know, that says a lot for the dedication of the man." [1]

[edit] Props and sets

  • A portion of a Horta tunnel was seen in "Patterns of Force" as the entrance to the Underground's cavern.
  • The unbroken Horta eggs were toy bouncing balls painted gold.
  • The reactor for the colony is the same piece of equipment in engineering that Kirk's double phasered in "The Enemy Within".
  • Janos Prohaska, the creator of the Horta costume, actually wore it into producer Gene L. Coon's office, as if to say "Look what I designed". Gene was so impressed by it, he was inspired to write this episode in four days so it could be used.
  • The over-sized microbe from the final episode of the 1960s version of The Outer Limits (titled "The Probe", with Peter Mark Richman) was the basis for the Horta. It was also designed and performed by Janos Prohaska.

[edit] Costumes

[edit] Continuity

[edit] Response

  • In his book Star Trek Memories, William Shatner identified this as his favorite episode, because his father died during filming and Nimoy's delivery of the mind meld lines made him laugh. Shatner insisted on finishing his dialogue scenes and after he left for the funeral, a stand-in completed his shots with Spock and the Horta, filmed from behind. When the scenes were later edited together, in several sequences, Shatner has his phaser up and the stand-in does not. However, in the later Star Trek: Fan Collective - Captain's Log DVD set, Shatner said that his favorite episode was TOS: "The City on the Edge of Forever".
  • Arthur C. Clarke once remarked, in 1995, that of the Original Series, the only episode he could recall was "The Devil in the Dark," stating that "It impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn." (Star Trek: Four Generations)

[edit] Novelizations and adaptations

  • McCoy specifies that he had the Enterprise beam down about a hundred pounds of thermal concrete. In James Blish's novelization of the episode in Star Trek 4, which was generally based more so on early draft scripts than final drafts, states that McCoy only used ten pounds on concrete.
  • Bantam Books published a series of novelizations called "foto-novels," which took photographic stills from actual episodes and arranged word balloons and text over them to create a comic book-formatted story. The ninth installment was an adaptation of this episode. In it, Leslie is depicted as thinking to himself, "That Vulcan would have us killed for his precious science!" after Spock instructs the security detail to capture the Horta.
  • The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel Devil in the Sky is a sequel of sorts to this episode.
  • The 2001 WildStorm Comics comic "Star Trek: Special" featured a short story of the Borg attacking Janus IV.
  • No Kill I was the name of a Star Trek themed punk rock band.

[edit] Remastered information

  • "The Devil in the Dark" was the third episode of the remastered version of The Original Series to air. It premiered in syndication on the weekend of 23 September 2006 and most notably featured new effects shots of the pergium production station, the Horta burning through a mine wall, and final fly-by of the Enterprise.

Max Gabl was responsible for creating the new CGI for the mining colony, at the time it was his very first assignment on the episode. [2] Producer Niel Wray was included in the matte shot as one of the two workmen walking into a tunnel in the lower corner. Wray and another member of the team were shot against a blue screen and placed into the matte. Niel was chosen because he fit into the costume. [3]

The original Janus VI mining colony matte painting

The remastered computer-generated colony

The original disintegrating wall effect

The remastered computer-generated effect

The next remastered episode to air was "The Naked Time".

[edit] Production Timeline

[edit] Video and DVD releases

[edit] Links and References

[edit] Starring

[edit] Co-stars

[edit] Featuring

And

[edit] Uncredited co-stars

[edit] References

50,000 years ago; 2210s; 2240s; 2266; acid; adit; administrative head; animal; Alter of Tomorrow; armor plating; asbestos; asphyxiation; bandage; bone; bricklayer; carbon life; cerium; Chamber of the Ages; Channel 1; chief; chief engineer; chief processing engineer; chemist; club; colony; devil; distress call; drift; ears; egg; empathy; Federation; foot; gallery; geology; ghost; gold; guard; hatchery; healer; Horta; Janus VI; Janus VI colony; life span; main circulating pump; maintenance engineer; medical kit; mile; miner; mineral; modus vivendi; monster; nuclear reactor; oxygen; pergium; pergium production station; phaser bank; phaser I; phaser II; physician; physiology; platinum; plumber; pound; PXK pergium reactor; radiation poisoning; rain; reactor room; retardation mechanism; science; sentry; silicon; silicon-based lifeform; silicon nodule; starship; stone; teeth; thermal concrete; tiger; tissue; tricorder; trowel; tunnel; Vault of Tomorrow; volcano; Vulcan; Vulcan mind meld; uranium; yard; zoology

[edit] External link


Previous episode produced:
"This Side of Paradise" 		Star Trek: The Original Series
Season 1 		Next episode produced:
"Errand of Mercy"
Previous episode aired:
"This Side of Paradise" 		Next episode aired:
"Errand of Mercy"
Previous remastered episode aired:
"Miri" 		TOS Remastered Next remastered episode aired:
"The Naked Time"
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