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The Devil in the Dark (episode)

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Real World article
(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 supercritical 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... they're 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

[edit] Props and sets

  • A portion of a Horta tunnel was seen in "Patterns of Force" as the entrance to the Underground's underground.
  • 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

  • This is the only original series episode in which the distinction is drawn between "phaser one" and "phaser two."
  • McCoy specifies that he had the Enterprise beam down about a hundred pounds of thermal concrete. In his novelization of the episode in Star Trek 4, James Blish, possibly working from an earlier draft of the script, reduces this to ten pounds.

[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] Tributes

[edit] Apocrypha

[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.

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] Uncredited co-stars (remastered)

[edit] References

50,000 years ago; 2210s; 2217; 2240s; 2247; 2266; asphyxiation; cerium; Chamber of the Ages; Channel 1; Checkpoint Tiger; gold; Horta; Janus VI; Janus VI colony; main circulating pump; pergium; phaser type-1; type 2 phaser; platinum; PXK reactor; radiation poisoning; silicon; Silicon-based lifeform; thermal concrete; tricorder; Vault of Tomorrow; Vulcan mind meld; uranium; 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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