Real Life in Star Trek, The Devil in the Dark
Disclaimer
This is a discussion of a non-âFree as in Freedomâ popular culture franchise property with references to a part of that franchise behind a paywall. My discussion and conclusions are free, but nothing about the discussion or conclusions implies any attack on the ownership of the properties. All the big names are trademarks of the owners and so forth and everything here should be well within the bounds of Fair Use.
PreviouslyâŠ
The project was outlined in this post, for those falling into this from somewhere else. In short, this is an attempt to use the details presented in Star Trek to assemble a view of what life looks like in the Federation.
This is neither recap nor review; those have both been done to death over fifty-plus years. It is a catalog of information we learn from each episode, though, so expect everything to be a potential âspoiler,â if thatâs an irrational fear you have.
Rather than list every post in the series here, you can easily find them all on the startrek tag page.
The Devil in the Dark
We have a rare cold open where the crew doesnât appear.
SCHMITTER: Nobody ever does. Whatever the thing is, itâs already killed fifty people. I never realized before how dark it is down here.
âŠ
SCHMITTER: A lot can happen in three minutes. Chief, is it true the Enterprise is on its way?
VANDERBERG: Itâs coming.
Weâve gotten the messaging, so far, that colonies are often extremely small, with most of the industrial colonies having single-digit populations, sometimes zero. This colony, however, has a population thatâs significant enough to still be operating after fifty deaths and seemingly waited a good portion of those deaths before calling for help. Weâll find out after the credits that this has been happening for weeks.
Captainâs log, stardate 3196.1. A distress call from the pergium production station on Janus VI has brought the Enterprise to that long-established colony. Mister Spock, Doctor McCoy, and I have beamed down to meet with Chief Engineer Vanderberg, administrative head of Janus VI.
Pergium is original to this episode; Blish provides some loose hints about what it might be, but the closest thing that I can find that might have inspired the name is Perg.
âJanusâ doesnât appear to be based on any star, but is almost certainly named for Romeâs two-faced god of thresholds. However, itâs also a relatively common name and a moon of Saturn, so it could be named for any of those, instead.
VANDERBERG: About three months ago, we opened up a new level. Sensors gave us an unusually rich pergium reading. Not only pergium, whatever you want. Uranium, sirium, platinum. The whole planetâs like that. Itâs a treasure house.
Sirium is also original to the episode, as far as I can tell, though it happens to be the Roman name for mugwort plants that I assume arenât being mined on Janus VI. However, if it wasnât named for Sirius, a star less than nine light years away and seems to host a colony as early as 1996. The trend of naming elements after the facilities that discover them, then, makes some sense. Note that itâs highly unlikely, but thereâs another reason that the name Sirius might be relevant to the episode mentioned in the credits, down at the bottom of the page.
If youâd like to pretend that history in the Star Trek franchise resembles our own, Copernicium is the element discovered in 1996 in our world.
KIRK: Yes, weâre aware of that. If mining conditions werenât so difficult, Janus VI could supply the mineral needs of a thousand planets. But what happened?
This statement gets back to the mercantile-style colonial economies we saw suggested last time, in This Side of Paradise. There, the colony was deemed problematic, by some of our characters, because it wasnât producing enough food to export. Here, Kirk is salivating over the possibility of this mineâs potential to supply other planets with minerals.
It also indicates that Federation technology might not be particularly adaptable, if there are a thousand planets that are considered mineral-poor. Either that, or the idea is to thoroughly exploit Janus VI, so that mining doesnât need to disrupt the thousand other colonies.
VANDERBERG: Ed shot it.
SPOCK: Oh. You mean shot at it.
APPEL: No. I mean shot it. With this.
SPOCK: Fascinating.
APPEL: A good, clean shot. Didnât even slow it down. Well, Iâve made my report to you. Production has stopped, nobody will go into the lower levels, and I donât blame them. If the Federation wants pergium, then youâre going to have to do something about it.
The âoh, we definitely shot it, because thatâs the sort of thing you doâ idea connects back to The Man Trap, in a lot of ways, where the crewâs priority was to kill their perceived attacker, no matter what the cost might be.
KIRK: Thatâs why weâre here, Mister Vanderberg.
APPEL: Youâre all pretty tough, arenât you? Starship, phaser banks. You canât get your starship down in the tunnels.
âŠ
VANDERBERG: A few trace elements. Look, we didnât call you here so you could collect rocks.
Given this reaction and the aggressive way that the miners negotiated with Kirk in Muddâs Women, itâs hard to avoid the impression that Starfleet tends to have a poor reputation among miners. Since Kirk essentially destroyed an automated mining colony in Where No Man Has Gone Before without much comment, itâs possible that the feeling is mutual.
VANDERBERG: Youâll have it. Just find that creature, whatever it is. Iâve got a quota to meet. Come on, Appel.
Vanderbergâs need to meet a quota means that some aspect of his job depends on his output, which further reinforces the idea that these colonies exist primarily for exploitation of resources to send back to âcivilizedâ colonies. Spock rolls his eyes, but as Vanderberg himself pointed out, the Federation wants the pergium production up and running enough that it sent the Enterprise to figure this out.
It sure is a good thing that nobody lives on these planets who might feel threatened by the destruction of their ecosystems, right�
KIRK: Too many tunnels. We couldnât possibly. Mister Spock, our sensors can pick up normal life functions at a considerable distance, but what about abnormal life functions?
I like that the script presents âwell, what if itâs not normal?â as some sort of brilliant deduction.
VANDERBERG: The main circulating pump for the entire reactor is gone.
âŠ
KIRK: Is there a replacement for that?
VANDERBERG: No, none. Itâs outdated, but we never had any trouble with it.
KIRK: Spock, on board?
SPOCK: Nothing for a device this antiquated, Captain.
Scotty is going to make the same kind of point, butâŠitâs a pump. Humans have been moving water around since at least the Archimedes screw, so surely, replacing it canât be too difficult.
It definitely shows, though, that the Enterprise canât just fabricate random equipment.
SPOCK: The missing pump wasnât taken by accident. It was the one piece of equipment absolutely essential for the operation of the reactor.
KIRK: Do you think the creature is trying to push the colonists off the planet?
SPOCK: It would seem so.
I already mentioned The Man Trap, and itâs interesting to contrast the two episodes. Kirk and Spock are both far more willing to give this mystery creature a fair trial with presumed innocence, when itâs somebody else at risk.
KIRK: But why now, Mister Spock? These production facilities have been in operation for over fifty years.
Wherever the star Janus is, itâs near enough that itâs more than fifty years old. Thatâs sort of remarkable, given that itâs held on this long without producing at nearly its potential, especially once they start talking explicitly about profitability.
KIRK: Speculate.
SPOCK: I have already given Doctor McCoy sufficient cause for amusement. Iâd prefer to cogitate the possibilities for a time.
I think thatâs Spockâs way of saying that his feelings were hurtâŠ
KIRK: The creature may or may not attack on sight. However, you must. It is vitally important we get this installation back into production.
Itâs worth a reminder that we havenât heard anything to indicate that the pergium mine is vital, only useful.
KIRK: This tunnel goes back as far as the eye can see. Our best machinery couldnât cut a tunnel like this, not even with phasers.
SPOCK: Indeed, Captain. Iâm quite at a loss.
This gives a strong indication of the limits of the energy the Enterprise can bring to bear.
Itâs also odd that theyâre not analyzing the corrosive. That seems like it might be more valuable than the mine.
GIOTTO: You mean itâs impossible to kill?
KIRK: No. No, it might require amassed phasers.
SPOCK: Or a single phaser with much longer contact.
You know? Itâs not really relaxing to know that theyâre all fantasizing about how to murder this thing, now that one of their men is a casualty. I was half-joking in my comparison to The Man Trap, but here we areâŠ
SPOCK: Or it is the last of a race of creatures which made these tunnels. If so, if it is the only survivor of a dead race, to kill it would be a crime against science.
âŠAnd genocide. Somehow, thatâs not a problem. Spock just wants to treat it like a biological sample.
SPOCK: Captain, there are approximately one hundred of us engaged in this search, against one creature. The odds against you and I both being killed are 2,228.7 to 1.
KIRK: 2,228.7 to 1? Those are pretty good odds, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: And they are of course accurate, Captain.
There doesnât seem to be much of a chance of that being remotely accurate, so the lesson is that a precise enough invented number is enough to make Kirk back down, at least out of amusementâŠ
SPOCK: Kill it.
KIRK: I thought you were the one who wanted it kept alive, captured if possible.
SPOCK: Jim, your life is in danger. You canât take the risk.
Again, weâre back at the point where it was an intelligent being that might need protection, when it was the miners dying. But kill one Starfleet officer, and youâre suddenly a killer that needs to be put down.
That said, despite the fact that the âcreatureâ is very obviously a man crawling around covered by a blanket, itâs still highly expressive and the silent interplay between it and Kirk is interesting, doubly so when weâre shown that it understands English.
KIRK: No. It seems to be waiting. I tried talking to it, but it didnât do any good.
Huh. We literally saw it show its wound to Kirk when it asked if theyâre supposed to talk the situation over, so it obviously did some good.
SPOCK: Possibly the answer, Captain, but Iâm not certain. Captain, you are aware of the Vulcan technique of the joining of two minds.
KIRK: You think you can get through to that thing?
SPOCK: Itâs possible.
KIRK: Mister Spock, I know itâs a terrible personal lowering of mental barriers but if thereâs a chance
SPOCK: Iâll try.
I donât want to suggest that the whole story about the mind-joining being âintensely personal,â but Spock was pretty quick enough to do it in Dagger of the Mind, Return of the Archons, and arguably A Taste of Armageddon that Iâm starting to get the impression itâs not that big a deal.
SPOCK: I donât know, Captain. Evidently, it gained an immediate knowledge of us from its empathy with me. In my brief contact with the creatureâs mind, I discovered it is a highly intelligent, extremely sophisticated animal. In great pain, of course, because of its wound, but not reacting at all like a wounded creature. It calls itself a Horta.
To this day, I need to laugh at the fact that she âgained an immediate knowledgeâ of the Federation, but the best she could come up with is âno kill I.â But also, Spock just got through saying that he could only detect pain, but now he also got intelligence and sophistication.
KIRK: Heâs a healer, let him heal.
Honestly, Iâm surprised Kirk doesnât just wade in there. Weâve seen in at least a dozen episodes before that he can do just about everybody elseâs job.
SPOCK: Murder. Of thousands. Devils! Eternity ends. The chamber of the ages. The altar of tomorrow! Murderers! Stop them. Kill! Strike back! Monsters!
Is it my imagination, or have we gotten more information about Horta culture in five minutes than weâve gotten about human culture in two dozen episodes?
APPEL: That murdering monsterâs in there, and weâre going to kill it.
Itâs worth pointing out that just the one Horta has been running a guerrilla campaign against the miners for weeks, and we know that they only have clubs as weapons. When they eventually knock the guards out, they donât even take the phasers. These guys are so embarrassing, even in their thirst for revenge against the creature they wrongedâŠ
KIRK: Mister Spock. Mister Spock. Spock. Spock! Come out of it. I found the unit in there. Itâs in pretty good shape. I also found about a million of these silicon nodules. Theyâre eggs, arenât they?
SPOCK: Yes, Captain, eggs and about to hatch.
KIRK: The miners must have broken into the hatchery. Their operations destroyed thousands of them. No wonder.
Itâs a bit disturbing that nobody saw it worth mentioning that there was (presumably) fetal Horta in those nodules theyâve been breaking and leaving around. It seems like something that would come up.
KIRK: Youâve complained this planet is a mineralogical treasure house if you had the equipment to get at it. Gentlemen, the Horta moves through rock the way we move through air, and it leaves tunnels. The greatest natural miners in the universe. It seems to me we could make an agreement, reach a modus vivendi. They tunnel. You collect and process, and your process operation would be a thousand times more profitable.
VANDERBERG: Sounds all right, if it will work.
In case we needed confirmation that the goal of the mine was profitability, here it is, explicitly.
KIRK: Well, Spock, Iâm going to have to ask you to get in touch with the Horta again. Tell her our proposition. She and her children can do all the tunneling they want. Our people will remove the minerals, and each side will leave the other alone. Think sheâll go for it?
This isâŠwell, itâs a horrifyingly bad deal for the planetâs native inhabitants. I donât want to say that Kirk just enslaved the entire population for the profitability of the mine, but the âbargainâ is basically that the Horta provide the humans with minerals, in exchange for the humans no longer murdering them.
VANDERBERG: Weâve already hit huge new pergium deposits. Iâm afraid to tell you how much gold and platinum and rare earths weâve uncovered.
I canât think of many reasons that Vanderberg would be unhappy with a known large amount of material to sell, but all the reasons I can think of are at least borderline-criminal. The most charitable interpretation is that heâs about to sell enough that the commodity prices are going to dropâŠ
VANDERBERG: You know, the Horta arenât so bad once youâre used to their appearance.
âŠ
SPOCK: Curious. What Chief Vanderberg said about the Horta is exactly what the Mother Horta said to me. She found humanoid appearance revolting, but she thought she could get used to it.
This is a nice twist that we donât often see in science-fiction, certainly not often at this point in history. Everybody, in essence, is alien (or simply foreign) to somebody else out there.
KIRK: She really liked those ears?
SPOCK: Captain, the Horta is a remarkably intelligent and sensitive creature, with impeccable taste.
KIRK: Because she approved of you?
SPOCK: Really, Captain, my modesty
KIRK: Does not bear close examination, Mister Spock. I suspect youâre becoming more and more human all the time.
SPOCK: Captain, I see no reason to stand here and be insulted.
Iâm quoting this more than I think would otherwise be appropriate, because itâs so rare that Spock is called out on his obvious dishonesty, and calls back to Kirkâs half-joking acceptance of Spockâs âaccurateâ calculation of the odds, earlier in the episode.
Blish Adaptation
This version of the story comes later (Star Trek 4), so is mostly similar, though it does provide some additional information, here and there, and skips other sections where our crew isnât around. For example, we start here, with Kirk already in Vanderbergâs office.
Janus was an ugly planet, reddish-brown, slowly rotating, with a thick layer of clouds so turbulent that it appeared to be boiling. Not a hospitable place, but a major source of pergiumâan energy metalâlike plutonium, meta-stable, atomic number 358; the underground colony there was long-established, highly modern, almost completely automated. It had never given any trouble.
Interesting but irrelevant: We have observed atoms with atomic numbers as high as 118. Thereâs some suspicion that elements with atomic numbers greater than 137, but that atoms with atomic numbers greater than 173 might generate positrons, the antimatter equivalent of an electron, by creating electrons to deionize itself.
Actually relevant: The Janus facility is âalmost completely automated,â but has more than sixty colonists working there.
We later find that they found the egg chamber three months ago, and thatâs where the valuable metals are found in abundance. The Hortaâs corrosive fluid is called out aqua regia, sometimes with traces of hydrofluoric acid, and later tries to give a sense of what the Hortaâs physiology might look like. Later, we find out that the stolen pump was made of platinum and treated to be corrosion-proof, which better explains why Scottyâs improvised pump canât last for very long.
âNo creature is monstrous in its own environment, Doctor. And this one appears to be intelligent, as well.â
We also get tiny additions to the dialogue, like this, which nicely underscores Vanderberg and the Horta both saying that they need to get used to the othersâ appearance. Spock also makes the point that some tunnels are thousands of years old, but the Hortaâs âspeed of movement indicates a high metabolic rate. That is not compatible with a lifetime much longer than ours,â and that âno kill Iâ implies that she âthinks in vocables,â though itâs unclear what sense thatâs meant beyond the Horta being able to detect (and probably produce) sounds similar to humans.
Otherwise, there isnât much new.
Conclusions
As mentioned, we actually get a lot more information about the Horta. And, given that, itâs honestly a little disappointing that fifty-odd years and over seven hundred episodes and movies later, we havenât gotten even one Horta officer.
The Good
âŠNobody on the crew fell asleep on the job. Weâre not treated to that, very often.
The Bad
Very little in this episode shows the Federation in a spectacular light.
The miners wait for the bodies to stack up before calling for help, but stay on despite the facility apparently being automated, at least according to Blish. When help arrives, theyâre dismissive. Given the number of times profitability is mentioned, itâs hard not to get the impression that the murders were being covered up in order to protect the production line. They hammer hard on profit and quotas, suggesting that itâs up to at least this colony to work out its own problems or risk losing imported supplies. Theyâre also desperate for an excuse to beat the Horta with clubs, for some reason. And, on top of everything else, itâs possible that Vanderberg is embezzling, selling outside his contract, or trying to manipulate the commodities market.
We also get a reminder (as if the possible covering up of industrial accidents wasnât already a reminder) of how hard colonial life might be, with Janus VI expected to export enough raw material for a thousand colonized planets, possibly implying that there are no easy substitutions with native materials.
And we also see the recurrence of the idea that the deaths of other people by an alien are an inconvenience, but the deaths of people youâre responsible for must be avenged at the earliest possible opportunity. Even Spockâs objection to genocide is the scientific loss, not the logic of acting civilized in another creatureâs home.
Speaking of Spock, he lies multiple times through this episodeâgetting called out on it at the endâand hiding behind a shield of âlogic.â
While we didnât get any of the crew completely fouling up their jobs, everybody definitely failed to notice the eggs, which surely had some sort of suspicious contents. Spock looks at his enough times that he must have scanned it.
Finally, while itâs possible that the dialogue just lacked the desirable nuance, it sounds a lot like Kirk has told the Horta that theyâre to work for the humans under threat of extermination.
The Weird
It sounds like the Enterprise has no fabrication facilities, which seems like it might be ill-advised for a ship that occasionally finds itself far from civilization, inevitably with their systems breaking down.
Next
Next up, Kirk and his even-more-smug counterpart need omnipotent aliens to talk them out of starting a massive war, in Errand of Mercy, the season finale.
Credits: The header image is Aa large by the United States Geological Survey, released into the public domain as a work of the United States Federal government. Far from a Horta, itâs an Ê»aÊ»Ä flow from KÄ«lauea. The Polynesians apparently refer to Sirius as Ê»AÊ»Ä, interestingly enough, but the Star Trek franchise rarely refers to one of our nearest and most famous neighbors, primarily in off-handed references such as what we saw at the end of Arena.
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Tags: scifi startrek closereading