I thought this was the Star Trek “Terms of Service” adventures where we dissect the multitude-page documents where we sign our lives away.
I believe you are thinking of “STD”.
I can watch this on a loop for hours…
Save it for season three gentlemen! We still have a long road ahead.
Yeah, I don’t even know what the hell you guys are even talking about anymore. We had a nice discussion going about the current episode and everything.
It is kind of an awesome happenstance that we’re doing this viewing just as Star Trek: Discovery is going on. And the show just happens to be set a few years before The Original Series. It’s just neat to see how the events line up, and that Discovery is obviously trying to be consistent with what we’re watching on TOS, while simultaneously doing their own thing.
Visually it’s also interesting for them to be trying to bridge the uniforms from ST: Enterprise and transition to the uniforms more in the style of Star Trek (TOS), while still maintaining their more futuristic look.
Meanwhile, back in the Original Series, let me just comment on something that I’ve been meaning to mention now for many episodes, but I always forget to. Sometimes the Captain and the crew is on the bridge, and they get these beautiful ladies parading politely through the bridge, giving everyone drinks in little paper cups. The first time it happened, I thought “aha! This is like Chekov’s gun. I wonder how this will play into the story later?” Except, it never does. Which is why I haven’t mentioned it yet. It’s such weird little quirky thing that’s actually kind of cool, right? I mean, the bridge crew’s going to get thirsty, why shouldn’t they be served drinks? Why do later crews like Picard and company have to wait for their bridge shift to be over before they can quench their thirst? It’s not right, I tell you. It’s not right! Bring back the bridge interns!
Wait, you’re saying the drink serving ladies are a long term story setup? I honestly don’t believe you.
(But that is a great hook to keep me tuned in to the end. The mysterious drink ladies long term plot payoff).
I’m saying there is a payoff. And I am not joking.
Avert your eyes! My impressions, one day early.
“The Devil in the Dark”
There’s parts of this episode that are so hokey. The “horror” portions with the monster hunting them, and them hunting the monster was all so tediously executed. And the little balls are eggs. Really? No one there say this coming?
On the other hand, it presents a side of Star Trek that I do love. Tolerance of others, even when you initially think they are monsters. Even though, in their eyes, you are the monsters. It’s the message of Ender’s Game/Speaker for the Dead, but presented here in a much more cheesy manner.
When they first showed this planet, I thought, wow, even in a world with no more profit motive, where humans live in a Eutopia, I guess someone still has to do the blue collar jobs. Of course, that was the way TNG presented the Star Trek universe. Maybe in The Original Series, they weren’t quite there yet. At the end of the episode Kirk even tells them they can be rich if they work with the Hortas. So clearly the profit motive is still in full effect here.
Overall I ended up kind of liking the episode because of its high concept science fiction, but also kind of hating it for being a cheesy horror flick for most of the episode. But in the end, it was quintessential Star Trek with its positive, hopeful, un-cynical, idealistic message. So kudos.
Edit: Also, did MOO2’s silicoid race come from the species shown in this episode?
Looks very similar.
Pretty enthusiastic for this week’s episode, are we @Rock8man? One might even say suspiciously so, eh Mr Rock (who) Ate (a) Man??? I’ve got my eye on you.
Moving along, we are indeed watching and discussing Devil in the Dark, and this is one I’ve seen a whole lot of times for whatever reason, and I’ve always liked it a lot. I didn’t find the horror show tropes to be silly, certainly no sillier than the Frank Castle movies of the era, though I guess it’s no Hitchcockian masterpiece either. But the episode establishes a paranoid feel from the start, with a security guard getting all jumpy when his relief shows up. We find out lots of folks are being burned alive, subsequently discovering they’re eaten alive by acid (not really a step up in terms of pleasant endings) by some weird lumpy, fuzzy creature. It’s a horta! And it’s only defending its young. Whoops, spoilers, sorry.
It’s a straightforward little story, but I quite liked the little fakeout that the plot sends us on. We might be thinking at first that this is another salt vampire story (who, as you’ll recall, the Enterprise crew had no compunctions about killing even though it was the last of its race. Then again, it never begged for its life like the horta). But we eventually find out that while its appearance and response are quite alien, its motivations are not. Even the miners, out for blood for the deaths of their fellow crew, have to stop when they find out that all those nodes they’ve been carelessly destroying were the horta’s young.
In this episode we get to see Spock mind meld with another being once again, and I bet at this point Spock has serious regrets about ever bringing up that particular skill to begin with. We see McCoy demonstrate his troweling skill, and Scotty not being a miracle worker. It also amused me that Spock demonstrates initial hesitation to kill the horta, knowing it’s the last of its kind, while Kirk adamantly insists that his security team kill it on sight, not willing to risk another member of his crew. Then as soon as he’s stuck with it, both flip their positions with Spock apparently deciding that the horta must die and Kirk deciding it’s the cutest pile of rubble he’s ever laid eyes on, I guess.
But peace, love and understanding win the day, as was the way of things back in the 60s. Except in Vietnam, the deep south and, well, anywhere else I guess. Good thing we had television back then to show us the way!
Oh hey, I wanted to mention one last thing about This Side of Paradise before we moved on - can’t believe nobody (myself included) commented on the fact that Leila was played by Jill Ireland, Mrs Charles Bronson herself! For some reason I didn’t recognize her.
My favorite Star Trek line of dialog: “No kill I.”
I loved this episode as a youth, and I think it holds up pretty well, cheap-looking sets aside.
For me, this episode embodied Star Trek for years to come: An adventure with heart where people do the right thing, even when it’s hard. I loved the whole concept of a hideous, murdering monster that was in fact just a mother desperately trying to save her kids.
Watching it just now, the sets and the shooting angles really stood out to me. The very first scene with the doom, whiny guard pretty much set the tone: polished floors with random pieces of Styrofoam “rocks” strewn about in easy-to-trip-over places so that you know that this is a mine rather than… I dunno what. Later scenes added a bunch of rusted weight-lifting equipment, presumably pulled from the Desilu lounge or something. Crappy.
But on the positive side, some of the shots were pretty well-done. A couple of Kirk and Spock shot from the interior of the small tunnels at them looking in seem pretty innovative for the time. I guess.
Re-watching it taught me something new: For years I wondered about the two different types of phasers shown in TOS – the little ones that kind of sometimes doubled as communicators, and the bigger, more iconic, pistol-types. My faulty memory told me that the little ones were used in the first season while the bigger ones were added in later shows. But no - the little ones are “phaser one” weapons (apparently carried by random civilian miners) and the more-powerful “phaser two” weapons are available to starship crews. Cool.
This whole episode is a massive sausage-fest. There are two women in the thing – one is a nameless crew-member on the bridge in the final scene (no speaking part) and the second is the Horta… played by a guy.
William Shatner got the news that his father died while filming this episode. According to lore, he wanted to finish shooting for the day, even after the crew volunteered to shut everything down. The first scene he shot after getting the phone call was the one where he kneels down to mourn the dead Enterprise red-shirt.
That was great-- the revelation that the creature had learned from Spock as he had learned from the creature; that it had fine control of its rock chiseling, and the ambiguity of the slightly garbled message.
There weren’t many alien creatures that were neither barely disguised humanoids nor just shimmering lights, but they show up in my favorite episodes: the horta, the Gorn, the Gamesters of Triskellion, the extra-galactic aliens of Catspaw, the OK Corral one, and the one with Lincoln and Genghis Khan.
And the Organians.
I classify the Organians as “shimmering lights”, and so not interesting (not that it wasn’t a great episode).
You’ll pardon me for getting slightly ahead of the game, but the teleplay of what is considered to be one of the best Star Trek episodes is on sale on Amazon today for $1.99:
I have never read this, but as a big fan of Trek and Ellison I’ll probably have to pick this up.
I’m curious about this but my understanding is that the original teleplay by Ellison is somewhat different than the broadcast version, rewritten by DC Fontana. The DC Fontana version is the one we all know and love; I’m curious how the Ellison version stacks up.
Edit: I just double checked imdb and noticed that, 50 years later, DC Fontana is still not getting the credit for that final rewrite. Another reason I am not an unalloyed Rodenberry worshiper. I love TOS, but Rodenberry IMO was not perfect.
Yeah, it’s different because I know Ellison held a grudge for decades (imagine that) against Roddenberry for “butchering” his script. I don’t really know the details, guess I’ll have to read it and see.
And hey, that gives me an idea! City on the Edge of Forever is coming up in a few weeks on the rotation, maybe I can read this and compare them in the thread!