Trek50: The Devil in the Dark: The Us/Them Opportunity

Who is “Us” and who is “Them”? This key question in the human experience is the direct subject of “The Devil in the Dark,” a late first season episode, but in its full extent, it is a basic subject for all of Star Trek.

The question is implicit in the adventure of exploration, or of being explored: the inhabitants of strange new worlds, or the arrival of strangers. It is the social analogue to the internal exploration, as in “The Enemy Within”: Who is Me and who is the alien (the devil, the enemy) within?

 “The Devil in the Dark” deals with the starkest example: confrontation with a creature unlike Us in almost every apparent way. But there are gradations of otherness, which Star Trek exhibits in the course of this story.


It opens with a scene similar to the standard opening of the many 1950s “creature features.” After some expository talk among human miners (50 people have already been killed, but the Enterprise is expected soon), we follow a single person alone, suddenly turning with an expression of horror, killed by something large but unseen.

 After the teaser, we join Kirk and Spock as they learn why the Enterprise was called to Janus VI. Miners were being killed and their machinery simply dissolved by an unknown creature that strikes and disappears. “A thousand worlds” depend on the “pergium” and other minerals they mine, so there is an economic incentive for the Federation to send a starship to deal with the situation. “I don’t know what this butchering monster is,” says the mine boss, chief engineer Vandenberg, “but I know what it’s doing.”

There is the operative word: monster. The word goes back to at least the 14th century and over time its meaning included deformed animals and creatures of great size, and eventually was applied to humans of surpassing “inhuman” cruelty.

 But lurking in the word were suggestions of significance—it is derived from Latin words meaning divine portent or sign, a warning.

Monsters were often creatures of the imagination, either by size or by combining features of several fearsome beasts (griffins, comprised of parts of lion and eagle), sometimes including human components (werewolf.)

The monsters of the 1950s movies were most often creatures enlarged and deformed by atomic radiation: Godzilla for example, and the giant ants of Them! (A 1954 film that included an uncredited appearance by young Leonard Nimoy, and an impressive scene by Fess Parker, seen by Walt Disney who tapped him for the Davy Crockett role that started a craze demonstrating the power of the TV medium. Fess Parker went on to star in the Daniel Boone TV series that was Star Trek’s lead-in on NBC.)

Some movie monsters were sympathetic, like King Kong and the Gill-Man of the three Creature of the Black Lagoon movies in the 50s, in which the real monsters were the human scientists caging and torturing him.

 But the main significance of monsters was inherent in that one-word title: Them! Monsters were at the clearest and most obvious end of the spectrum of beings who are not Us.

 That’s a crucial difference, because once a being is defined as “them,” almost any outrage can be attributed to them, and they can be said to have nothing in common with “us”—not our emotions, thought processes or ethical standards.

 Defined as “them” engages fears and aggressions that makes killing them or mistreating and exploiting them easier, almost automatic, without qualm or question. This is why in modern warfare, opponents deliberately exaggerate the monstrous qualities of the enemy—even when the truth is monstrous enough. For example, opponents in both world wars spread stories of the enemy killing and disfiguring children—stories that turned out to be untrue.

 Another way to put this is with the terminology of evil beings derived from Christianity and other religions, namely devils or demons. They are by nature evil and malevolent, and the unknown or obscure Other is assumed to be evil (the devil in the dark.) Especially if it is defined as an enemy, this labeling as evil without reliable evidence, this assumption of evil, is often called “demonizing.”

 Eventually, everything bad that happens is attributed to “the demon.” That’s part of the psychology of the Salem witch hunts.

 In this episode, the “monster” is the most basic kind, with no human or even mammalian features. But Star Trek in this episode as well as in others, and in general, deals with other gradations of “them”—of The Other.

One of the next category of Others is standing with Captain Kirk analyzing the problem. He is the alien Mr. Spock, a humanoid with a Vulcan father and Vulcan features, and with a human mother and human features-- a version of the griffin or the werewolf, with the ears of the devil.

It is the alien Spock who notices the “silicon modules” on Vandenberg’s desk. As identical perfect spheres, they would raise questions, but not in these circumstances. Vandenberg dismisses Spock’s inquiries and interest. “We didn’t ask you down here to collect rocks.”

 But Spock is the alien whose mind is open to the possibility of something more alien—a silicon-based creature. Spock seems to have intuited from the beginning that these modules are eggs, but—especially after being chided by Doctor McCoy—he does not want to risk seeming to be too different, too alien, and not be accepted as a scientific observer, his main common ground with human beings.

 There are other Others aboard the Enterprise—but their effect is subliminal, because they aren’t considered Others in the Star Trek universe of the 22nd century. But a black woman officer and an officer of Asian extraction are Others in the 1960s, especially 1960s television.

While Uhura and Sulu are accepted as equals on the Enterprise, and therefore as “Us,” Spock is somewhere in between: he is Science Officer and second in command, but as several first season episodes show, he is not quite understood or accepted as one of Us by everyone. Still, for some viewers (and not just in the 1960s), they are all somewhere along the continuum of Them. They all have that alienness, that “not-Usness” of the monster.

The Enterprise officers are piecing together a picture of the monster. McCoy identifies a chemical corrosive it uses. Then the monster not only kills a man, but steals a key component of a machine that pumps air for the miners to breathe underground. But it seems they are all slow to acknowledge what this theft means—that the monster is intelligent, not a mindless killer.

 This has long been a limitation in human dealings with the first Others in human experience: animals. In fact there is ample evidence that early humans understood more of humanity’s relationship and resemblances to animals than did modern science until recently, when examples of animal intelligence (and such formerly human-only activities as tool use) as well as social behavior that might be described as ethical are finally being acknowledged.

 But at this point in the story, the miners are intent on one thing: “find that monster and kill it.” By then, Kirk has accepted the possibility of a silicon-based lifeform that Spock theorized—one that extruded a corrosive chemical to move swiftly through rock “as we move through the air,” as Spock said. And that machine component was not taken “by accident,” as Spock says.

 But Kirk’s mission is to get the mines operating again, and his duty is to defend the human life in the tunnels, so he orders searchers to shoot on sight, to kill.

 Kirk and Spock then see the creature, and their phaser fire wounds it. Having modified his tricorder, Spock discovers that within a hundred miles there is only one creature. It is possibly the last of its kind. To kill it, Spock says, would be a crime against “science”—reviving an argument about genocide that began in the first episode, “The Man Trap.” But he quickly agrees with Kirk that they have no choice but killing it.

There then occurs a very interesting dance of attitudes between Kirk and Spock that bears upon the dual attitude towards the Other.

 Human intelligence developed two very different and sometimes contrary sets of survival skills: one to identify danger, the other to identify opportunity. Dangers were to be avoided or overcome, but opportunities—for new food sources, dwelling spaces, mating and social contact—were to be pursued.

 So humans are endowed with fear and curiosity, with frowns and smiles, fists and open hands. Sometimes risks are seen as worth the potential reward. Sometimes supposed dangers get redefined as opportunities, or at least as non-threatening, and maybe even interesting for the differences. Difference is a source of knowledge, a way humans learn and add new skills. What constitutes Us can even be expanded.

So Spock has voiced his regret but his agreement that the creature must be killed. But instructing another set of searchers, Spock suggests they might capture it. Kirk quickly intervenes, reiterating his order to shoot to kill. “I will lose no more men.”

 When Kirk then tells Spock not to join the search but to assist Scotty in trying to repair the damaged machine, Spock and the rest of us understand that Kirk is worried that Spock’s doubts will prevent him from killing the creature. But without confronting that doubt, Spock convinces him that he is more useful in the search.

 Yet when Kirk eventually confronts the wounded creature, he does not kill it—and it is Spock, rushing to his aid, who urges him to kill it because “you can’t take the risk.”  This isn't a contradiction--but a subtle example of the effect these two have on each other, and an illustration of the two alternatives. While Spock's paramount concern in that moment is the safety of Kirk,  Spock has at least put Kirk in mind of the possibility that the creature should not be killed if it's not necessary.

Once Kirk assesses that the creature won’t attack as long as he has his phaser at the ready, he relaxes. He has heard his alien officer’s feeling about an alien life form, and taken this risk. He sees an opportunity.

Kirk appears curious. But he doesn’t know what to do. Spock comes upon this impasse. Kirk then suggests that he use the Vulcan technique of the joining of two minds. He knows the opportunity of the impasse is for communication, and the mind meld is the surest way.

 Spock’s mind meld (actually two separate melds, with the Horta’s attempt at communicating between them) reveals the truth: the creature is a member of a highly intelligent species, the Horta. At a certain point in their cycle (every 50,000 years), all Horta die except one, who nurtures the thousands of eggs that will become the next generation.

 This Horta is not only a sentient life form—it is a mother defending its eggs, the silicon nodules that the miners have mindlessly been destroying. A mother defending its young is something humans understand not only from their own behavior, but that of their original Others, the animals.

 But that’s not all that results from Spock’s mind meld. He is able to repeat the Horta’s internal cries of pain, and anguished thoughts about the actions of the human miners. From the Horta’s point of view, the humans are murderers, devils, destroying the Chamber of the Ages, the Horta’s very future. So the Horta feels compelled to kill the “monsters.”

 This contradicts the usual monster story in several ways. First, the monster is not killing without reason, or for the sake of killing: it has a reason, fully understandable. Moreover, it is a reason that would motivate humans to kill, if they were in its position—in its “shoes.”

And were humans in its position, they too might consider their enemy as monsters, as devils. But these humans weren’t purposely killing or committing genocide (though humans have been known to do so, employing various rationalizations, such as considering Native Americans as less than human.)

 In this story the miners were aghast at what they had done, in mistakenly destroying the eggs they believed were lifeless. “We didn’t know,” Vandenberg says, when confronted with Spock’s explanation.

 Kirk orders McCoy to heal the Horta’s wounds, and brokers a mutually beneficial agreement between the Horta and the miners. It is an agreement that still seems a bit colonialist (the Horta tunnel for the miners in exchange for not being killed) but it is an agreeable solution.

 Intelligence put the Horta in a different category, more akin to humans. The “mother” defending the eggs caused empathy. Both changed the ethics involved.

 Had this not so elegantly removed any point of conflict, the ending might not have been so happy. But the point of allegory is to elegantly make its point, and the understandable motivations of the Horta moved it out of the category of Monster, of Them, closer to Spock’s status of acceptable Other.

The script by Gene Coon is generally praised as countering the monster movie and (too often) even science fiction assumption that the “monster,” the alien, the Other, is automatically malevolent. In fact, some movies after this—like “Close Encounters” and E.T. but not limited to Spielberg—dramatized peaceful aliens, though most movies have since returned to the more explosive plots and violent visual effects involving completely evil aliens.

 The episode succeeds as allegory and human drama, despite production deficiencies and unconvincing plot points. Sometimes it succeeds because of these. For example, the miners at one point form what is essentially a mob, armed with clubs—implausible in terms of effective weapons against the creature’s known capabilities, but very suggestive on the allegorical or metaphorical level of a mob armed with clubs and pitchforks in pursuit of the Frankenstein monster, or witches or demons.

 The tragic error of reflexively demonizing the Other extends to racial, ethnic, national and other human conflicts. As such reflexes and such conflicts exist in some profusion today, it is a timely allegory still, fifty years later. And one that is essential to the soul of Star Trek.

 By showing how prejudices operate in the extreme situation of the monster, the danger of prejudice is exposed in less obvious situations—with a diverse crew, for instance, in which a sense of Us versus Them on a smaller scale can flare with bewildering swiftness and power, resulting in a breakdown of teamwork and worse.

 In Star Trek, the alien often provides a focal point for drama and for human self-examination. Only by getting a perspective outside itself—an alien perspective, even if only imaginatively—can humanity see itself more clearly. Just as humans first learned who they were in comparison to animals, in Star Trek they learn their differences and similarities from encounters with aliens, and often by means of those with both a human and alien heritage, like Spock.

The view towards non-humanoid aliens would become more complex in Star Trek, especially in the Next Generation series. The positive side of The Devil of the Dark allegory would enable Star Trek’s boldest value, expressed as the Vulcan motto of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination.”