Synopsis: The Enterprise is sent to a perigium production station on Janus VI to investigate some strange occurrences and discover a silicon-based lifeform.
As was the case with “This Side of Paradise,” Leonard Nimoy refers to “The Devil in the Dark” as one of his favorite episodes from Star Trek: The Original Series (1995). And I can understand why Nimoy, as an actor, would be appreciative of these two storylines. They give him the ability to explore emotions, or the Eros, of Mr. Spock beyond the logical Logos of his normal persona.
In “The Devil in the Dark” Spock once again performs a Vulcan mind meld, but this time not on a human, but on an individual so far removed from himself that it is not even a carbon-based life form, as the horta’s makeup is based on silicon. The mind meld here acts as a tool to communicate between two completely disparate species, much as a psychopomp acts as a go-between connecting the conscious ego with one’s unconscious. When Spock is able to understand the horta he learns she is a mother, the last of her species – the only one of her kind left in a 50,000-year cycle to care for the eggs, the silicon modules located in “The Chamber of the Ages.” The miners destroyed the silicon modules not knowing that they were her eggs, which is why she started killing them. The production station’s Chief Engineer Vanderberg immediately understood his transgression against a mother, and with a fresh understanding of her viewpoint a new way of living on the planet came about, mutually beneficial to both carbon-based and silicon-based life forms. This is a metaphor for Jung’s concept of the transcendent function, the ongoing and gradual integration and acceptance of one’s unconscious into one’s ego persona.
Reference:
Nimoy, L. (1995). I am Spock. Hyperion.
Original post created 30 January 2021
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