Well now, I've seen some cheesy looking monsters in my time. Most of them came from 1959 'Z' grade sci-fi flicks like "Attack of the Giant Leeches", "The Giant Gila Monster" and that real scary lobster silhouette in "Teenagers From Outer Space". But this Horta just takes the cake. Seriously, what were they thinking when they came up with this design?
Yet on another level, this episode does a nice job of exploring the unknown and presenting the Enterprise crew with a choice to react with animal instinct or take a more systematic approach to find out what was happening on Janus VII. Captain Kirk is particularly effective here in the way he comes to the side of the Horta. But I would like to know what Shatner and Nimoy were REALLY thinking when Spock went into that Vulcan mind meld on the creature. Is there a Star Trek outtakes reel?
Then there's Bones - 'Yeah, you heard me, beam me down a hundred pounds of concrete and a trowel. I've got work to do'. I have to say, that was actually a quite creative resolution to the story of an injured crawling rock and her unhatched brood. I don't believe that whole fibrous asbestos/silicon based life form idea was ever used before or since. You have to hand it to Roddenberry and his writers here, they boldly went and never looked back with this one.
Yet on another level, this episode does a nice job of exploring the unknown and presenting the Enterprise crew with a choice to react with animal instinct or take a more systematic approach to find out what was happening on Janus VII. Captain Kirk is particularly effective here in the way he comes to the side of the Horta. But I would like to know what Shatner and Nimoy were REALLY thinking when Spock went into that Vulcan mind meld on the creature. Is there a Star Trek outtakes reel?
Then there's Bones - 'Yeah, you heard me, beam me down a hundred pounds of concrete and a trowel. I've got work to do'. I have to say, that was actually a quite creative resolution to the story of an injured crawling rock and her unhatched brood. I don't believe that whole fibrous asbestos/silicon based life form idea was ever used before or since. You have to hand it to Roddenberry and his writers here, they boldly went and never looked back with this one.