Star Trek Ruminations

“The Devil in the Dark” is basically the early prototype for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Of course, “The Devil in the Dark” doesn’t have time travel or all of the fish-out-of-water gags of the movie, but at the core these are both stories about communication—and of the conflict that can grow out of a lack of communication. In his book, I Am Spock , Leonard Nimoy makes a direct link between his fondness for this episode and his inspiration for The Voyage Home . The Horta is an interesting case study of the difficulties of translation. First, there is the mechanical hurdle—this creature has no speech organs. As Phillip Morrison indicated , in a diversely populated universe what we think of as speech can hardly be universal. We have to wonder, how quickly would we recognize intelligence and communication from totally alien life-forms? The seemingly omniscient UT simply is no match for the Horta (or the whales, or the mystery probe that came to find them). Spock makes an attempt to ...

While Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country wove issues of translation and communication into the story, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home issues of translation and communication are the story. More than any of the other movies, and more than all but maybe a handful of episodes, the drama of this story grows directly out of the complexities of communicating with alien life-forms. In his book I Am Spock , Leonard Nimoy provides some insight into the creative process behind this movie. Early on he consulted with three scientists involved in the SETI program, including Philip Morrison. Morrison argued strongly that communication with an alien life form would be virtually impossible: In addition to the mechanical problems of having radically different speech organs, the thought process and shared experience from a totally alien environment and path of evolution would leave even a translated sentence incomprehensible. Of course, in the Star Trek universe we are dealing with a lot of hum...