The monster in the dark here, murdering members of a deep mining colony, creates a scary impression in the first act.
Of course, I was never in danger of being burned to a crisp, as the colony chief (Lynch) is fond of describing. He reminded me of the trepidation associated with being a lone security guard at night somewhere - the type of work I did briefly about 20 years ago. I sympathized with the plight of the first man, Schmitter, we see killed in this episode. You have to hand it to Roddenberry and his writers here, they boldly went and never looked back with this one. I don't believe that whole fibrous asbestos/silicon based life form idea was ever used before or since. I have to say, that was actually a quite creative resolution to the story of an injured crawling rock and her unhatched brood. 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. But I would like to know what Shatner and Nimoy were REALLY thinking when Spock went into that Vulcan mind meld on the creature. Captain Kirk is particularly effective here in the way he comes to the side of the Horta. 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. 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". Well now, I've seen some cheesy looking monsters in my time.
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