Television Review: The Man Trap (Star Trek, S1X05, 1966)
The Man Trap (S01E05)
Airdate: 8 September 1966
Written by: George Clayton Johnson
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Running Time: 43 minutes
(SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE: This is the first review in the series in which I intend to cover Star Trek television shows starting with The Original Series in 1966 and ending with Enterprise in 2005. )
Like many great media franchises of our time, Star Trek had quite a modest beginning. Its very first incarnation – the initial episode of the television series that would later retroactively be subtitled The Original Series – is actually nothing to write home about and is not well-liked by “trekkies”.
It was originally not even supposed to be a beginning. The very first work of Star Trek was The Cage, a 1964 pilot episode that was rejected by NBC (it was later aired in 1988, with its material recycled for the two-part Season 1 episode The Menagerie). The second pilot was the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, which was accepted by NBC, but network executives ultimately decided that it wouldn’t work well as the introduction to the series. Thanks to the standalone nature of episodes, they could afford to make a choice among the number of already produced episodes, and they picked The Man Trap.
The episode, like almost all of Season 1, doesn’t bother to provide much exposition about the future world in which Star Trek is set; much of the world-building was done through later shows, films, and other officially and unofficially canonical material that allowed dedicated fans and scholars to reconstruct when exactly in the fictional timeline The Man Trap is set. The only number given is Stardate 1324.1, which later corresponds to the year 2266 AD. The famous original intro describes the plot as “the voyages of the USS Enterprise”, a Starfleet spaceship in the service of the United Federation of Planets, commanded by Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner), which conducts various research and research-related missions throughout the galaxy.
The plot deals with one such mission – the delivery of supplies to a team of researchers on planet M-133, home to an ancient and apparently lost civilisation. The team consists of Doctor Robert Crater (played by Alfred Ryder) and his wife Nancy (played by Jeanne Bal). The mission also involves regular medical check-ups, which are to be conducted by Enterprise chief medical officer Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (played by DeForest Kelley). He looks forward to it because he used to be romantically involved with Nancy a long time ago. When he finally sees her, he is surprised to find her much younger than her age might indicate. Captain Kirk, however, sees a middle-aged woman while crewman Darnell (played by Michael Zaslow) sees a bombshell blonde (played by Francine Pyne) who resembles a woman he once met on Wrigley’s pleasure planet. Darnell is soon afterwards found dead, which Nancy explains as being due to poisonous plants he had accidentally consumed.
Kirk doesn’t believe this explanation, especially after McCoy discovers that the unfortunate Darnell (who has the honour of being the first “Redshirt” in the history of Star Trek) had all of the salt drained from his body. His further investigation is opposed by a visibly nervous Crater. A new team is sent to the planet, resulting not only in more deaths but also in Nancy changing shape into crewman Green (played by Bruce Watson) and coming back aboard the Enterprise. There she continues to change shape before Crater explains that “Nancy” is actually an alien creature that is the last member of the native M-113 race. The creature has killed his wife and later, due to its ability to read people’s minds, took Nancy’s shape to comfort Crater. However, it depends on salt in order to survive, which makes it desperate. The creature kills Crater before it is confronted and killed by McCoy in a dramatic finale.
The episode is solid, well-acted, and well-directed, but it definitely shows its age and, more importantly, the technical and budget limitations of 1960s US broadcast television. The set designed to represent an alien planet and ruins of an ancient civilisation looks rather theatrical. The plot about a shape-shifting monster creating havoc on the Enterprise seems a little exploitative and too reminiscent of those in B-grade horror films at the time. The episode wasn’t particularly liked by members of the cast and crew, including William Shatner.
The Man Trap, on the other hand, serves its purpose by introducing the main characters – Vulcan science officer Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy); communications officer Uhura (played by Nichelle Nichols), who unsuccessfully flirts with emotionless Spock; senior helmsman Hikaru Sulu (played by George Takei); Yeoman Janice Rand (played by Grace Lee Whitney); and chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (voiced by James Doohan, who would appear on screen in later episodes). Despite its shortcomings, The Man Trap reminds us that with enough talent and vision, strong edifices might be built even on seemingly weak foundations.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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