Airdate: 9/08/1966
The Man Trap – Plot Summary
The Man Trap begins with McCoy, Kirk, and Darnell beaming down to a planet to make sure Professor Crater and his wife Nancy are healthy and OK. Complicating the situation is that Nancy is an old flame of McCoy. Nancy greets them and appears as a different woman to each of the three crew members, though they don’t realize it.
Darnell sees her the most different as a blonde. While McCoy and Kirk talk with Crater, they hear Nancy screaming and find Darnell dead with weird red rings on his face. He has a fruit in his mouth. They beam back up with Nancy asking about salt provisions.
They figure out that Darnell has no salt left in his body. They beam back down to ask Mrs. Crater more questions. After two more crewmen are killed, Crater finally comes clean about Nancy. The creature was the last of its race and needed salt to survive. It killed the real Nancy and took her form.
He tried to keep it alive and it in turn took the form of his wife to provide companionship. But with the salt running out, it got desperate, killing the crewman. It finally tries to kill Kirk but Spock arrives to stop it, forcing McCoy to kill it.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk calls Nancy a “handsome woman.” A letter-writing campaign ensued and never again would a woman be called handsome… well until The Next Generation, and I think it was done as an apology.
Logical
Spock beats the crap out of a woman. He also is not affected by the salt vampire’s charms and sees through her almost immediately. Spock also makes Uhura cry by making her do her job.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy accuses Kirk of getting girls to like him by bribing them. This is a McCoy-centered episode where he finds an old flame, or at least he thinks he has. McCoy also says “Yes Sir” when Kirk angrily tells him he wants to know how his crewman died, a formal response I don’t think McCoy did ever again.
But the big moment for McCoy is the first time when he uttered the now famous line “He’s Dead, Jim” when he found Darnell.
Canon Maker
Spock establishes that Vulcan has no moon, and writers in 2009 will forget this fact. This is the first crewman to die and ironically is a blue shirt, not a red shirt. The silver earpiece makes its first appearance, as do the properly colored uniforms and rank insignias.
The idea of civilian research outposts is established here.
Sulu mentions the “Great Bird Of The Galaxy” a nickname Gene Roddenberry would be informally given over time.
Uhura makes her first appearance here, although since this is the 6th episode made, it’s difficult to say what’s first. She is established as Swahili here.
Janice Rand makes her debut and would appear frequently throughout the first season before she had a falling out with the producers. Apparently an unnamed executive couldn’t keep his hands off her so she was let go. Not sure she would’ve made it with the cast anyhow but that’s a crappy way to have it end. She is kind of the Tasha Yar of the original series.
Canon Breaker
A weird suit is worn by a crewmember, looking like a radiation suit. It’s never seen again. Crater uses the same phaser that was used the pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, beginning a long-standing Trek tradition of reusing props.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
Three crewmen die in this episode, though only one is a red shirt. We get the hat trick with a gold and a blue shirt as well.
Technobabble
The Enterprise can search a planet with pinpoint accuracy. This will be something that will work only when the plots demand it. Truth serum is a thing that they never use again.
I Know That Guy
Michal Joel Zaslow played Darnell, an actor who went on to a successful career in soaps before being cut down by cancer in 1998 at age 56. Crater was played by Alfred Ryder and Jeanne Ball played Nancy.
What It Means To Be Human
The Man Trap was actually the first episode ever aired, though it was the 6th episode produced. Most of what would be Trek as we know it was in full swing as they already had 5 other episodes under their belt, including The Cage. So weird things that would go away as the series progressed already had gone away by the time this episode was aired.
As for the episode itself, it’s a typical shapeshifting alien monster episode. One of the things I really liked about Star Trek in the first season is so many of the creatures were misunderstood. Look foul, felt fair as Frodo would say. Later on the creatures just became creatures to be shot. This episode straddled the line.
The Salt Vampire is the last of its kind, it’s lonely and needs to survive. It’s intelligent but not able to control itself, murdering to get what it needs. It seems that it should be very easy to control but I’m guessing this planet is devoid of salt, maybe that’s why it’s the last of its kind. It’s hard not to feel some kind of sympathy for it.
Yet it makes no sense for it to be killing everyone. They can provide salt really easy, so why kill everyone? It’s intelligent but doesn’t even try to talk to anyone about what it needs. If you have another species that will be willing to help you with easily available food for you, every choice the Salt Vampire makes is against its own best interest.
Of course showing it in its hideous form makes it all the easier to kill it, since McCoy couldn’t while in its Nancy form. Why change forms? Was it trying to commit suicide? It certainly doesn’t seem to want to die. Overall, I just can’t make heads or tails of this episode. I think in the days of Twilight Zone and other “scary” shows, maybe it was more to get people’s attention to this new show on TV.
Unfortunately The Man Trap was not a good start.
