Original air date: September 8, 1966
Captain’s Log: Stardate 1513.1: Orbiting planet M-113
It’s the first time we hear these words: Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s 5 year mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.
SYNOPSIS
Dr. McCoy discovers his old flame is not what she seems after crew members begin dying from a sudden lack of salt in their bodies.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Man Trap was the sixth episode produced and not Rodenberry or Shatner’s first choice for what was the series premier episode. However, NBC and the Desilu productions won out and that was that. However, when ranked against the other networks on premier week, Star Trek came out on top.
A RECAP
Before the opening credits roll the “trap” is set. Interesting the choice of camera angles and cut aways used for this episode in order to convey how differently “Nancy” appeared to the landing party. Let me start by saying I can already see how overtly sexualized this show is and I’m only two episodes in. It’s pretty cringe-worthy, actually and I’d love to have been a fly on the wall to know how the conversation went about in the writers room for this random scene between Spock and Uhura. Seemingly supposed to be “small talk” and casual it is anything but. For a second I thought it had to do with the fact that while in orbit around planet M-113 the women couldn’t help but want to be wanted by any man in their vicinity. Boy, was I wrong. It was— well, just see for yourself.
Moving on to the actual storyline of a creature who needs salt to survive. Equated to the water Buffalo. Once mighty and numbering in the millions, now extinct. This creature will shape shift at will into whomever it needs to in order to both survive and receive love. It killed the wife of the man the Enterprise is sent to meet to do a routine examination, and assumed her likeness. Now is as good a time as any to point out the salt that humans naturally have in their body. Basically, this creature starts sucking the salt out of random crew members, leaving them dead.
Oh, and let me not forget that Nancy happens to be an ex of Dr. McCoy, aka, Bones. The real Nancy, not the creature one they encounter, of course.
In the end the poor creature is killed by Bones once he comes to his senses and realizes that thing isn’t the ex he was in love with. It’s a good thing too because she was moments away from killing the captain.
I’ve gotta say this at least once before I forget. I appreciate the length of each episode is 50+ minutes. Unlike today where it seems like 20 minutes of an hour long show are devoted to commercials. Back then it was more about the length of the show and advertiser money wasn’t as desperately needed.
DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?
Dr. McCoy: [examining Darnell] Dead, Jim.
[first aired occurrence of his famous line]
For all its weirdness, this was a great intro to Jim's character -- and makes his unearned playboy reputation all the more strange to me! The other characters all see the monster in a form they find most attractive ("she hasn't aged a day" yikes), but Jim just sees a person who looks her age and isn't sexed up in any way. And his advice to bring flowers to an ex! Odd, but it works -- we'll see throughout the series that he's still on great terms with his own exes. Definitely shows off his sweet and dreamy side.