Customer Reviews

Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 6: The Man Trap [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is rather early in the series to introduce a romantic figure from McCoy's past, but I like the touch early on where everybody looks at Nancy and sees what they expect to see. But the important thing here is that Nancy is really a Salt Vampire. This settles once and for all the question of whether a vampire merely has to suck blood to truly be a vampire. They can suck blood, salt, minds, whatever, as long as they suck, they are vampires.

This was not another particularly acclaimed episode, but it is one of my favorite. The crew are doing routine medical examinations on an archeological couple who only request salt tablets, presumably because of the hot climate of the planet. It turns out to be that Dr. McCoy's old girlfriend, who is part of the couple is actually a shape-shifting creature that has to feed off salt to survive, so it goes around killing crew members leaving red suction cup marks on their faces. The creatures true appearance is revealed near the end. Only complaint: it seems that the creature could not get enough salt no matter how many people it kept killing.

McCoy, Kirk and a young Ensign beam down to M113, a deserted planet inhabited only by some indigenous plants and married scientists Robert and Nancy Crater... yes, Crater - like moon crater. Ten years earlier, McCoy and Nancy were an item, then they parted ways and she married Robert Crater. McCoy never saw her after she left and has mixed feelings about their visit to the scientists. M1113 is arid - dry, hot and extremely salt deprived. McCoy has come to give the Craters a required annual medical exam. Robert Crater is resistant and says all they need is salt pills.

When McCoy sees Nancy, he sees her just as she was 10 years earlier - a girl of 25. When Kirk sees her, she is a woman in her mid 40s and when the Ensign with them sees her, he sees a tall blonde hottie he claims to recognize from a pleasure planet.

As McCoy examines Robert Crater, they hear Nancy screaming. She is standing over the body of the young ensign - he is dead as a doornail - with circular mottled marks on his face. McCoy finds a piece of fruit in his mouth and Nancy states that it is the deadly Borgia plant - from the Nightshade family, indigenous to the planet.

A medical exam rules out poisoning - McCoy finds that the ensign was completely depleted of salt. When Spock, Kirk and 2 other ensigns beam down to investigate further, they find one of the ensigns dead and the other missing. When they find the missing crewman, they beam back up. Unbeknownst to them, Ensign Green is really some creature from the planet that has been masquerading as Nancy.

After Ensign Green's body is discovered on the planet, they realize that the person they beamed up wasn't Green... but it's too late.

This creature, as Robert Crater describes it, is the last of its kind, like the Do-Do bird of earth. All of its kin died from lack of salt and it's the last one. After it killed Crater's wife, he tried to kill it, but then felt sympathy for it. It took the form of his wife and has been his surrogate companion all these years, friend, lover, cook and entertainer.

In many ways, it's quite silly that the creature has been living peacefully with the doctor for at least a year, surviving on salt tablets, but now that it's on the ship, it goes on an eating rampage, killing one person after another to suck the salt out of them.

The creature, in its true form, looks like a cross between a blue shag carpet and a funnel - a truly loathesome looking mess - and Robert Crater has been knocking boots with this thing!

McCoy acts like a puppy in love, totally irresponsible and goofy - but this is only the 6th episode, so characters were still in development.

The concept of this creature was very clever - assuming the shape of what the viewer desires to see, siphoning the salt right out of them. Cheese, to be sure, but interesting cheese. Like Brie.

"The Man Trap" is one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek. It's about a mysterious alien that has to have salt to live. The salt creature can take the form of any person in disguise. The last remaining salt creature boards the U.S.S. Enterprise and takes the form of Nancy, a woman that Dr. McCoy was once involved with. Once Nancy comforts Dr. McCoy to fall asleep, the creature then takes the form of Dr. McCoy and goes on its venture to find salt while onboard the ship. When you finally get to see what the salt creature looks like, it's not a disappointment. It's some of the best makeup and effects for a show that came out in the 60's. The creature will put its huge hands on your face and drink you dry of all the salt in your body.

I definitely recommend "The Man Trap" to any fan of Star Trek. It'll keep your interest while you watch to see how Kirk and the rest of the crew will fend against the salt creature while it takes the form of the Enterprise's crew.

Now this was good because of, well, everything! The plot is like any good mystery show. Next, the action is taking a good course. I haven't seen this movie in a while, but you'll like it.

This episode is one of my faves. The Doc decides to visit an old flame, only to find out that on the planet she is on, people are dying. He tries to find a cure, and in doing so finds out that the disease is not caused by a what, but a who...

This is another cool "scary" episode, Trek style. One of McCoy's old flames seems connected to a series of deaths -- what will McCoy do?

Oddly, this is the episode the network chose to first air (although others were completed first), introducing the world to Star Trek. At first glance, "Man Tap" lives down to the cliche of "scary monster in a cheap costume who tries to kill everyone on the ship." But there's much beneath the surface. Later episodes would focus on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy to the detriment of supporting characters. TNG tried to correct that, but at the cost of having fuzzier dramatic focus. In contrast, "Man Trap" gives us interesting scenes involving Uhura, Sulu, and Janice Rand, but in a way that keeps dramatic tension high.

This is a terrific episode for Uhura. By chance, she runs into the "salt vampire" that has gotten aboard the ship and seeks to survive by sucking all the salt from its victims. The twist is that the creature can appear in whatever form suits its purpose; also, it can read minds. To McCoy, it appears as his long lost love, Nancy Crater. To a hapless crewman (strangely, in a blue shirt, not a red), the creature is a busty blonde from a "pleasure planet." To Uhura, the creature appears as a tall black crewman who can speak Swahili. Uhura just barely escapes.

Early on, there's a fun scene between Uhura and Spock when she speaks longingly of a moonlit romantic evening. "Miss Uhura, Vulcan has no moon." "I don't doubt it, Mr. Spock." In that same scene, Uhura mentions that she hates the word "frequency." This is both ironic and appropriate, considering that in many later episodes her dialog consists of little more than "Hailing frequences open."

I first saw this episode as a boy well into my "Trek" infatuation. I did not know then this was an early episode. One scene here is unlike just about any other in TOS; when Spock defends the Captian with all his might against the beast, and does little more than anger it:

In so many episodes we see Spock's strength-- he rarely needs more than a neck pinch to disable a foe. And always, he is calm and logical.

Here, we see Spock showing more emotion, begging Bones to help him defend his friend. With both fists he is landing direct hits to the creature's face -- she appears to be a delicate lady -- and she, Nancy she is called, just looks at him. Oops! If she were human could she take this kinda beating? Spock cries out to Bones. Then, showing the strength we now suspect she has, she swats Spock accross the sick-bay with the back of her hand.

Spock down, Bones hypnotized, Nacy slowly walks toward Kirk to resume feeding upon him....

This was a TV show from the 60s, before Alien, Star Wars, E.T., all that!

While this is officially episode number 6, it was the first one to be aired, so it served to introduce us to the main characters and some of the technology that they were to use. The Enterprise stops to check on an isolated married couple who are investigating an ancient and alien archeological site. The woman is an old love interest of Doctor McCoy, and she dutifully looks like she did many years ago and calls him by her old pet name of plum.
However, the woman is in fact a creature that has a tremendous physiological need for salt and is capable of sucking it out of a person's body. "She" is also capable of adopting any appearance, although it appears to be an act of mind blocking rather than shape-shifting. It kills a member of the crew and while the "husband" knows what happened, he covers for her and they both end up on the Enterprise, where she continues to kill. It is here where we learn for the first time that Spock does not have sodium chloride in his blood, making him immune from the salt-sucker's death grip. Eventually, the creature is tracked down and killed by McCoy's own hand, but not before he hesitates and we see an emotional outburst from Spock who implores McCoy to kill the creature.
There are two main themes running through this episode. The first is that of the wily alien, who can muddle your mind and considers humans to be little more than a source of sustenance. While there is no explicit argument made either way, the implicit one is that the creature is not intelligent. For if it was intelligent, it would not have killed the first crewman and would have simply made the request for the salt that it needed. An intelligent creature would have recognized that humans would have to kill it if it began killing them. All of the behaviors indicate that it is operating largely on instinct, where the images and sounds are projected into the minds of the Enterprise crew.
The second main theme reinforces the first, in that Kirk laments the death of the creature, as she was the last of her species. In the final scene, Kirk appears lost in thought, and when prodded, he confesses to have been thinking about the buffalo. Once again, the approach is to consider it to have been an animal rather than an intelligent creature. Even though it was necessary to kill it to save his life, Kirk has the fundamental morality to regret the events. This establishes the fundamental theme that the purpose of the Enterprise is to seek out new life and creatures in order to establish friendly ties.
While not one of the best episodes of the series, it is a sound beginning, and on that plane, about as good as it could have been. In it we learn some of the technology that will rapidly become routine, and we see what truly made Star Trek great, the incorporation of grand ideas into the plots.