Some prissy dude with a dorky bowl haircut repeatedly punches a creepy middle-aged lady in the face right before she pushes him into a pile of books while some other older dude watches and another guy screams a scream which seems like it’s supposed to be a fake scream. It’s not a David Lynch movie; it’s the first aired episode of Star Trek, ever, and if it were everyone’s first exposure to Star Trek today, then, honestly, no one would like Star Trek.
Though “The Man Trap,” was the fifth regular episode of Star Trek filmed, it was broadcast first. 48 years ago today on September 8th, 1966, the world got their first taste of Star Trek, and it was this. Apparently, the reason it was picked first was mostly because of a weird process of elimination, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was too expository, “Mudd’s Women” was about space prostitutes, “Charlie X” had too-much ass-slapping, and “The Corbomite Manuever,” starred a laughing baby who drinks cocktails in the afternoon. In comparison, this story—the one about killing an intergalactic female vampire who digs salt—was the clear safe bet.
As a general caveat: of course there are those who really do remember seeing “The Man Trap,” when it first aired in 1966. My late father was one of them, and he used to tell me that he knew Star Trek was “special” from this very first airing. But, an original series purist like my dad would have never dreamed of making me start with “The Man Trap,” because it would be super-weird. Today, the people who love Star Trek and started with “The Man Trap,” are greatly outnumbered by the people who started with something else. True, in the 1987, I was that odd 6-year-old who affected a distrust of The Next Generation as it debuted, but even I’m not sure I ever loved “The Man Trap.” It’s part of Star Trek—so it’s protected by the mafia that lives in my mind and guards my favorite stuff—but let’s get real. While “The Man Trap” is accidentally a decent introduction to the show and its characters, it might have gotten Star Trek off on the wrong space boot.
Here’s what happens: the Enterprise rolls up on a planet where they’re supposed to be doing some routine medical check-ups on a couple of space-archaeologists. Captain Kirk’s famous “Captain’s Log” narrative voice-over thing starts firmly in the present-tense, as though this log is some kind of direct line we have into his mind. He tells us “Mr. Spock is in command,” while he and Bones and some joker named Darnell beam down to the planet. If you’ve never seen Star Trek before, you have no idea why Mr. Spock is important and you might suspect Darnell is regular character. The landing party meets the Craters—Dr. Crater, and Nancy Crater—and Bones, Kirk, and Darnell all “see” a different version of Nancy. She’s Bones’s old girlfriend and he sees her as a young woman, Kirk sees her as her “correct” age, and Darnell sees a blonde-bombshell person who is totally different. You ready for some Star Trek? Cause that’s the big hook.
Next, you get the famous “Space…the final frontier” shtick, which if this were your first Star Trek, would ring false, because after what you’ve just seen, it doesn’t seem like the mission of the Enterprise is to explore “strange new worlds,” but rather, to check in on randos who live on worlds that aren’t new at all, just strange.
As the episode gets going, there’s a decidedly Twilight Zone-ish vibe, in which an inverse-whodunit plays out, where we learn very quickly that a shape shifting creature is murdering people by sucking all the sodium chloride (salt!) out of their system. Nancy can morph into all sorts of other people because, as revealed later in the episode, “this is not Nancy.” Nancy’s been replaced by a “salt vampire” monster that in its true form looks kind of like one of the Morlocks from the George Pal film-version of The Time Machine.
Not-Nancy makes everyone very emotional. There’s some discussions about the salt vampire/Nancy being an endangered species similar to that of the buffalo, prompting Kirk to yell at a lot of people about being kind of wusses about killing it. Later Kirk is back-pedal-y and contemplative about killing this endangered intergalactic vampire, but it seems sort of like cop-out since he’s been a jerk the whole time. Bones, who is kind of in the spotlight—a thing that rarely happens in other Star Trek episodes—arbitrarily decides that Not-Nancy is still Nancy, despite being the person most qualified to tell that she is not. Spock takes up that mantle instead, jumping into the fray in a highly illogical manner.
Speaking of “regular” Star Trek characters, this episode does give quasi-regulars Sulu, Rand, and Uhura way more to do than many later, more famous episodes. From a storytelling perspective, this muddles the attempt at creating a solid episode of television, but as a statement of diversity “The Man Trap” is tops. If you’re just watching Star Trek for the first time, you’ve got every reason to believe that the salt vampire might kill Uhura, Sulu, or Rand. Sulu has just as much screen time as crewman Green or Darnell, who do fall prey to the vampire, so why not? In contrast, “The Man Trap” showcases how great and real Uhura and Sulu are as characters, with both of them getting to be fun and interesting in ways that they won’t get to be again until pretty much the Star Trek films.
Oh, Scotty isn’t in this episode. Whatever.
The weirdest thing about “The Man Trap” is probably its writer. Show creator Gene Roddenberry famously didn’t write a lot of the actual teleplays, and this one was written by a guy named George Clayton Johnson. If you’re like me, this name is famous for one reason: he’s the co-author (with William F. Nolan) of the novel version of Logan’s Run. If you were to look at his Wikipedia page, you’d barely even notice this and probably just assume this guy wrote for The Twilight Zone a lot. Now, this one and only collaboration with William F. Nolan was published in 1967, meaning his (arguably) two most famous contributions to science fiction happened in only two years, back to back. Johnson’s writing here is sharp and scary, and shows off his Twilight Zone chops. Also, there is considerable reason to believe he offered a story treatment for an episode called “The Syndicate,” based off of a Roddenberry idea called “President Capone,” which later became the second season mobster-comedy fest episode “A Piece of the Action,” George Clayton Johnson never wrote for Star Trek again, and that kind of seems to be a good thing.
Star Trek was not The Twilight Zone and it wasn’t a dark meditation on the state of society like Logan’s Run. I’m a delirious advocate of George Clayton Johnson and his work, but the tone of “The Man Trap” does seem a little off with the rest of Star Trek. The critics of the time didn’t really like it either, although I wouldn’t constitute that as sole proof that Johnson didn’t fit with the show. Variety called it “dreary and confusing,” which is kind of true, even if you like things that are dreary and confusing.
Personally, I do like this episode; probably because of it’s flaws. I also love Star Trek, and true love is all about acceptance. But had I been a critic writing in 1966 would I, like TV Guide, have written “the sky is not the limit for Trek”?
Almost 50 years later, Star Trek has proved over and over again that it is so much more than a trap for bored people. More than just a TV show, Star Trek is like a really eccentric relative who shows up in all of our lives and regales us with screwed-up stories. But it still doesn’t change the fact that the first time Star Trek came to dinner, things were pretty awkward.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
I also watched this episode when it first aired, in high anticipation. I found it so silly I did not watch Star Trek again until the second season. Now of course I have a more balanced view of the original series — some good, a few great, some not-so-good. My memory of this one is still not great, but maybe I should look at it again.
I was watching when it first aired, I found that I prefered Lost in Space, probably because I was only ten years old. It wasn’t until the syndication years of the Seventies when I was in high school that I became a Trek fan.
Where No Man Has Gone Before was much more impressive even then – they really should have started with that one.
I was in what is now called middle school when STAR TREK started, and I watched this episode. I watched every episode and grieved when the show was cancelled.
The first episode was enough of a taste of the series to bring me back for the second, but I didn’t totally buy into the series until the Horta episode where the monster proved to be a misunderstood momma.
I loved Bones for his passion and kindness as well as the outsider Spock–all teenagers see themselves as outsiders. Kirk was a bit too Sixties manly man using women like episodic testosterone tests, but I was used to that. Uhura, the other women, and the minorities were a revelation for that period which I hardily approved of. I loved the thought and social commentary which you didn’t see much of back then.
It was so different from what was on at the time.
You also have to remember how hungry many of us who loved science fiction back then were for TV science fiction. Any media sf as far as that goes. What was on TV was really the only source for sf many of us had.
I loved this episode because I had the weirdest grade school crush of all time on Dr. McCoy, and this is a McCoyish episode. But the first Trek I ever saw was “Arena,” and who wouldn’t fall in love with a show that featured a lizard dude wearing a mini-dress in a really bad sixties print?
The reason the network led with this episode, so I’ve always understood, was because it was a monster story, which fit with network and audience expectations at the time about what a science fiction show would be, because their main examples were things like The Outer Limits and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. As for “Corbomite,” given that it was aired rather late in the season, I suspect the elaborate visual effects (for the era) took a long time to complete.
(“Corbomite” was the first episode I ever saw, as it happened, and I was instantly hooked.)
As far as critical reactions, I think context matters: At the time, with The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits both ended, ST was the only adult-oriented SF show on the air in 1966. So just the fact that it was telling a serious, mature drama rather than a campy action comedy story was probably striking enough to get a lot of viewers intrigued.
“The Man Trap” isn’t a favorite of mine, but it does nicely represent the tone of the early first season, the effort to portray the characters, not as larger-than-life space heroes, but as regular people leading everyday lives that just happened to be on a spaceship in the future. The episode’s emphasis on the casual interactions among the crew and everyday business of shipboard life adds some nice texture that was lost later in the show and not really seen again in the franchise until the first season of Enterprise. (Although there’s also an astonishing amount of eating and talking about food in the episode. I often wonder if that was some kind of deliberate irony or thematic statement on Johnson’s part.)
Something to remember is that there were no serial arcs there are today. Television episodes were mostly standalone bottle shows where you didn’t have to have a ton of knowledge about canon. I actually find that refreshing given today’s environment where it’s practically impossible to start watching a show in its second or third season without a Netflix binge to get caught up.
My first TOS episode: “All Our Yesterdays” when I was 11 years old.
Television episodes were mostly standalone
I think that’s an underappreciated factor in modern re-watches. When I was 8 my main TV “thing” was watching (then-recent) re-runs of Emergency and Adam-12 after school. Adam-12 had no backstgory or ongoing character development that I can remember, Emergency had about 30 seconds of B-story sandwiched in between the act 1 minor fire and act 3 major fire. And every episode of Twilight Zone was a one-off of course.
What did anyone watching Star Trek really need to know anyway? Archetypal macho captain, dorky scientist, scottish engineer and country doctor fight rubber aliens in a big spaceship. And if you could sneek in a meditation on racism or hippies or commies or colonialism or environmentalism or feminism, so much the better.
It wasn’t invested with the weight of canon until much later.
I love this episode, which always sends me back to this Topless Robot post:
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/03/the_most_amazing_star_trek_collectible_of_all_time.php
This happened to be the first Star Trek episode I saw–in the early 1990s. It was enough to get me hooked.
But she calls McCoy “Plum”! It’s so sweet. Poor Salt Vampire didn’t deserve that fate. Salt Vampire/McCoy forever!
The very first episode
The monster kills some crew.
But the redshirt phenomenon
Started off in blue.
BURMA SHAVE
Born in 1968, I honestly have no memory of what my first Star Trek episode was. I watched them in reruns all through my childhood.
This episode WAS my gateway drug to TV science fiction. I was 9 years old and watching the re-run because my older brother said it was cool. Having no couch in the room, I hid behind my brother because the Salt Monster was TERRIFYING!
Star Wars could never compare – it was fun but Star Trek had deep, scary, difficult ideas that changed my life and set me on my future career. In real life, my Ph.D. is in planetary geology and for a couple of years part of my job description included “planetary defense”.
Thank you, “Man Trap” – you snared me!
I was ten years old when I watched this as it originally aired–and I was blown away. You really have to put it into the context of the times, as others have noted–there was nothing remotely like it on tv. And as a ten year old sci fi fan in 1966, I was blown away. Christopher Bennet (above) lays this all out clearly in his post:
” . . . it does nicely represent the tone of the early first season, the effort
to portray the characters, not as larger-than-life space heroes, but as
regular people leading everyday lives that just happened to be on a
spaceship in the future.”
In that sense, it was not an awkward first dinner at all, but more like an amazing glimpse of things to come.
I have only seen a few TOS episodes – but I’ve actually seen this one!
I am (pretty sure) I started watching Star Trek in the late ’60s with my dad. I was already a huge Lost in Space & Voyage/Sea fan then (and their trading cards). The White Mountains were the first science fiction I ever read and i was already hooked by age 11. Cheers!
-Ken
(edit: I saw War of the Worlds on TV then too and it scared the crap! outta me)
I always thought The Menagerie was supposed to the the first episode, but somone at NBC thought it to be “too cerebral” for audiences.
Forgive me if this is wrong, I was 7 years old when Star Trek first aired. I do remember that it was a big deal because as a family we all sat down together to watch Star Trek!
@18: The pilot episode “The Menagerie” — known these days by its working title “The Cage” to distinguish it from the later 2-part episode “The Menagerie” — was turned down for a variety of reasons. Being “too cerebral” was a factor, but as part of a larger concern that it wasn’t a good example of what a typical episode of the series would be like. A pilot needs to represent a typical episode so the network can estimate the average episode budget and determine how much it would have to invest in producing an entire season. But “The Cage” was rather more elaborate and expensive than a typical episode. The thing is, at the time Desilu pitched ST to the networks, it was a studio in decline, surviving mostly by renting out its production facilities to other people’s shows. The only show Desilu itself produced was The Lucy Show, a basic three-camera sitcom. And now they were attempting to make what, at the time, was the most elaborate science fiction television production in history. So “The Cage” was made to prove that they were capable of handling such a production, and thus they pulled out all the stops and made a feature-quality pilot. But that didn’t work as an exemplar of a typical episode’s budgetary and logistical requirements, so a second, more typical pilot was requested. In essence, the first pilot was made to sell Desilu, and the second was made to sell the show.
Another thing the network complained about was the cast. Not only did they find most of the cast rather bland, but they were upset because Roddenberry had promised them a diverse, multiethnic cast but had instead delivered an all-white cast save for one Asian extra in the transporter room. Networks at the time were eager to include minority actors because of recent studies showing the buying power of minority audiences. So they sent him back to the drawing board to try again with a better cast.
(Source: Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman.)
Could be worse. My first was The Apple. Didn’t watch again for a year. When I did, it was The Apple again.
I enjoyed reading your article. “The Man Trap” is definitely the series episode to showcase “the monster of the week”, and atypical of other classic Star Trek series episodes. I really think they should have gone with my top ten favorite episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” as it would have been a great way to introduce the series, even though the majority if the main cast were not part of the episode.
Say, am I the only one to notice that the Dr. Crater character looked and sounded a lot like Christopher Walken???
When articles like this one are written from what appears to be a contemporary perspective, it is a bit irritating. You had to be there in 1966 to understand why Star Trek made such an impact. To degrade it based on current times, shows how shallow the writer is. Suspending disbelief is essential to extracting the deeper meanings to all sci fi. This writer should be a political columnist. Opinion and conjecture are right where he belongs. Imaginative and creative thinking is needed to review Star Trek with accuracy.