I recall reading somewhere that NBC wanted this episode to premiere, thinking audiences would love the "monster of the week" trope.
Obviously, since NBC chose to air it, why wouldn't they premiere with "Where No One Has Gone Before"? Either which way, the audience would be thrown off by the more austere set design for that one week - not to mention, Trek was unusual in having pilots not meant to be seen by viewers shown.
But that's another story. Is "Man Trap" really just another "big scary BEM" show with sexist title?
Nope. This "monster" is presented with a back story, reasoning for its actions, right down to the "last of its species" trope - something that's not often done in sci-fi or even sci-fi parodies and, let's face it, the only parody one could make here would be too nasty - even for shows like MadTV. It escapes the overused trope of BEM by including those very simple additions that, in 1966, were very mature and grown-up.
And that's the rub - most sci-fi of the time was little more than showing mindless BEMs horrifying people because, you know, they look weird. "The Man Trap" is derided for being superficial. But in the context of BEMs, "Man Trap" is doing what little it can to move the genre into a more interesting direction - and that often gets overlooked, though on the flip side Kirk has zero sentiment and is almost Spock-like in determining the creature would even kill Mr Crater if need be. Kirk spells it out, quite harshly, in Mr Crater with "your heat bleeds too much, you're too noble. you've made a private heaven (for the creature). This thing becomes friend... lover... (this... that...) slave..." Without the episode doing a very special subplot, the fact Kirk says "lover" (among other things) lets the viewer take the idea wherever they want and to whatever (creepy) extent they wish.
The first 15 minutes alone sell Kirk and Spock as being complex, interesting characters. Kirk has a huge range presented, which is worth seeing as opposed to just describing here. Being early season 1, Shatner also shows a wider acting range - I love how Kirk became as the show progressed, but his assertiveness and assuredness are on full display in this episode. He makes decisions and he's right. (As much as I love "ST: Beyond", Kirk at the beginning was shown to be a continual failure and - alternate timeline aside - I didn't care for that, but as that movie progressed Kirk becomes far better as the story continues along and with a rewtach it all made a greater sense, with even more appreciation...)
Uhura and Sulu are also given some lines more than just the usual throwaway catchphrases, lines and some intrigue that I wish remained throughout the whole of the series. Sulu has some variety and Uhura is bold enough to counter superior officers' sexism by using sarcasm. Her sparring with Spock is impressive, in 1966 or in 2017. It's also odd that Uhura's first scene on television has her lamenting over hating the word "frequencies'. Though Spock's response to hearing about a dead crewmate is the icing on the cake to sell his character.
While behind the scenes, the makers wanted Spock and Uhura to be an item, ultimately Chapel would get to pine for him and he didn't care for either. As a clinical exchange, Uhura pestering Spock about emotions is strong on its own - and a lot more interesting than seeing them in "Into Darkness" bickering like a couple on the brink of divorce (though their sparring was amusing, the more serious take of the 1960s original just holds interest more than "The Star Trek Comedy Hour". (you can probably guess that the Tribble episode wasn't exactly my favorite, though DS9 took it to a much better level...)
I also liked how the species the creature belonged to requires salt (sodium) as sustenance and how the human body holds salt. Be grateful the creature's species didn't manage to invent space and time travel; the late 20th century-present (early 21st) would offer quite a glut of dinners, either sitting on a shelf or walking down the street, just loaded with excess sodium. But it is true, a lack of salt will kill a person and salt is excised through pores while exercising or when hot and the planet looks hot. Nobody put "sweat makeup" on Kirk (we know Vulcan is a hot planet so Spock wouldn't be fazed), but I suspect the writer was glossing over some science materials and turned science fact into science fiction over salt. It adds up to a certain extent, certainly...
Use of stunt doubles are painfully obvious, particularly when "Nancy" swats Spock on the cheek and he reels back and whaps the wall - Spock's double is better than what Kirk would get in other episodes and one doesn't always need to get the Blu-Ray edition to see the differences in details... (But earlier in the same scene where Spock punches "Nancy" silly and she stands there almost looking satisfied by him doing so, we are treated to a very emotional Spock, since early season 1 hadn't had Spock as being non-emotional as a character trait as such yet. Even the pilots showed him being different, but TOS is no different from every other TV show in that regard - characters are created and refined as the series continues, if the series continues.)
The story's episode is downbeat and reflective. Not the sort of ha-ha jokes that later episodes would use, not matter how dangerous the plot was to the characters.
The cinematography and direction are of some quality here. I'll get into shading detail (contrasts) and color in a moment, but even small roles like Green - notice the actor had put some liveliness into his lines, right down to eyebrow movement that really nailed the scene. Nuances like that really stand out, positively.
TOS has always had lush use of color, but TOS season 1 was amazing with contrasts along with the color. Later seasons wouldn't use contrast as much as lush but would still keep the bold color palettes. It's almost as sumptuous as black and white contrast filmography, though b/w always wins because color will always "distract". It's also why many productions use shades of teals and oranges, they're closest to black and white in terms of palette and wanting to make greater contrast or, if nothing else, to evoke a feel of b/w by using a virtual sepia-tone palette. That and teal and orange look cool everywhere. Except the Superman blu-rays where they turned his blue outfit along with anyone wearing blue denim jeans into teal... yuck...
There also isn't as much music, in favor of wind and other sound effects (e.g. turbolift, squee!) to cleverly carry the mood. I often find that more preferable and engaging than any music score, though over the years TOS and many other shows would come up with truly fantastic scores. I'm not sure, it's just nice to have atmospheric elements and dialogue hold up the audio side of things as opposed to music all the time. Which isn't to say this episode didn't have music, it did, but it's so wonderfully low-key and subdued that it made a far greater impression than having a 20 piece band blaring bombast over the proceedings. Early season 1 is fascinating for sure but the horror element they nailed perfectly.
Even more interesting, later in the episode, Kirk's spitting of the phrase "your heart bleeds too much" to Crater is as noteworthy as the cinematic decisions involving lighting and (lack of) incidental music. Kirk would, by his own use of the word, display very "bleeding heart" tendencies in later episodes. Being 1960s American television, there are no character arcs as such, and the times an episode referred to previous episodes were very few. Chalk this one up to the writers finding their way as the series goes along but Kirk's own line almost reminds me of Sisko's grilling Dax and Worf in "Sons of Mogh" (an excellent episode) as both characters have to walk a line between a number of factors. It's an unintentional parallel and perhaps a loose one, the only similarity would be base politics as opposed to the reasons for each captain getting frustrated. There is some of Kirk in Sisko with the matter-of-factness and it's a refreshing change from Picard. Both captains know when there's time for tolerance and time to be stern given the big picture. Sisko's definitely the better of the two given some of the decisions he had to make, but early season 1 has Kirk getting close to the same trope. Sisko also had more refined writing from the start of his era. Kirk was about as anti-PC as it gets and, yes, "The Man Trap" is littered with many un-PC scenes that would not be made today.
Even Rand gets some anti-male sexism in a great scene with Sulu about the alien plants. Sulu brings up "why are creatures called 'she'?" Rand says she describes the plants as "he". She also laments, almost as an in-joke but not quite since the plants are clearly glove puppets with actors operating them, how she fears a plant will try to grab her. All of her scenes are fantastic - in another, when leaving a turbolift with her chicken meal, male crewmembers look at her thighs and ask if those are for them and her retort is utterly perfect in combating sexism with some of her own that get the two hornball letches to shut up and they do. 23rd century crewmen are oh-so-hideously male, but Rand and Uhura clearly hold their own in terms of responding to sexism in the form of alleged mistakes or being advanced on very crudely when they're not interested. Rand is definitely in command of the scene and Grace Lee Whitley steals the show, just as how she and Takei had in the arboretum with the flowers that came in handy for both their banter and for shrinking and screaming when Green walks into the room. (Hmmm, are these plants native to the Tribble homeworld and can sense their presence?)
This script may be simplistic in spots but there are scenes and bits of dialogue that speak mountains and it's all incredibly good stuff. And, again, it makes me wish the show remained and expanded on its original ensemble nature as opposed to becoming myopic with "The Big Three", though McCoy/Spock/Kirk are clearly large enough characters that would have overtaken the show no matter what. Still, no character was small and I wish there was more devoted to Uhura, Sulu, Rand, Chekov (instead of the Russia cliche jokes), etc.
Speaking of alleged logging of frequency mistakes, frequencies, and so on, in "Who Mourns for Adonis" do note that it is Spock who also says only Uhura can fix the critical problem of Apollo's meddling at hand. That's a terrific change from his chastising her in this story about her being so human she's forgetting a frequency number in the log. Both stories obviously have no tie-ins or correlation or even narrative relevance to one another, again it's due to being 1960s non-soap opera American TV, but the show said more than all the mouthfuls in a buffet during peak dinner hour.
Most interesting of all, noting sci-fi from the last five decades, the "creature" displaying its actual appearance doesn't induce unintentional laughter. The costume evokes a feeling of sympathy as well as horror - the costume was designed and created very well.
Why am I referring to the "salt vampire" as a "creature", the way McCoy had on screen? Because, at least for me and because McCoy (who was the creature at the time using his form or using psi ability to let the crew see itself as him), no name for it was accorded and "salt vampire" is more a descriptor of what it does as opposed to what it is. We are human but we are not known as "leaf and ligament vampires", are we? So why attribute it to the "salt vampire"? I'm not creative enough to give the species a title and civilization, for which the actual episode hinted at, and anything is going to be a step up from the oversimplified verbal vomit of "salt vampire".
Speaking of salt, the plot tells us through Spock that salt shipments had been reduced and, at the start of the story, Mr Crater still had a little salt left. Why was "Nancy" so keen on getting more salt? (Because her doing so proves Kirk's speech correct about how Mr Crater kept her, and under paranoia and confusion "Nancy" killed Mr Crater anyway, which also proved Kirk's point - and for Kirk's own apparent harsh attitude complete with "bleeding heart" line, at the story's end he's clearly ruminating in sorrow over the sequence of events and is in no way happy over what had to be done to save his ship and crew.)
Some other noteworthy scenes include:
* Spock advocating truth serum, for which the creature (projecting McCoy's image) agrees (and the creature knowing McCoy, apparently gaining the knowledge when killing Nancy way back when, put out a convincing act so Kirk and crew wouldn't notice)
* any scene where the creature turns into another character and probes his or her memories. Not many beings have psi abilities, but in this episode it manages to work. Seeing Uhura getting hypnotized by the creature is a potent scene and had Rand not left her quarters when she had then Uhura would have been another victim of the hungry hungry creature.
* When the Creature goes after Kirk, she is not given the soft lens filter treatment but McCoy was (nice change of pace of what would become the norm for "Kirk's babe of the week" where she gets the gauss lens)
* Spock advocates the use of salt as bait
* Kirk mocking and trolling the creature to come after the salt, as if it were an errant pet trying to shy away from being scolded by its master. Think "flip side to how Mr Crater treated the creature as a pet/friend/lover/slave per Kirk's previous speech".
* when the Creature shows its real BEM self and McCoy strains to fire while Kirk is being attacked (the direction, intercutting between characters by the director, and look on the creature's face and Kirk's scream were potent for the 1960s to sell the scene effectively.)
* Kirk telling Sulu to go to GQ3, after being informed of the dead crewman - which Sulu contacted Kirk while he was trying to use reason to talk with Mr Crater about Nancy (while using sarcasm to hint he knows why Nancy isn't with him on the planet) just before Mr Crater fires his phaser at them (also note, the middle support strut of the obelisk thing was destroyed but the set piece did not collapse. Pyrotechnics failure?)
* No red shirts died in this episode, security dudes are always the first to go...
* Crater making the comparison between the creature and buffalo, with Kirk's retort about the one difference - the buffalo did not kill Kirk's crew. Mind you, one of the Enterprise crew's ancestors could have eaten buffalo and died from food poisoning, so there you go... 'course, that's also stretching things more than a tad. But in this premiere episode, right down to protectiveness of his crew, almost everying about Kirk is summarized very nicely (and other crewmembers leave the audience wanting more... well, most of the audience - with racism of the day being horrendous, it's amazing as much of what was tried was actually made. And MLKJr was right as well, just being on the command deck of a huge ship was a positive influence. In 1960s society, every little thing was a lot more than what many people watching this 51 year old show for the first time might believe since we've all read the criticisms and belittling of what Uhura and other characters were reduced to. "Galactic phone operator" as if life in the 2000s was identical to the 1960s, which it was not... )
* new f/x at the end of the camera looking down onto the ship as it leaves orbit
And a noteworthy non-scene:
* If only Nancy had waited a little longer instead of killing the first Enterprise crewman, then they could have gotten their salt and Nancy would never have turned on Mr Crater the way a cat devours its owner the moment said owner dies of a heart attack of whatever (since this episode is all about allusion and parallels... which reminds me, I have to feed my four kitties shortly...)
Also, this story is a case where religion does exist. Not as in "Who Mourns for Adonis" where Kirk states how "the one god will do" (which may or may not have been sarcasm, that's a debate in its own right) but McCoy himself states outright "Lord, forgive me" as he shoots the creature to prevent it from murdering Kirk. If nothing else, being a doctor, he's going to hesitate on the prospect of ending life, regardless. (Also of interest, for both shots, we're not told what the setting is but in most episodes "stun" is used by default... like it was when Kirk and Spock had to get Mr. Crater for questioning... but McCoy doesn't change the setting. Yet he's so sure another stun blast will kill, despite knowing nothing about the creature's physiognomy apart from the fact it needs salt. So either the stun setting removes salt from the body ever so slowly, or it's the writer not wanting to go into details because we're so close to the end of the episode at this point. The problem with the latter is, effort was made to describe the stun setting earlier - useful for a pilot or premiere episode to clue in the viewers - so that creates an assumption the phaser was set to kill. Which isn't bad in of itself; they were at GC4 (not a magazine subscription four times per year) and the creature had already killed numerous crewmembers. Since GC3 was stated, the higher the GQ the rules state phasers must be set to kill. I can buy that as opposed to any notion of "Oh for humans we'll stun but for aliens we'll just fry 'em as soon as possible." )
As for the title, is it sexist? "Man" is easily an accepted synonym for "Human" and women (who are just as human) were being preyed upon by the creature as well. Ultimately, nope, I'd say the title itself is not sexist as such. Especially as, at the same time, scenes in the story unfortunately prove sexism still exists in the 23rd century, even indirectly given how Uhura sarcastically tells Spock how she's "just a woman" earlier in the episode because she's tired of hearing how women are scapegoated for every little thing (as off-screen events, I don't believe "Man Trap" was intended to run first until someone said "He's got bug eye monsters so the kids will flock to see it!"). It's pointing out sexism via response, and memorable once we get to stories like "The Changeling", "Wolf in the Fold", "Amok Time", and other stories where sexism shown and told overtly and rampantly.
NBC did choose it over other episodes because they felt people wanted BEMs (despite not calling up Neilsen to keep their sensors locked on the demographics), and critics of the time hated it because they saw it just as a BEM with no depth. The problem is, the depth is in the details - not the main plot which is linear. But the details are numerous and all enjoyable, I've never understood - then or especially now - why it is hated so much. Apart from arguably being early in the show's run and characters are not entirely developed, but that's not good enough a reason. Rough edges or not there's a lot of little nuances that make more for the linear nature of the plot.
But I'm not spelling out entire scenes, especially as so many scenes exist that make the episode greater than the plot itself - this story honestly deserves to be seen and appreciated for so many "little" moments because so much is overlooked by critics who pan this story for being "a mindless BEM" or any other criticism.
8/10 with ease
Obviously, since NBC chose to air it, why wouldn't they premiere with "Where No One Has Gone Before"? Either which way, the audience would be thrown off by the more austere set design for that one week - not to mention, Trek was unusual in having pilots not meant to be seen by viewers shown.
But that's another story. Is "Man Trap" really just another "big scary BEM" show with sexist title?
(BEM, meaning "Bug-Eyed Monster", has been a staple in sci-fi ever since its inception and has clearly remained popular since. To my knowledge, only Star Trek and (very early) Doctor Who tried to get around it, but even these shows went back to refill their chalices from the big cheap punch bowl of BEM, especially the latter, though in one or two specific cases - due to how they were created - those monsters ended up as BEMs for strong enough reasons that to de-BEM them would backfire no matter how glossy the deconstructing story is told.)
Nope. This "monster" is presented with a back story, reasoning for its actions, right down to the "last of its species" trope - something that's not often done in sci-fi or even sci-fi parodies and, let's face it, the only parody one could make here would be too nasty - even for shows like MadTV. It escapes the overused trope of BEM by including those very simple additions that, in 1966, were very mature and grown-up.
And that's the rub - most sci-fi of the time was little more than showing mindless BEMs horrifying people because, you know, they look weird. "The Man Trap" is derided for being superficial. But in the context of BEMs, "Man Trap" is doing what little it can to move the genre into a more interesting direction - and that often gets overlooked, though on the flip side Kirk has zero sentiment and is almost Spock-like in determining the creature would even kill Mr Crater if need be. Kirk spells it out, quite harshly, in Mr Crater with "your heat bleeds too much, you're too noble. you've made a private heaven (for the creature). This thing becomes friend... lover... (this... that...) slave..." Without the episode doing a very special subplot, the fact Kirk says "lover" (among other things) lets the viewer take the idea wherever they want and to whatever (creepy) extent they wish.
The first 15 minutes alone sell Kirk and Spock as being complex, interesting characters. Kirk has a huge range presented, which is worth seeing as opposed to just describing here. Being early season 1, Shatner also shows a wider acting range - I love how Kirk became as the show progressed, but his assertiveness and assuredness are on full display in this episode. He makes decisions and he's right. (As much as I love "ST: Beyond", Kirk at the beginning was shown to be a continual failure and - alternate timeline aside - I didn't care for that, but as that movie progressed Kirk becomes far better as the story continues along and with a rewtach it all made a greater sense, with even more appreciation...)
Uhura and Sulu are also given some lines more than just the usual throwaway catchphrases, lines and some intrigue that I wish remained throughout the whole of the series. Sulu has some variety and Uhura is bold enough to counter superior officers' sexism by using sarcasm. Her sparring with Spock is impressive, in 1966 or in 2017. It's also odd that Uhura's first scene on television has her lamenting over hating the word "frequencies'. Though Spock's response to hearing about a dead crewmate is the icing on the cake to sell his character.
While behind the scenes, the makers wanted Spock and Uhura to be an item, ultimately Chapel would get to pine for him and he didn't care for either. As a clinical exchange, Uhura pestering Spock about emotions is strong on its own - and a lot more interesting than seeing them in "Into Darkness" bickering like a couple on the brink of divorce (though their sparring was amusing, the more serious take of the 1960s original just holds interest more than "The Star Trek Comedy Hour". (you can probably guess that the Tribble episode wasn't exactly my favorite, though DS9 took it to a much better level...)
I also liked how the species the creature belonged to requires salt (sodium) as sustenance and how the human body holds salt. Be grateful the creature's species didn't manage to invent space and time travel; the late 20th century-present (early 21st) would offer quite a glut of dinners, either sitting on a shelf or walking down the street, just loaded with excess sodium. But it is true, a lack of salt will kill a person and salt is excised through pores while exercising or when hot and the planet looks hot. Nobody put "sweat makeup" on Kirk (we know Vulcan is a hot planet so Spock wouldn't be fazed), but I suspect the writer was glossing over some science materials and turned science fact into science fiction over salt. It adds up to a certain extent, certainly...
Use of stunt doubles are painfully obvious, particularly when "Nancy" swats Spock on the cheek and he reels back and whaps the wall - Spock's double is better than what Kirk would get in other episodes and one doesn't always need to get the Blu-Ray edition to see the differences in details... (But earlier in the same scene where Spock punches "Nancy" silly and she stands there almost looking satisfied by him doing so, we are treated to a very emotional Spock, since early season 1 hadn't had Spock as being non-emotional as a character trait as such yet. Even the pilots showed him being different, but TOS is no different from every other TV show in that regard - characters are created and refined as the series continues, if the series continues.)
The story's episode is downbeat and reflective. Not the sort of ha-ha jokes that later episodes would use, not matter how dangerous the plot was to the characters.
The cinematography and direction are of some quality here. I'll get into shading detail (contrasts) and color in a moment, but even small roles like Green - notice the actor had put some liveliness into his lines, right down to eyebrow movement that really nailed the scene. Nuances like that really stand out, positively.
TOS has always had lush use of color, but TOS season 1 was amazing with contrasts along with the color. Later seasons wouldn't use contrast as much as lush but would still keep the bold color palettes. It's almost as sumptuous as black and white contrast filmography, though b/w always wins because color will always "distract". It's also why many productions use shades of teals and oranges, they're closest to black and white in terms of palette and wanting to make greater contrast or, if nothing else, to evoke a feel of b/w by using a virtual sepia-tone palette. That and teal and orange look cool everywhere. Except the Superman blu-rays where they turned his blue outfit along with anyone wearing blue denim jeans into teal... yuck...
There also isn't as much music, in favor of wind and other sound effects (e.g. turbolift, squee!) to cleverly carry the mood. I often find that more preferable and engaging than any music score, though over the years TOS and many other shows would come up with truly fantastic scores. I'm not sure, it's just nice to have atmospheric elements and dialogue hold up the audio side of things as opposed to music all the time. Which isn't to say this episode didn't have music, it did, but it's so wonderfully low-key and subdued that it made a far greater impression than having a 20 piece band blaring bombast over the proceedings. Early season 1 is fascinating for sure but the horror element they nailed perfectly.
Even more interesting, later in the episode, Kirk's spitting of the phrase "your heart bleeds too much" to Crater is as noteworthy as the cinematic decisions involving lighting and (lack of) incidental music. Kirk would, by his own use of the word, display very "bleeding heart" tendencies in later episodes. Being 1960s American television, there are no character arcs as such, and the times an episode referred to previous episodes were very few. Chalk this one up to the writers finding their way as the series goes along but Kirk's own line almost reminds me of Sisko's grilling Dax and Worf in "Sons of Mogh" (an excellent episode) as both characters have to walk a line between a number of factors. It's an unintentional parallel and perhaps a loose one, the only similarity would be base politics as opposed to the reasons for each captain getting frustrated. There is some of Kirk in Sisko with the matter-of-factness and it's a refreshing change from Picard. Both captains know when there's time for tolerance and time to be stern given the big picture. Sisko's definitely the better of the two given some of the decisions he had to make, but early season 1 has Kirk getting close to the same trope. Sisko also had more refined writing from the start of his era. Kirk was about as anti-PC as it gets and, yes, "The Man Trap" is littered with many un-PC scenes that would not be made today.
Even Rand gets some anti-male sexism in a great scene with Sulu about the alien plants. Sulu brings up "why are creatures called 'she'?" Rand says she describes the plants as "he". She also laments, almost as an in-joke but not quite since the plants are clearly glove puppets with actors operating them, how she fears a plant will try to grab her. All of her scenes are fantastic - in another, when leaving a turbolift with her chicken meal, male crewmembers look at her thighs and ask if those are for them and her retort is utterly perfect in combating sexism with some of her own that get the two hornball letches to shut up and they do. 23rd century crewmen are oh-so-hideously male, but Rand and Uhura clearly hold their own in terms of responding to sexism in the form of alleged mistakes or being advanced on very crudely when they're not interested. Rand is definitely in command of the scene and Grace Lee Whitley steals the show, just as how she and Takei had in the arboretum with the flowers that came in handy for both their banter and for shrinking and screaming when Green walks into the room. (Hmmm, are these plants native to the Tribble homeworld and can sense their presence?)
This script may be simplistic in spots but there are scenes and bits of dialogue that speak mountains and it's all incredibly good stuff. And, again, it makes me wish the show remained and expanded on its original ensemble nature as opposed to becoming myopic with "The Big Three", though McCoy/Spock/Kirk are clearly large enough characters that would have overtaken the show no matter what. Still, no character was small and I wish there was more devoted to Uhura, Sulu, Rand, Chekov (instead of the Russia cliche jokes), etc.Speaking of alleged logging of frequency mistakes, frequencies, and so on, in "Who Mourns for Adonis" do note that it is Spock who also says only Uhura can fix the critical problem of Apollo's meddling at hand. That's a terrific change from his chastising her in this story about her being so human she's forgetting a frequency number in the log. Both stories obviously have no tie-ins or correlation or even narrative relevance to one another, again it's due to being 1960s non-soap opera American TV, but the show said more than all the mouthfuls in a buffet during peak dinner hour.
Most interesting of all, noting sci-fi from the last five decades, the "creature" displaying its actual appearance doesn't induce unintentional laughter. The costume evokes a feeling of sympathy as well as horror - the costume was designed and created very well.
Why am I referring to the "salt vampire" as a "creature", the way McCoy had on screen? Because, at least for me and because McCoy (who was the creature at the time using his form or using psi ability to let the crew see itself as him), no name for it was accorded and "salt vampire" is more a descriptor of what it does as opposed to what it is. We are human but we are not known as "leaf and ligament vampires", are we? So why attribute it to the "salt vampire"? I'm not creative enough to give the species a title and civilization, for which the actual episode hinted at, and anything is going to be a step up from the oversimplified verbal vomit of "salt vampire".
Speaking of salt, the plot tells us through Spock that salt shipments had been reduced and, at the start of the story, Mr Crater still had a little salt left. Why was "Nancy" so keen on getting more salt? (Because her doing so proves Kirk's speech correct about how Mr Crater kept her, and under paranoia and confusion "Nancy" killed Mr Crater anyway, which also proved Kirk's point - and for Kirk's own apparent harsh attitude complete with "bleeding heart" line, at the story's end he's clearly ruminating in sorrow over the sequence of events and is in no way happy over what had to be done to save his ship and crew.)
Some other noteworthy scenes include:
* Spock advocating truth serum, for which the creature (projecting McCoy's image) agrees (and the creature knowing McCoy, apparently gaining the knowledge when killing Nancy way back when, put out a convincing act so Kirk and crew wouldn't notice)
* any scene where the creature turns into another character and probes his or her memories. Not many beings have psi abilities, but in this episode it manages to work. Seeing Uhura getting hypnotized by the creature is a potent scene and had Rand not left her quarters when she had then Uhura would have been another victim of the hungry hungry creature.
* When the Creature goes after Kirk, she is not given the soft lens filter treatment but McCoy was (nice change of pace of what would become the norm for "Kirk's babe of the week" where she gets the gauss lens)
* Spock advocates the use of salt as bait
* Kirk mocking and trolling the creature to come after the salt, as if it were an errant pet trying to shy away from being scolded by its master. Think "flip side to how Mr Crater treated the creature as a pet/friend/lover/slave per Kirk's previous speech".
* when the Creature shows its real BEM self and McCoy strains to fire while Kirk is being attacked (the direction, intercutting between characters by the director, and look on the creature's face and Kirk's scream were potent for the 1960s to sell the scene effectively.)
* Kirk telling Sulu to go to GQ3, after being informed of the dead crewman - which Sulu contacted Kirk while he was trying to use reason to talk with Mr Crater about Nancy (while using sarcasm to hint he knows why Nancy isn't with him on the planet) just before Mr Crater fires his phaser at them (also note, the middle support strut of the obelisk thing was destroyed but the set piece did not collapse. Pyrotechnics failure?)
* No red shirts died in this episode, security dudes are always the first to go...
* Crater making the comparison between the creature and buffalo, with Kirk's retort about the one difference - the buffalo did not kill Kirk's crew. Mind you, one of the Enterprise crew's ancestors could have eaten buffalo and died from food poisoning, so there you go... 'course, that's also stretching things more than a tad. But in this premiere episode, right down to protectiveness of his crew, almost everying about Kirk is summarized very nicely (and other crewmembers leave the audience wanting more... well, most of the audience - with racism of the day being horrendous, it's amazing as much of what was tried was actually made. And MLKJr was right as well, just being on the command deck of a huge ship was a positive influence. In 1960s society, every little thing was a lot more than what many people watching this 51 year old show for the first time might believe since we've all read the criticisms and belittling of what Uhura and other characters were reduced to. "Galactic phone operator" as if life in the 2000s was identical to the 1960s, which it was not... )
* new f/x at the end of the camera looking down onto the ship as it leaves orbit
And a noteworthy non-scene:
* If only Nancy had waited a little longer instead of killing the first Enterprise crewman, then they could have gotten their salt and Nancy would never have turned on Mr Crater the way a cat devours its owner the moment said owner dies of a heart attack of whatever (since this episode is all about allusion and parallels... which reminds me, I have to feed my four kitties shortly...)
Also, this story is a case where religion does exist. Not as in "Who Mourns for Adonis" where Kirk states how "the one god will do" (which may or may not have been sarcasm, that's a debate in its own right) but McCoy himself states outright "Lord, forgive me" as he shoots the creature to prevent it from murdering Kirk. If nothing else, being a doctor, he's going to hesitate on the prospect of ending life, regardless. (Also of interest, for both shots, we're not told what the setting is but in most episodes "stun" is used by default... like it was when Kirk and Spock had to get Mr. Crater for questioning... but McCoy doesn't change the setting. Yet he's so sure another stun blast will kill, despite knowing nothing about the creature's physiognomy apart from the fact it needs salt. So either the stun setting removes salt from the body ever so slowly, or it's the writer not wanting to go into details because we're so close to the end of the episode at this point. The problem with the latter is, effort was made to describe the stun setting earlier - useful for a pilot or premiere episode to clue in the viewers - so that creates an assumption the phaser was set to kill. Which isn't bad in of itself; they were at GC4 (not a magazine subscription four times per year) and the creature had already killed numerous crewmembers. Since GC3 was stated, the higher the GQ the rules state phasers must be set to kill. I can buy that as opposed to any notion of "Oh for humans we'll stun but for aliens we'll just fry 'em as soon as possible." )
As for the title, is it sexist? "Man" is easily an accepted synonym for "Human" and women (who are just as human) were being preyed upon by the creature as well. Ultimately, nope, I'd say the title itself is not sexist as such. Especially as, at the same time, scenes in the story unfortunately prove sexism still exists in the 23rd century, even indirectly given how Uhura sarcastically tells Spock how she's "just a woman" earlier in the episode because she's tired of hearing how women are scapegoated for every little thing (as off-screen events, I don't believe "Man Trap" was intended to run first until someone said "He's got bug eye monsters so the kids will flock to see it!"). It's pointing out sexism via response, and memorable once we get to stories like "The Changeling", "Wolf in the Fold", "Amok Time", and other stories where sexism shown and told overtly and rampantly.
NBC did choose it over other episodes because they felt people wanted BEMs (despite not calling up Neilsen to keep their sensors locked on the demographics), and critics of the time hated it because they saw it just as a BEM with no depth. The problem is, the depth is in the details - not the main plot which is linear. But the details are numerous and all enjoyable, I've never understood - then or especially now - why it is hated so much. Apart from arguably being early in the show's run and characters are not entirely developed, but that's not good enough a reason. Rough edges or not there's a lot of little nuances that make more for the linear nature of the plot.
But I'm not spelling out entire scenes, especially as so many scenes exist that make the episode greater than the plot itself - this story honestly deserves to be seen and appreciated for so many "little" moments because so much is overlooked by critics who pan this story for being "a mindless BEM" or any other criticism.
8/10 with ease
