A brief explanation. I was in JB Hi-Fi the other day, and what should I find but remastered, blu-ray editions of Star Trek‘s original series. Having never seen them before, my curiosity got the better of me. And here we are.

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It’s stardate 1531.1, and the Enterprise is visiting a tiny scientific outpost to check on the health of the two scientists living there. They arrive to find Dr McCoy’s ex-girlfriend Nancy has a strange propensity for looking like different women. It’s only after they let her wander about the Enterprise that they connect her to the peculiar salt-draining deaths that have been happening since they arrived. Nice work, guys.

At first, ‘The Man Trap’ almost feels like it’s going to be the ‘sex’ episode. Nancy appears to McCoy exactly as he remembers her at 25, and to another crew member (who by all rights should have been wearing a red shirt) as a cute girl he met on some other planet. But then, for some reason to Kirk she looks exactly like she does to her new husband, Professor Crater.¹ If you’re going around seducing spacemen, why skip Kirk? I’d take offence if I were Jim. It seems an odd episode to start with; unsurprisingly, it wasn’t actually made first, or supposed to be shown first. Some things never change.

I was expecting Star Trek to be a bit faster paced than Doctor Who of the same time, simply because they didn’t have serial episodes. I was wrong, it seems. About a quarter of the running time of this story is spent watching our peculiar, silent threat wander about the corridors of the enterprise, pressing its finger to its mouth in over-the-top concern, and unsettling some of the least interesting crew members. Nancy the shapeshifter wants salt, but while she’s unwilling to steal salt-shakers from people, she quickly decides that she can get away with the occasional murder. These developments are followed up with some bizarre violence from Mr Spock, and long, arduous close-ups on the drugged Dr McCoy, as he has to struggle to make sense of the ridiculous plot unfolding before him, and work out which crazy person to shoot.

Just one more curiosity to note before I wrap up.² Janice, one of the Enterprise’s Yeomen, was eating from a tray whilst standing around in a corridor. How odd, I thought. Perhaps ‘stable tables’ had just been invented in 1966, and George Clayton Johnson was merely using science fiction to explore the infinite possibilities they seemed to offer? In fact, it turns out that the tray isn’t for her; in the future, the female crew will bring food on trays for their male co-workers, when they’re not getting bored of their job and trying to flirt with the first officer. I have a feeling that a large part of the joy and horror of watching Star Trek will come from games of ‘spot the sexism’. This sort of thing will date any TV show, but Trek‘s far future setting makes it especially unfortunate. I live in desperate hope that in a future episode we’ll meet a male Yeoman.

‘The Man Trap’ is weird, and slow, but one thing is apparent right from the start: even if all else fails, William Shatner is worth watching. I’m developing a theory that he’s America’s Tom Baker.³

1. Disappointingly, Crater is not an expert on meteorites. ↩
2. I don’t want the reviews to get too long, or I’ll never get through the whole thing. ↩
3. This theory may not stand up to scrutiny. Don’t push it too hard. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009. It concerns such pressing issues as Star Trek, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.