To Boldly Go Where Everyone I Know Has Gone Before #1

Is Nancy a human woman, an alien, or a horse? You'd never guess from the dialogue!

Star Trek: The Original Series

Season 1, Episode 1: The Man Trap

Wow, OK: look, I know enough about the first Star Trek to have already girded my loins regarding the sexism I’m probably going to watch… but we are all of thirty seconds in and this episode is really called “The Man Trap”? Sure is. Anyway:

McCoy, Kirk, and some expendable character named Darnell have landed on a planet that appears to have one functioning structure, a hybrid structure that combines a musty 70’s thrift store and Fred Flintstone’s house. Everyone’s Star Fleet pants are very short, and their heels are very high. 

Inside the Flintstones’ residence, McCoy and Kirk encounter Professor Crater (at least I think his name is Crater— wow, the bar was low for scifi-sounding character names back then) and his wife. All of the crew seem to think she’s a babe, but! There’s a catch! When McCoy (who is apparently her ex-boyfriend) sees her, she has a hot Sophia Loren vibe; when Kirk sees her she looks like Isabella Rossellini in a Bride of Frankenstein wig (so you know, still hot, but not up to Kirk’s standards based on some shitty comments he makes), and somehow, when ol’ expendable Darnell looks at her, she looks like she’s Karen fresh off an anti-lockdown protest in Ohio. The men all look terrible and like they haven’t slept in weeks, except for Kirk who looks like someone doused him in Fenty highlighters, and seems to always have a soft glowing light on him. So, these sleep-deprived men exchange some comments about her relative babeliness, though no one seems yet wise to the fact she’s also a walking hall of mirrors. Blonde Helmet Karen shakes a hip on the way out of the cave and Darnell skulks into the fiberglass scenery after her, and I cannot believe that this scene is how one of the most iconic sci-fi shows of all times begins!? This!

Now come the credits, and let’s all take a moment to appreciate how completely fabulous the original Star Trek’s logo font is! I want to slide naked down the S and the E. 

Back to the plot: the tension is thick as Shapeshifting Karen (whose name is actually Nancy) has left and her husband, who looks like he wandered in accidentally while looking for the community theater’s Hamlet auditions, has arrived. Professor Crater is wearing what appears to be a military-grade tactical Snuggie, and it’s very clear that he knows McCoy and his wife used to be ~an item~. Speaking of inanimate objects, the three men have a conversation about women that reveals their two-molecule-deep understanding of Nancy’s psyche, and Kirk calls her “handsome”. Is Nancy a human woman or a horse? One would never know from the dialogue.

Screaming comes from outside, and we find out that Darnell has died of reinforcements— you know reinforcements, those little donut shaped stickers for fixing paper you punched with a three hole punch? I honestly haven’t used them since about 1992, so I’m not sure if they’re even still a thing. Well, it looks like Darnell used about twenty of them to wax his face, and now he’s dead. Everyone’s very upset, but honestly I think Darnell seemed like a creep anyway.

Meanwhile on the Enterprise, we meet Uhura and Spock, trying to relate. Uhuru is wearing some bold neon green earrings that most people couldn’t pull off with a red Trek dress without looking like a Christmas elf. Spock looks uncomfortable. By the way, did you know Leonard Nimoy was a poet and an accomplished visual artist? It’s true, you should look up his work. But for the purposes of Star Trek, he’s but a Vulcan, so after Darnell is announced dead over the intercom, some exposition happens to emphasize that Spock doesn’t have “normal people” feelings.

Another aside: Nichelle Nichols came up with the name Uhura for her character, based on the fact she was reading Uhuru right around the time of her casting call. 

In the Enterprise’s medical bay, or morgue, or conference room or whatever, McCoy announces that Darnell has no salt left in his body, and that’s why he’s dead. The crew head back down to interrogate Professor Crater, who has supposedly been hoarding salt tablets, which he inexplicably keeps in fancy liquor decanter (sure, why not). 

Kirk is also plenty salty, and growls:

“I don’t like mysteries. Give me a belly ache, and I have a beauty right now!”

which prompts the professor to run out of his Flintstones house. There’s another dead crew member outside, who also appears to have died of being attacked by office supplies. For the next 30 seconds or so the cast all runs around yelling across the sound stage, and it has never been more clear that four people are in a warehouse in LA and not, in fact, in space.

We meet up with Nancy again, who suddenly transforms into the newly-dead crew member! Nancy’s new body looks like she plays rhythm guitar in a novelty Star Trek cover band. She beams herself up to the Enterprise, and starts chasing down a crew member with a woven blond hair basket and a tray of snacks. A bunch of other weird dudes harass blond basket hair in the hallway, can’t a woman snack on this ship without being delayed?

Oh! It’s not even her snacks— they’re for Mr. Sulu! Mr. Sulu has a raised bed full of animate Dr. Seuss looking plants, and he and Basket Head Blonde Lady have a debate over what gender one of them is. Let me take this moment to tell you: the food on the Enterprise looks BAD. Like, cubes of jicama dyed with Easter egg colors bad. 

Now Nancy has changed herself into a handsome Black man who tries to seduce Uhura by saying some words in Swahili, but Uhura is BUSY and leaves. Nancy’s new body has a crew outfit that is exactly the pajamas that I want for this entire COVID-19 experience: sort of like scrubs, sort of like a karate uniform, silky looking, flattering shade of blue. Sign me up for this jumpsuit! 

Nancy re-Nancy’s herself and tries to put the moves on McCoy in his quarters. She keeps talking about liking his feelings.

Nancy says he looks tired (word to that, Nancy, he does) and then McCoy holds up a canister of cinnamon Red Hots candy and claims Kirk has been telling him to take them. In the meantime, another crew member falls to the threat of attack by office supplies. McCoy is sedated with the worst possible Valentine’s candy, and Nancy shape shifts into his body and heads out to cause more salty mayhem. 

Kirk and Spock head down to interrogate “Professor Crater” (how is that his name!) and find him partly concealed behind a fire sale of ornamental lawn statues. He won’t tell them where Nancy is! Maybe he doesn’t know— either way, we know, Nancy is back on the Enterprise, lurking around in her McCoy suit.

There's a hallway shot of the crew running around to the “intruder alert” and I am pleased to report that the crew jumpsuit also comes in olive green. I really want one!

Professor Crater has been cornered, and starts talking about passenger pigeons and “Earth Buffalo”, saying his wife was the last of her kind. Did you know the buffalo were systematically killed by white settlers to starve Native American nations? Now you do! Anyway, Kirk is onto Nancy, and has tipped off the crew on the Enterprise.

Professor Crater explains the sugar daddy relationship he has with “Nancy”— a.k.a. a shapeshifting alien: that they are trading salt tablets for love in return, as the creature takes on all of his former wife’s attributes. I guess this makes him more of a salt daddy, but I say if it’s consensual and working for everyone then it’s nobody’s business. Professor Crater won’t give up his wife, even if she is an alien shapeshifter, and I respect that. 

Phew, this plot is complicated! Turns out a salt-hungry alien can cause a lot of trouble if one runs amok on your spaceship. The crew find her, and Kirk tries to lure her with a handful of salt tablets he’s holding like kibble at a petting zoo. She noms them really fast and then goes for Kirk’s face! Fisticuffs ensue— Nancy straight up backhands Spock across the room! Really impressive. WHOA, so then Nancy fades out, and there is the creature from the Black Lagoon in a gray with wig trying to eat Kirk’s salt! 

Now that Nancy also looks like shit, McCoy doesn’t have a problem shooting her when Kirk hollers in pain. Inexplicably when Nancy is in her true form, she’s wearing a fishing net toga. The planet seemed to have been very dry, is this supposed to give us a kind of ocean vibe to go with her lust for salt? I’m not sure, and we may never know.

Spock, Kirk, and McCoy share a smirk about the fate of North America’s buffalo population in the Bridge, and Mr Sulu drives the Enterprise out of that burgh.

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