"The Man Trap" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It originally aired on September 8, 1966, and was the first episode to be shown on NBC. It was written by George Clayton Johnson, and directed by Marc Daniels.

Although it was first aired, it was not the first produced (the pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and several regular episodes had been produced before it). The current official timeline considers "Where No Man Has Gone Before" to be set first.

This episode also served as a scenario for an unofficial parody movie called Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek which predates the official Star Trek movies.

Overview: An illusory, shapeshifting, salt-hungry creature terrorizes the crew of the Enterprise.

Plot[link]

Stardate 1513.1: The starship Enterprise arrives at planet M-113 for routine medical exams of archaeologist Professor Robert Crater and his wife Nancy. First Officer Mr. Spock is left temporarily in command. Captain Kirk, Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy, and Crewman Darnell beam down and Kirk teases McCoy about his affection for Nancy Crater item ten years ago. Nancy arrives and each of the three men seem to see her differently: McCoy as she was ten years ago, Kirk as she should look age-wise, and Darnell as a totally different, attractive younger woman. Kirk sends the dazed Darnell outside and when Nancy goes out to fetch her husband, she beckons Darnell to follow her.

Professor Crater arrives and doesn't appear happy to see them, telling them that he and his wife don't need a medical examination, and that all they really need are more salt tablets to help them cope with the planet's hot, dry climate. Then, he adds that he's glad to see McCoy as an old friend of his more social wife. Kirk orders Crater to submit to the medical exam but before McCoy can complete the procedure they hear a scream from outside. They go out to find Darnell, dead, with red ring-like mottling on his face. There's a plant root in his mouth and Nancy comes up, saying she saw Darnell taste the plant and she couldn't stop him. Kirk is skeptical that an experienced crewman would taste an unknown plant. Kirk has Darnell's body beamed up to the ship.

Spock analyzes the plant, the Borgia root (named for Lucrezia Borgia^{[citation needed]}, a notorious poisoner) and confirms records showing it's poisonous, but skin mottling is not a usual symptom. McCoy conducts the initial exam, but can't find any cause of death — poisoning or otherwise. Kirk and McCoy compare notes on Nancy, and McCoy admits he might have been seeing her the way he imagined her from ten years ago.

Kirk decides to remain to investigate Darnell's death. McCoy and Spock determine that Darnell had every bit of salt drained from his body, which caused his death. Kirk beams back down to the planet with McCoy and two crewmen, Green and Sturgeon. They spread out to search, but Crater slips away and calls out to Nancy, saying he has salt. Kirk and McCoy find Sturgeon's body, unaware that Nancy is nearby over Green's corpse. Both the bodies have the same red rings on their faces. She pauses and then changes her shape, turning into a duplicate of Green. He meets with Kirk and McCoy and they beam back up to the ship to conduct a search from orbit.

"Green" roams the halls and runs into Yeoman Janice Rand, who is taking a food tray to Lt. Sulu in the botanical lab. "Green" is attracted to the salt and follows her in, but the plants react badly to him. He leaves and runs into Lt. Uhura, taking the hypnotizing form of a crewman from her memories in preparation for an attack. Uhura is summoned to the bridge over the intercom. That and Rand and Sulu's arrival break the trance.

In his quarters, McCoy is trying to get some sleep. Kirk reminds him of the sleep medication McCoy gave him once. Spock confirms that the scans show only one person, Crater, on the planet, and he and Kirk beam down to capture the professor. "Nancy" assumes her female form and goes to McCoy's quarters, and seems reassured by the fact he has strong memories of her that she can rely on. Nearby, Sulu and Rand find a dead crewman with the same red mottling.

McCoy is already asleep when the General Quarters-3 alert sounds, and "Nancy" takes on his form and goes to the bridge. On M-113, Kirk and Spock find Green's body and realize an imposter is on-board. They find Crater, who tries to frighten them off with phaser fire. They flank and then stun him, and the dazed Crater says that his real wife died a year ago, killed by the creature, which still appears to him as Nancy out of true affection. Kirk informs the ship of the creature's intrusion: "It's definite Mr. Sulu, the intruder can assume any shape — crewman, you, myself, anyone, do you understand?" Sulu acknowledges, and Kirk adds "Go to General Quarters-4." As they're about to transport to the Enterprise, a frustrated Kirk tells the Professor, "Your creature is killing my people!"

With Crater, Kirk calls a meeting. McCoy and Spock join them, but the officers are unaware that McCoy isn't McCoy. "McCoy" suggests they try to deal with the creature peacefully and Crater clearly recognizes it for what it is. Kirk prefers to eliminate the predator and insists that Crater help identify it. Refusing, Kirk orders McCoy to administer truth serum. They go to sickbay and a suspicious Spock insists on going with them. The alert goes off and Kirk arrives in sickbay to find an injured Spock. Crater is dead, killed by the increasingly desperate creature but Spock's copper-based Vulcan blood made him incompatible with the creature's needs.

Back in her "Nancy" form, the creature goes to McCoy's quarters and asks him for help. Kirk arrives with a phaser and a handful of salt and tries to entice the creature into attacking. McCoy refuses to believe Nancy is false and gets in the way, giving the creature the opportunity to attack Kirk. It hypnotizes him and prepares to feed off of him while McCoy holds the phaser, indecisive. Spock arrives and tries to use his superior strength against the creature, but it is stronger than he and easily knocks him to the floor. As Spock asks, "Is that Nancy, Doctor?", McCoy finally realizes the creature isn't "his" Nancy. The creature reverts to its true alien appearance and starts to feed on Kirk. McCoy opens fire with his phaser and breaks the creature's grip on Kirk. Despite changing back into the shape of "Nancy" to plead with McCoy for its life the doctor continues firing, finally killing it, saving Kirk.

40th Anniversary remastering[link]

This episode was remastered and aired September 29, 2007 as part of the remastered Original Series. It was preceded a week earlier by the remastered version of "The Conscience of the King" and followed a week later by the remastered version of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?."

Aside from remastered video and audio, and the all-CGI animation of the USS Enterprise that is standard among the revisions, specific changes also include:

• The planet M-113 was given a more realistic appearance.

• A panning CGI matte painting with more detail given to the ruined structures and landscape replaced the original slow pan of the M113 surface.

Production[link]

• For a while during production, the episode was known as "The Unreal McCoy" — a name which refers to the M-113 creature taking the form of Dr. McCoy, and this title survived in the James Blish adaptation of the episode for Bantam Books.

• In the book Inside Star Trek The Real Story, producer Robert Justman recalled feeling that "The Naked Time" would have made it easier for viewers to understand the characters. He suspected that NBC chose "The Man Trap" as it was "scarier and more exploitable than the others." However Justman later agreed with NBC's decision.^[1]

Reception[link]

Daily Variety columnist Jack Hellman gave the episode an unfavorable review, stating, "Not conducive to its popularity is the lack of meaningful cast leads. They move around with directorial precision with only violence to provide the excitement."^[2]

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club was more favorable and gave the episode an "A-" rating, describing the episode as "done very well" with a plot that is dark and ambiguous.^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Man Trap

• The Man Trap at StarTrek.com
• The Man Trap at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Man Trap" at TV.com
• The Man Trap at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• M-113 creature at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• The Man Trap side-by-side comparison before and after the remastering

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.^[1]

History[link]

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[2][dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

It was also used as a term for a drug dealer in the 1950s and 1960s and can be seen in such media as Curtis Mayfield's "No Thing On Me", William Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, and in the Velvet Underground song "I'm Waiting for the Man", in which Lou Reed sings about going to Uptown Manhattan, specifically Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, to buy heroin.

The use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies, which, according to a May 19, 1969 article in U.S. News and World Report, had the "avowed aim ... to destroy 'The Man', their term for the present system of government". The term eventually found its way into humorous usage, such as in a December 1979 motorcycle ad from the magazine Easyriders which featured the tagline, "California residents: Add 6% sales tax for The Man."

In present day, the phrase has been popularized in commercials and cinema, featuring particularly prominently as a recurring motif in the 2003 film School of Rock.^[3][4][5][6]

Use as praise[link]

The term has also been used as an approbation or form of praise. This may refer to the recipient's status as the leader or authority within a particular context, or it might be assumed to be a shortened form of a phrase like "He is the man (who is in charge)." One example of this usage dates to 1879 when Otto von Bismarck commented, referring to Benjamin Disraeli's pre-eminent position at the Congress of Berlin, "The old Jew, he is the man."^{[7][dubious – discuss]}

In more modern usage, it can be a superlative compliment ("you da man!") indicating that the subject is currently standing out amongst his peers even though they have no special designation or rank, such as a basketball player who is performing better than the other players on the court. It can also be used as a genuine compliment with an implied, slightly exaggerated or sarcastic tone, usually indicating that the person has indeed impressed the speaker but by doing something relatively trivial.

See also[link]

• Absentee landlord
• Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• New World Order (conspiracy theory)
• Ruling class
• The Establishment
• Power elite
• Corrections officer
• YTMND

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lighter, J.E. (Ed.). (1997). Random House Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House.