Man Trap Versus Turnabout Intruder

[Ssosmcin]

Could they have tried to saved it? Perhaps. Suppose McCoy just stunned it, then they call security to take it to the brig. It wakes up along the way and uses its hypnotic powers on the security guards, who then go the way of typical redshirts. Or they manage to get it into the brig, but it fools some weak-minded guard into letting it out (and then consumes said guard's bodily salts). Then the creature is running loose aboard the ship again, and the same thing keeps happening.

Kor

Why the brig? Why not the transporter room? Beam it down, leave it salt, warp out. Problem solved. While it was "McCoy," both the creature and Crater very clearly stated how it felt and what it needed. Ending it with a confrontation was probably the biggest concession to the monster/SF genre this episode made.

Had this episode been written or shot at after the mid point of season one, the climax would have been totally different.

Would Spock have suggested using a truth drug on Crater?
Would Kirk have been such a nasty bastard toward the Professor at that time?
Would Kirk have showed up alone in McCoy's quarters with a phaser and a few salt tablets?
Would Spock have run in right after, shrieking like a lunatic and whaling on "Nancy" with both fists? (I admit I loved "proto Spock")
Would McCoy have used the kill setting (although it was resistant to "kill" so maybe it wouldn't have done much good)?

I'd venture to say "no." Just look at "Devil in the Dark." It was practically a reworking of this episode, only with the more enlightened point of view the series became known for.

 

[Spock's Barber]

I'd venture to say "no." Just look at "Devil in the Dark." It was practically a reworking of this episode, only with the more enlightened point of view the series became known for.

Gene Coon devised a better ending. Live in peace with the alien.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I agree and I think the resolution to "The Man Trap" is its greatest weakness in retrospect. For those minutes, this became the standard sci-fi show. That was a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ending. But the creature becoming Nancy one last time was a really chilling moment.

 

[fireproof78]

The creature was an immediate threat to the crew.

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Could they have tried to saved it? Perhaps. Suppose McCoy just stunned it, then they call security to take it to the brig. It wakes up along the way and uses its hypnotic powers on the security guards, who then go the way of typical redshirts. Or they manage to get it into the brig, but it fools some weak-minded guard into letting it out (and then consumes said guard's bodily salts). Then the creature is running loose aboard the ship again, and the same thing keeps happening.

Kor

That's my view as well. As soon as it killed Carter, despite Carter taking care of it, there was a danger to the crew that could not be mitigated easily.

 

[Spock's Barber]

At least at the end of TI Janice Lester didn’t get wacked like the Salt Creature did in MT.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Another comparison between MT and TI...S1 had plenty of crew members walking the corridors.

By the end of S3, even the Enterprise crew seemed to have jumped ship.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Uhura's a linguist at least in one universe, yes? My best job was populated by probably up to 16 national representatives, and though a Sierra Leonean friend of mine confused some of the others, I managed fine. Unlike them, I only spoke one language.

Let's leave JJ-Trek to its own forum.

 

[Neopeius]

I feel like Nancy-creature was not just trying to survive. It dug killing.

On the other hand, as my wife pointed out, it might not always have been like that. It might have been essentially a salt-starved sex slave for Crater, and the result we saw was in great need of therapy.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Shatner wrote in one of his books that the cast and crew suspected that TI was the end of the line for TOS...little did they know...Star Trek cannot die!

I can fill in a detail. According to the 1975 book Star Trek Lives!, workmen started tearing down the Enterprise standing sets literally as soon as "Turnabout" wrapped, with the actors still present. Joan Winston reported on it first-hand from her set visit.

So yeah, it really did look like the end. Destroying the sets instantly made a last-minute renewal prohibitively expensive. But obviously Paramount wanted Stage 9 cleared out for something else.

 

[Timo]

"Why not stun it?" is a valid question, but not a valid critique. Our hero had to fire at the beast twice, because the first time did not suffice. The second shot was lethal. Since it wasn't a make-disappear shot, though, the heroes could not know if they'd need a third, or a fourth, or perhaps fifteen. It's not legit to argue they didn't give the beast a chance, or even that they intended to kill at any point.

Nor does it appear valid to think that the heroes took the killing lightly. Speaking the Lord's name in vain is pretty extreme for this show or any other, and it's an eternity of somber reaction shots thereafter, right till the end of the outta-orbit scene.

Leaving the creature alive yet behind would be a kiddie show cop-out, sadistically prolonged and unmitigated murder without the guts to admit to it. This early on, the heroes were still bigger than that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

Leaving the creature alive yet behind would be a kiddie show cop-out, sadistically prolonged and unmitigated murder without the guts to admit to it.

Timo Saloniemi

Nope. Not even a little.

Kirk and co had the perfect chance to settle it reasonably at the conference. Crater and McCoy presented their rational points of view and Kirk responded with: "you bleed to much, you're too pure and noble" and accused him of narcissism. and then he ordered Spock and "McCoy" to subject him to the 23rd century version of waterboarding. Now faced with being unmasked, as it were, the creature killed Ceater. Self-preservation. Kirk forced its hand.

Had Kirk been more open to what Crater and the creature were saying, it could have ended with:

Crater: "Beam us down. Leave me with enough salt for it to survive. Allow it to live its life in peace."

Spock: "We could arrange for regular deliveries of salt with a warning for the crews."

McCoy as creature: "I'm sure it would agree to that."

Kirk: (considers) "Very well."

Not a kiddie cop out, in fact something the show would have entertained just a few months later. It's just less exciting.

 

[Timo]

Doesn't wash. Mankind can afford to send a starship to the location once a year to support a survey team. Now they'd be expected to send one there to drop salt to a dying creature? Fuck that: Starfleet would simply order the critter put out of its misery there and then for the sake of humanity.

"Live its life in peace" is either idiocy or sheer sadism. The beast doesn't want that. The heroes already gave it salt aplenty, and instead it wanted to kill. It's either deranged or bloodlusty by birth. And in any case the last of its kind. Putting it into further solitary confinement on that dead planet is not mercy, and not even rational, by any stretch.

Now, a rational conclusion might entail somehow succeeding in stunning the creature, and then putting it in a box so that the Federation can study it for the miserable last weeks of its miserable life. And even then chiefly to find out where the creature came from and how its kind can best be killed in possible future encounters.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

The same ship that shows up once a year to do check ups instead drops salt. No change in the schedule, just the mission.

 

[Timo]

Won't work. The last time a ship went there to check up on the Carters, both were alive and there was no vampire, or it would have started its mindless killing spree there and then already. Within the past year, the situation has not changed significantly as regards sources of salt, though: Crater is not out of those yet, and OTOH getting more depends on not alerting Kirk that anything is amiss, and nevertheless the vampire kills. Just as it killed aboard the starship despite swimming in free salt.

There will be no survey there from this point on, not if the creature remains alive. It's either-or: Starfleet kills the beast and resumes surveying, or leaves the beast there to die and never sends a ship there again.

(Or, if we return to the "stunning is a stunning success" scenario, Starfleet again will be keeping the planet free of salt vampires - because it is the one place in the galaxy where those beasts demonstrably cannot survive. A lab or a zoo might be provided. And then the vampire would die there, fairly soon, because it would be unable to kill like it must. Would Starfleet try to clone the poor thing? If it was the native species that built those stone temples and cities and whatnot, cloning would only result in repopulation by creatures totally lacking in cultural context and knowledge. If it was the death of that native species, reintroduction would be doubly pointless.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Qonundrum]

"Man Trap" has:
* character building for some who aren't "the big three"- nominal or not, it's cool to see. Especially in early-TOS where we think we might get more of this as the seasons go on... (but sadly and too often don't.)
* a solid and interesting, if not imperfect, exploration of a near-extinct species
* Kirk being quite different than the character he ends up being in later seasons, season 1 in particular has numerous instances of Kirk being quite the antithesis of himself at times, and this is nowhere near "Space Seed" yet where he's barking mad!
* arguments over sodium chloride - also, does anyone have any french fries and catsup? Or ketchup, for those who think Catwoman subverted the word just to get Batman to find her next caper?
* more proof that men tend not to think with their big heads, as McCoy just stands and gawks as the monster of the week - donning the visage of his former girlfriend - slowly murders Kirk, yeehaw...
* a great budget

"Turnabout" has:
* great acting from William Shatner and especially Sandra Smith, for which both - portraying someone else in their bodies - sell it magnificently
* an interesting idea involving mental fitness for command (a shame the episode is as inconsistent as it could possibly get as it doesn't know when it's trying to frame Lester, if Lester truly is insane and thus would genuinely not be capable of command, claiming no woman could ever be in a position of command (despite Uhura being such a command character on the bridge as all the flag staff are there, at the top of the ship in the tiny room like sardines, waiting for a photon torpedo to be shot at by the Dumass clan... oh wait, wrong incarnation of Trek...), and who they're addressing - the general audience or the censors of the time... )
* the first time a mutiny aboard a starship brews
* the worst possible timeslot since most of the target audience were in cars copulating at the time


"Man Trap" gets my vote for being more consistent in its script, though despite both having some good talking points and ideas, neither is the best that TOS has to offer.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Both episodes have ex-lovers...one is still smitten and the other is scorned. Sounds like a script for The Young and the Restless.

 

[Neopeius]

I respectfully say ''Oh, come on.''

McCoy is pointing the phaser at Nancy. She doesn't say, "Leonard -- now you know what I am. Please just give me salt!"

She tries to eat Kirk.

Nancy is in crewman guise in search of salt. She doesn't just go to the galley, open up the salt dispenser, and chug.

She hunts down crew.

Now maybe one can squint and say there are other things in the human body she needs, but that's assuming facts not in evidence.

There are three things that seem to motivate the creature:

1) Salt
2) Other people's emotions (she likes McCoy's thoughts more than the Professor's -- that might have just been fluffery or it might have been true). She's obviously telepathic.
3) Hunting and eating people

Maybe she's like a cat and can't overcome the instinct to eat the cute rat, even though they grew up together as fellow pets. Maybe she's twisted into insanity by living with Crater in semi-starvation conditions. Or maybe she just really enjoys the hunt.

I agree that it would have been nice to have a solution where she was saved. But I also don't think she was an innocent dumb animal.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Doesn't wash.

Yes, it does.

Won't work.

Yes, it will.

"To seek out new life," it's right there in the opening monologue.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Both episodes have ex-lovers...one is still smitten and the other is scorned. Sounds like a script for The Young and the Restless.

Sounds like Star Trek.

 

[publiusr]

They really are the same episode…