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Who loves the Salt Vampire?

Moodib

Lieutenant
Red Shirt
From one of my fave episodes of the original show, i think it's such a fascinating creature and show that vampires aren't all the same stereotypes and can be unconventional.
 
Who loves the Salt Vampire?

Professor Crater.

I always loved this episode. It's not a good one to broadcast as a first episode on NBC in 1966, but it's a lot of fun with a grim story and cool haunting music. Oh, and Spock double-fisting Nancy was awesome. Wait, that didn't come out right...
 
Great episode, it was one rare times when Kirk wasn't after any of the women, I'm sure that he could've seen Nancy as some good looking female. Just surprises me that he saw the same image as Bones.
 
Great episode, it was one rare times when Kirk wasn't after any of the women, I'm sure that he could've seen Nancy as some good looking female. Just surprises me that he saw the same image as Bones.
He didn’t. At the start of the episode, Kirk saw Nancy Crater as a middle-aged woman. McCoy saw her as he remembered her, as a girl of 25 (although actress Jeanne Bal looked a bit older than that -- she was 38 when the episode was filmed).

And crewman Darnell saw her as “someone I left behind on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet.” I guess they must chew a lot of gum there.
 
I love the Salt Vampire too. Not only was the Salt Vampire a neat character, but I think it has some of the greatest make-up in all of Star Trek. Even with the limited budget and make-up at the time, I think it makes a cooler and more convincing alien than the majority of those bumpy forehead aliens in 1980s and 1990s Star Trek show.
 
^Or guy... remember the handsome crewman Uhura saw?

Actually, I didn't much care for this episode until I got hold of a filk music tape with a song about this episode. The song was from the pov of the Salt Vampire, and it literally made me bawl.

I cry every. single. time.


So now I have a lot of sympathy for the Salt Vampire - like the Horta, it really didn't want to kill - it just had to do what was necessary for survival.


Better question: If Trelane mistook the time period on Earth for many centuries ago, how come there was a Salt Vampire on display in his front hallway? :cardie:
 
I thought it was an ingenious creature to be imagined. There is one flaw, though... Given its level of sentience, you'd figure that it would understand the need not to kill, only to feed. The creature could assault its victim and take just enough salt not to cause death. The victim recovers and restores their normal sodium level, making it possible to be future prey once again.

Better question: If Trelane mistook the time period on Earth for many centuries ago, how come there was a Salt Vampire on display in his front hallway? :cardie:

It would've been great to see it again, in action, rather than stuffed and on display. Why did Trelane have one? I think perhaps as a representation of an extinct predator. A bit provocative, as though he was expecting human beings may eventually suffer the same fate.
 
^^^ i just had the same thought about the salt vampire.
it wasn't just a creature or force of nature. it had a level of sentience, it was an intelligent being.

so why all the stalking and ambushing and murdering?
why not reveal itself to kirk and crew, nice to meet you, explain that it needs salt to survive, got any?
there would have been no problems.

was it so alien it could only survive by predation rather than by being fed? it knew no other way? it couldn't reason its way to survival without killing?
 
so why all the stalking and ambushing and murdering?

She had killed one of Kirk's crew right off the bat (granted, a bit of Darwinism at work here) which had immediately made her a fugitive. Now, yes, she was starving and desperate... and it didn't help that Crater was being a dick and evasive.

was it so alien it could only survive by predation rather than by being fed? it knew no other way? it couldn't reason its way to survival without killing?

It had murdered. It was angry, understandably, at Carter. And, interestingly, it deliberately revealed itself to Bones so he could kill her. Definitely intelligent, even tragic, but the road was laid when Horny Crewman X walked off with her.
 
Also, depending on the level of the vampire's intelligence, self-preservation might always have conflicted with the knowledge that this was the end of the road. No future for the species (since if the creature could reach kinsmen or -women, it, he or she probably already would have, and AFAWK there was no ongoing pregnancy or possibility of parthenogenetic procreation), and no future for the individual. No responsibilities, either. Why not murder?

Timo Saloniemi
 
Sentience doesn't have to equal respect for other life forms. Also, we don't know the condition of the vampires mind, it could be insane, for all we know. It is the unknowns around the creature coupled with its abilities that make it such a fantastic alien.
 
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Sentience doesn't have to equal respect for other life forms.

...And the ability to speak convincing English doesn't have to equal sentience.

I mean, the vampire was making people see what they wanted to see - the victims produced the visual material themselves. It only stands to reason it also made them hear what they wanted to hear, in which case the victims would have been the ones producing the words and the meaning.

Timo Saloniemi
 
It's probably been asked before, but what is the history of M-113 and these creatures and how did this particular one manage to be the last of it's kind all of a sudden?

Did the planets salt levels suddenly run out due to some ecological disaster that also wiped out the inhabitants, and then each salt vampire suddenly began to die off or feed off each other until there was only one left?

What do you think happened?
 
Trelene loves them.

TheSquireOfGothosMeetsTheSaltVampire.jpg


He's probably the one who hunted them to extinction.
 
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