Huh. I knew that it wasn't until much later that I finally saw the episode, but I don't think I'd realized that it never had a repeat until after the series finished.
I must have, and I have learned a thing I didn't know before.
"The Man Trap" if you had seen it's debut in the 60's
- Thread starter Dale Sams
- Start date
Source for that assertion, please.
This has been discussed elsewhere, and it's covered in Inside Star Trek but, as I recall, of the episodes which were ready to air for the premier "The Man Trap" was the one NBC deemed most illustrative of the "strange new worlds" concept. "Where No Man" was considered "too expository, for instance. I'm not at home this week so I can't pull the book out to cite it.
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Well Greg, the term was not there when TOS was first run (it popped up in the 1970s), but from friends who watched Lost in Space on CBS ('65-'68), they said the series made them expect a monster every week. Same with most seasons of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Perhaps, but I think "Monster of the Week" being a term of derision, as in "I prefer ongoing arc plots to mere 'Monster of the Week' episodes," is of far more recent vintage, dating back, probably, to Buffy or The X-Files.
Nobody in 1966 would watch "Mantrap" and fret that Trek was going to be too "Monster of the Week" because that wasn't something anybody worried about back then. Indeed, as you said, people rather expected sci-fi shows to feature a different monster every week. That was just par for the course. The Salt Vampire would not have been cause for concern.
I can't resist the opportunity to mention Shaenon K. Garrity's webcomic Monster of the Week, which is a series of very funny recaps of every X-Files episode. It'd probably be even funnier if I remembered more of the episodes it's lampooning. But I think it does demonstrate the association of that phrase with that show.
"The Wrath of Lenore". Come on, it practically writes it's self!
You'll need to change your sig.
You think I'm joking, but just you wait . . . .
I was 9 at the time, and we sat as a family to watch Star Trek...pretty cool, if you think about it now...my friends and l lived and breathed it, and even "played" Star Trek..it was wonderous...there was a significant contingent of our schoolmates who had fun teasing us, but we did not care...we did NOT tell them, however, that my friend's basement shower was our transporter...
...Star Trek as discipline...in my day, the belt came off or the hand slapped face with fair regularity, and I was a kid that got a lot of belt, but never seemed to be able to stop with the bad behavior, until...they finally figured it out...when Star Trek was on, I was invited to my bedroom to spend the entire length of the episode in contemplation of my badness...
...two episodes of THAT, and I was cured...I always wanted to tell The Great Bird that, if I ever met him...wonder what he would have said...
...Star Trek as discipline...in my day, the belt came off or the hand slapped face with fair regularity, and I was a kid that got a lot of belt, but never seemed to be able to stop with the bad behavior, until...they finally figured it out...when Star Trek was on, I was invited to my bedroom to spend the entire length of the episode in contemplation of my badness...
...two episodes of THAT, and I was cured...I always wanted to tell The Great Bird that, if I ever met him...wonder what he would have said...
It was certainly a effective costume. I wonder if this photo was used as promotion for the new series, highlighting the monster in the first broadcast episode? It just seems a safer choice for this time period to appeal to that cultural interest, especially if there were still studio execs worried about getting more "cerebral" plots from Roddenberry.
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/pho...rek-the-original-series-22707297-800-1050.jpg
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/pho...rek-the-original-series-22707297-800-1050.jpg
I was watching Star Trek during its first year when I was 15, but "The Man Trap" was not the first episode I saw. I had caught a few minutes of different episodes during commercial breaks of other shows, but don't think I was regularly watching the show until about November 1966. The biggest marvel for me was the ship. I wasn't that crazy about the design initially, because it looked so strange compared to other sci-fi ships until then. But I didn't know anything about blue screen optical effects at the time, and couldn't figure out how they did the space scenes, which were obviously not done with a wire rig like on Irwin Allen's shows.
I had been a big fan of The Outer Limits with its weird monsters and aliens only 2-3 years earlier, and my first impression of Spock was he was the fakiest looking alien I'd ever seen.
I had been a big fan of The Outer Limits with its weird monsters and aliens only 2-3 years earlier, and my first impression of Spock was he was the fakiest looking alien I'd ever seen.
Noteworthy in The Man Trap: as far as I know, the one and only time McCoy kills anyone or anything
He killed a Mugato in A Private Little War. He also kills a pancake alien in his test chamber during Operation -- Annihilate!
And in TUC, he helps modify a torpedo that blows up an entire Klingon starship -- although it made no sense whatsoever for Spock to ask McCoy to do that rather than a qualified weapons technician.
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