The Man Trap...why not provide salt for the creature?
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
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The point was that the pure salt was either not tasty, or too pure. Thus, Crater eats more salt than his system can normally handle, and lets the creature feed so that they can both survive, he by being drained of the overdose of salt, and the creature by feeding on salt filtered through a body.
We're never told the whole relationship between Crater and the creature. Thus, the above is pure (there's a word) speculation. Who knows, it may be part of someone's headcanon, but by what we are shown, the implication is that it does eat the pure salt, especially when, at the climax, it grabs the handful of salt from Kirk and wolfs it down before hypnotizing Kirk and preparing to feed off of him. But speculation can postulate that the wolfing down of the pure salt was like a parched man in the desert drinking the first, fetid water he can find before finding the spring it originally came from and drinking his fill of the good stuff.
I always wondered why the Salt Vampire appeared in The Squire of Gothos. Trelane's recreations were from earth's past (he didn't take into account the time lag based on distance) so why is the Salt Vampire used as a prop? It wasn't from earth's past (as far as we know). Also, McCoy didn't seem too concerned or creeped out about seeing it again.
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Actually, blood donors are a pretty common idea in vampire stories. Maybe less so in movies than in tv/books. But the main problem with it is always: vampires usually don't want blood from a bag or a cup, they want it from a person and that therefore requires people to trust that they'll stop before they actually kill someone. Which is kind of a similar situation to this episode - the creature chose to go after humans.
Yeah the vampire stuff normally goes with the "tastes wrong" angle if cold and stored in anti-coagulent bags. Though Buffy did have Spike and Angel drinking cups of the stuff from the fridge.
If the creature is used to leeching salt from the bloodstream/cell cytoplasm then the sort of ion uptake channels biology has come up with would likely be overwhelmed by pure salt the same way seawater is too briney for us, even though WE need salt (and water). In fact, those salt tablets are likely designed to be dissolved in at least a pint of water and drunk.
If the creature is used to leeching salt from the bloodstream/cell cytoplasm then the sort of ion uptake channels biology has come up with would likely be overwhelmed by pure salt the same way seawater is too briney for us, even though WE need salt (and water). In fact, those salt tablets are likely designed to be dissolved in at least a pint of water and drunk.
Yes but it had sort of become attached to him in a love sort of way as Crater explained later on in the show!
JB
Dunno about that. People dealing with dangerous animals develop all sorts of weird ideas about what those animals might be thinking, often culminating in said beasts killing and eating them in rather rude contradiction of said ideas.
Crater's supply of salt tablets might well have been the only thing keeping him alive. And not even in the sense of him regulating the supply (we saw no safe, or a procedure accommodating longterm blackmail), but merely in the sense that the creature didn't need to eat Crater when it had so much of that tastier stuff.
That the beast skips salt tablets when hunted shipboard isn't indicative of much: it does show great interest in Rand's salt dispenser and eventually gobbles up that handful just before its death scene. It's just that its hunting instincts still seem to work quite nicely, and in parallel with the bliss of gorging up on tablets - they just went on a hiatus thanks to the bliss, but were tickled again with the sight of so many prey...
...Or predators. Perhaps the beast killed only those individuals it deemed a threat, such as the armed guard, people on the verge of finding out, etc.?
Timo Saloniemi
Crater's supply of salt tablets might well have been the only thing keeping him alive. And not even in the sense of him regulating the supply (we saw no safe, or a procedure accommodating longterm blackmail), but merely in the sense that the creature didn't need to eat Crater when it had so much of that tastier stuff.
That the beast skips salt tablets when hunted shipboard isn't indicative of much: it does show great interest in Rand's salt dispenser and eventually gobbles up that handful just before its death scene. It's just that its hunting instincts still seem to work quite nicely, and in parallel with the bliss of gorging up on tablets - they just went on a hiatus thanks to the bliss, but were tickled again with the sight of so many prey...
...Or predators. Perhaps the beast killed only those individuals it deemed a threat, such as the armed guard, people on the verge of finding out, etc.?
Timo Saloniemi
Roddenberry oversaw this episode and even did the final re-write.
Then he turned around and criticized TWOK for having Kirk kill the ceti eel instead of studying it.
Kor
That sounds like Roddenberry being bitter for being bumped to "consultant" while TWOK rolled on to leave his then-stale ideas (mid 70s ST concepts / TMP) in the dust. I guess he missed the part about the mission being about the search for Carol Marcus (and any other survivors), the Genesis device matter and the Khan situation. Naahhh. They were supposed to suddenly turn into the Starfleet Zoological Society in the middle of all of that.
Did he complain about Kirk deciding to kill the parasites infesting Deneva?
The Man Trap is being compared to Devil in the Dark quite a bit, but what about comparing the Man Trap to the TNG episode Silicon Avatar?
In Silicon Avatar Picard tries to uphold the most altruistic ideals of the Federation by attempting to communicate with the Entity when they catch up to it again. The Entity wiped out entire planets and Picard was still willing to try and negotiate with it. By comparison the M-113 being had killed a handful of people. Picard even rebukes Riker for letting his personal feelings cloud his judgment, making it clear they are not in the revenge business.
I don't agree with Picard's analogy (where he compares the Entity to a cuttlefish) because the Entity was obviously intelligent, just like the M-113 being. It conspired with Lore to wipe out a whole colony, after all, so it wasn't just some simple animal.
Given these similarities it doesn't seem unreasonable to spare M-113's life, give it salt and study it. Information regarding it's telepathic abilities and the history of it's species could have proven valuable.
In Silicon Avatar Picard tries to uphold the most altruistic ideals of the Federation by attempting to communicate with the Entity when they catch up to it again. The Entity wiped out entire planets and Picard was still willing to try and negotiate with it. By comparison the M-113 being had killed a handful of people. Picard even rebukes Riker for letting his personal feelings cloud his judgment, making it clear they are not in the revenge business.
I don't agree with Picard's analogy (where he compares the Entity to a cuttlefish) because the Entity was obviously intelligent, just like the M-113 being. It conspired with Lore to wipe out a whole colony, after all, so it wasn't just some simple animal.
Given these similarities it doesn't seem unreasonable to spare M-113's life, give it salt and study it. Information regarding it's telepathic abilities and the history of it's species could have proven valuable.
Killing the Salt Vampire solves a problem: it terminates the entire threat species. Killing the Crystalline Entity just leaves Picard high and dry in terms of intelligence on a threat species that no doubt numbers in the millions. Torturing the Salt Vampire for further intel would not be useful; failing to do so to the Crystalline Entity may cost lives.
But no, the Crystalline Entity isn't intelligent. It "conspiring" with Lore just goes to show that the Entity is stupid as a boot and/or that Lore is mad as a hatter. The android appears to be delusional about his ability to communicate with the Entity, as he formulates a very simple plan involving a single step for the Entity perform: "Attack when shields drop". What does the Entity do when Lore transports out (an act that he carefully explains will involve the shields dropping)? It moves away.
Nothing the Entity does is smart. It just homes in on signals suggesting food, and cannot tell safe food from threatening food to literally save its life.
Picard can afford to be methodical with the Crystalline Entity. After all, it's no threat to him, or to any other shielded target, and cannot defend itself except through fleeing at superior speed. But that latter ability means Picard can't let the beast go, either, or he'll never catch it again. Meaning we don't really know who was right in "Silicon Avatar", Picard with his willingness to interrogate, or Marr with her willingness to exterminate.
Timo Saloniemi
But no, the Crystalline Entity isn't intelligent. It "conspiring" with Lore just goes to show that the Entity is stupid as a boot and/or that Lore is mad as a hatter. The android appears to be delusional about his ability to communicate with the Entity, as he formulates a very simple plan involving a single step for the Entity perform: "Attack when shields drop". What does the Entity do when Lore transports out (an act that he carefully explains will involve the shields dropping)? It moves away.
Nothing the Entity does is smart. It just homes in on signals suggesting food, and cannot tell safe food from threatening food to literally save its life.
Picard can afford to be methodical with the Crystalline Entity. After all, it's no threat to him, or to any other shielded target, and cannot defend itself except through fleeing at superior speed. But that latter ability means Picard can't let the beast go, either, or he'll never catch it again. Meaning we don't really know who was right in "Silicon Avatar", Picard with his willingness to interrogate, or Marr with her willingness to exterminate.
Timo Saloniemi
I never suggested that they should torture M-113. Who knows what Spock could have learned from it with a mind meld? It certainly had an interesting camouflage ability, that might have been useful to study.
I don't agree with you there, but my point is that if Picard was willing to give the Entity a pass if it could be negotiated with, then it might have been possible to give M-113 a pass if they were able to come to an understanding. While pretending to be McCoy, M-113 all but offered a truce if they provided salt for it. It seemed to me that it's murderous actions were driven by starvation based on it's desperate behavior. In my opinion, Picard would have tried to find a way not to kill M-113 because that's supposed to be how Starfleet approaches aliens (even hostile ones). They're supposed to give them a chance before blasting them.
In I, Borg Picard changes his tune regarding his archenemy the Borg because he decides to talk to it rather than just implanting the virus and sending Hugh back to the Collective. Even Starfleet Command thought he was too lenient on that one.
In Arena, the Metron's point is that Kirk should not have jumped to conclusions regarding the Gorn's intentions. Since (as far as I'm aware) there was no Federation-Gorn War after the Cestus 3 attack, we can assume the Gorn got a pass from Starfleet after destroying an entire colony.
As others have pointed out, the Horta gets a pass because it was defending it's eggs.
Kirk was even willing to give Charlie Evans a pass when the Thasians came to pick him up. He had murdered the entire crew of the Antares and Kirk was ready to let him stay on board anyway.
The bottom line with Man Trap is that it's a kill the monster of the week Twilight Zone-type episode. The high ideals of the UFP weren't fully developed at that point in the series, so Spock beat it up, McCoy gunned it down and the credits rolled.
One thing that bothered me about the story was that M-113's camouflage ability was telepathic, it read the minds of people around it and projected the illusion of what people wanted to see. This is evident when it appears in three different aspects simultaneously at the beginning of the show. That scene suggests it is more like a Talosian rather than a true shape-shifting alien like a Founder. That ability wouldn't fool the Enterprise's internal sensors. They were able to track Beale and Lokai as they ran through the ship from Spock's station, so finding M-113 should have been easy. If Chekov could manage to distinguish between Vulcans and Romulans in The Enterprise Incident, surely Spock could detect something like M-113 and have it beamed into a brig cell. Once it was safely contained, they could have fed it, studied it and communicated with it at their leisure.
Taking a brief step outside of the Trek universe here, but maybe Kirk could have benefited from Galdalf's advice (when speaking of another despicable, murdering creature - Gollum): "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
Just my 2 cents on the episode, despite the story flaws I still found it enjoyable to watch.
Dissecting an animal works better if you kill it first. OTOH, dissecting a deranged person, one who engages in a mindless rampage of what amounts to cannibalism among us humanoids, is not just an exercise in futility whether done with McCoy's scalpel or Spock's fingers, but a cruel form of exploitation for the sake of (minimal) abstract knowledge.
Will would hardly be an issue here. Picard was confronting a fragile snowflake that was at his utter mercy (except if he foolishly let it go); Kirk was facing a beast capable of killing him and his crew, as already demonstrated, and his stun gun had not been of much use moments before against a frail old man down on the planet...
It told a pleasant lie, which is all it was capable of doing. The heroes established it was not taking the salt, for whatever reason (it had shown an interest earlier on, and it wasn't pursuing a strategy of avoiding capture).
So how is "Man Trap" a fail? Kirk gave the beast a chance, and it ate two of his crew.
Destroying colonies (or in this case, military outposts) is no biggie - every "villain" guilty of that in TOS, and most in the spinoffs, "got a pass", probably simply because going to war is such a hassle.
And for all we know, the Salt Vampire was pregnant and thus theoretically not the last of her species. But that's pretty unlikely, and what sort of a mother would she be, as the last survivor of a species that isn't supposed to perpetuate itself through last survivors like the Horta? Even if sapient, she'd know nothing of the culture of her planet.
...What choice would he have had? He was facing godlike powers on both sides of the argument.
Nor did the Talosians fool the sensors. Why should this matter? It's the people who are fooled. "Oh, there's a klaxon blaring. Better ignore it, because in front of me is just a beautiful young woman eating a pineapple, and I'd really like a pineapple just now."
The degree to which the Salt Vampire messes with minds is left a bit ambiguous. Are Kirk's men utterly undisciplined and willing to march to their deaths? Or did the Salt Vampire not only look attractive to Crewman Darnell, but also erased his inhibitions, clouded his judgement and made him forget his training? McCoy and Kirk seem to ignore the obvious for a long time, too.
That sort of sentiment is sorta wasted on the already dead, though. And it's difficult to argue the Salt CVampire had a future ahead if it/her/him/whatever.
Just my 2 cents on the episode, despite the story flaws I still found it enjoyable to watch.
Absolutely no disagreement there!
Timo Saloniemi
So say Kirk had the time, patience and good fortune to isolate the salt creature, whats going to happen to it?
He could either send it back to its planet or lock it in a cell with plenty of salt (salt is cheap after all). However they'd have to lock it up X-Men style to keep people safe on a Starfleet facility. My impression is that it just couldn't help itself really, sucking the life out of creatures like we eat meat.
And if you sent it back to the planet it would be alone and Crater said it needed love so it would be a cruel fate. Like Tom Hanks with the volleyball.
He could either send it back to its planet or lock it in a cell with plenty of salt (salt is cheap after all). However they'd have to lock it up X-Men style to keep people safe on a Starfleet facility. My impression is that it just couldn't help itself really, sucking the life out of creatures like we eat meat.
And if you sent it back to the planet it would be alone and Crater said it needed love so it would be a cruel fate. Like Tom Hanks with the volleyball.
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To Man Trap critics, I'd also add that it's not just a matter of judging some being who has murdered. If s/he has been caught and secured safely, you can afford forgiveness, as long as the being is still locked up or permanently stopped, even if s/he has killed millions. There's a world of difference between that, and a situation where a killer creature is on the loose is hard to find and control and stop, who may be about to carry off even one more murder. You have to stop your people getting killed ASAP no matter what. Any leniency starts after the capture. You can afford to be easy on him/her/it then.
I think Kirk knew that the creature could understand them and they were offering it a way out of the situation but because it kept on killing and let's not forget that it was actually Bones that shot it in defence of saving his Captain and friend's life!
JB
JB
...McCoy is a known klutz with the phaser in general. In "Return of the Archons", it's his phaser that the VFX folks forget to draw emitting a stun beam. In The Wrath of Khan, when Kirk tells the boarding party to set phasers on stun for the Regula Lab, McCoy keys his to kill. And never mind him leaving the safety not just off but on self-destruct in "City on the Edge of Forever".
Him firing at kill this time around could be a sheer mistake, then. But would his lack of skill actually mean he'd be more likely to fail in changing the setting, meaning Kirk originally had the gun on kill?
Timo Saloniemi
Him firing at kill this time around could be a sheer mistake, then. But would his lack of skill actually mean he'd be more likely to fail in changing the setting, meaning Kirk originally had the gun on kill?
Timo Saloniemi
Then again it was a battered Spock that gave him the order to shoot it as well! 
JB
JB
...Spock in turn is the bloodthirstiest of the heroes by far. Always proposing the use of force, advocating acts of war, suggesting killing the problem of the week (be it a space mollusk or a fellow crewman). I can't fathom where people got the idea that Vulcans are pacifist?
And no, it's not just the half-human Spock - his dad admits to being a cold-blooded (if not necessarily practicing) murderer, too. And Surak (or at least Spock's mental image of him) just tells Spock to pick his fights right...
Timo Saloniemi
And no, it's not just the half-human Spock - his dad admits to being a cold-blooded (if not necessarily practicing) murderer, too. And Surak (or at least Spock's mental image of him) just tells Spock to pick his fights right...
Timo Saloniemi
How does that make McCoy a klutz? Maybe nobody was coming in his direction.
How do you come to that conclusion? Is there on screen evidence? It's been awhile since I watched it.
Pure speculation. You have no idea what happened or how the phaser settings work or even if phasers have a safety. Besides, McCoy was heavily drugged with a shot of "Space Meth."
Did he fire to kill? The creature wasn't vaporized. For example, in The Squire of Gothos, Trelane specifically calls out the phaser settings, and when he selects the kill setting, he vaporizes the Salt Vampire prop. (I still wonder why it was there in the first place).
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