Monday, February 27, 2017

Star Trek Review - The Man Trap

The Man Trap (Season 1: Episode 1)

In some ways this episode is a horror story – something reminiscent, even, of H.P. Lovecraft.  The shape-changing salt vampire echoes Lovecraft’s concern with body swaps, as in “The Thing on the Doorstep,” and with the animalistic degeneration of humanity.  It’s actually quite creepy to see Kirk tempting the creature (disguised as Nancy Crater) with salt tablets – as though she were a wild animal.  It’s startling to see Spock smash a gray-haired lady repeatedly in the face to almost no effect.  The reveal of the shaggy and monstrous creature is especially spooky considering Kirk’s speech to Professor Crater just shortly before. He had reprimanded Crater, saying, “This thing becomes wife, lover, best friend, wise man, fool, idol, slave.  It isn’t a bad life to have everyone in the universe at your beck and call.”  All of this can be yours, it seems, if only you will accept a murderous, salt-sucking monster into your home and bed.


Gender and sexuality ripple through all of “The Man Trap.”  Even Sulu’s pet plant has to be given a gender role:  “It’s a he plant,” declares Yeoman Rand.  “I keep expecting one of these plants of yours to, uh, grab me,” she adds, evidently expecting aggressive and abusive behavior from men.  In a different scene, Lt. Uhura proudly declares to Spock, “I’m an illogical woman whose beginning to feel too much a part of that communications console.  Why don’t you tell me I’m an attractive young lady…” Nichelle Nichols is charming as she flirts with the Vulcan, but it’s hardly a moment of feminist empowerment.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.  In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir suggests that woman is defined as “the Other” by men and their systems of patriarchy. “She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential.  He is the Subject; he is the Absolute.  She is the Other.”  For the utopian starship of the 1960s imagination, the Other can include a universe of aliens and cosmic mysteries – but the most immediate and intimate of those are the women of the ship’s crew.

And now, your moment of Trek friendship:

McCoy: Another error on my part.
Kirk: I’m not counting them, Bones.  Are you, uh, in the mood for an apology?

Image: IMDB