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
