In Spring 2020, a UK Star Trek fan took it upon himself to watch every episode of “Star Trek” in chronological order. 2 years, and a month or so after completing this project, he decided to start it again. This time he will write a blog entry of at least 250 words about every episode.
This is his story
OK, so a few housekeeping notes. As much as possible, we will be going in release date order. Or more accurately US release date. The marathon I did started with Enterprise, however, as I recently got TOS on Blu Ray I decided to start the party that way.
Therefore we are starting with Season 1 and “The Man Trap.”
Anyone who knows their Star Trek stuff knows that this wasn’t Star Trek’s pilot. In fact, it wasn’t even its second pilot. Instead it was an episode that was made after the series was ordered In today’s shows, even the most episodic formats, the first episode usually represents the building of our crew and establishment of their characters and their situation. Today’s shows might see the crew meeting for the first time – the launch of the Enterprise’s latest mission or some other startingmilestone. Instead its just another day on the good ship 1701.
Kirk, McCoy and some non red red shirts beam down to the planet M-113 to perform a mandatory physical on archaeologist Dr Crater, and his wife Nancy who is a lost love of our ship’s surgeon Dr McCoy. Of course there is more to the story, the death count starts to mount up and we quickly start to learn that not everyone is as they seem.
This, obviously marks a lot of firsts The first episode of the franchise, the first of the original series and interestingly the show’s first shape shifter storyline We would see this used again and again, indeed it would be a big part of the DS9 mythology, and it starts here from day one.
It’s easy to see why this was selected to be the pilot episode. We get a sense of who this crew are, the scenes below decks between Sulu and Rand show that they are more than just robotic automotons, instead they are humans who happen to work in outer space. We get a good idea about the main trinity – the calculating Spock, the heartfelt McCoy, and the Captain who has to balance both approaches to protect those under his command.
There are a few other interesting things here The Captain’s Log is used slightly differently to how it would be later on. Instead of just providing exposition and telling us unseen events, we are also given a recap of the action, where Kirk tells us what has been happening on screen and things he isn’t aware of at this point in the story I actually find this slightly weird, as if Kirk is laying down narration to the visual feed.
The plot is fairly basic stuff, although you don’t want to break the format on its release. The creature is quite interesting visually, and the deadly red circles remain memorable
Another good reason for selecting this episode is probably that the principals are comfortable in the roles having a few episodes under their belt at this point.
This is pure Trek in that despite being deadly monster, the creature;s death is somewhat mourned by Kirk at the end.
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