Trivia / Star Trek S1 E1 "The Man Trap"

• Cast the Runner-Up: Jeanne Bal, who plays Nancy here, was listed in a 1964 casting memo for the original pilot as a candidate for the role of Number One.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Gene Roddenberry disliked Alexander Courage's score for the episode, feeling it was too "sci-fi" (he preferred more traditional orchestration).
  • In William Shatner's 1993 memoir Star Trek Memories, he calls this episode "a dreadful show, one of our worst ever".
  • Leonard Nimoy remarks in his Star Trek Memories special that he regrets the series opening with this episode, with a classic "monster movie" plot, as opposed to something more representative of the classic Star Trek themes and ethos.
• Executive Meddling: Responsible for the episode airing first, it was actually the sixth produced. The executives felt, in Nimoy's words, "it was 'proper' science fiction, with a 'proper' monster running around threatening folks." As seen above, many lamented that it got Star Trek off on the wrong foot with audiences.
• Prop Recycling: Dr. Crater gets into a gunfight with Kirk and Spock on the planet. Notable he's using a laser while Kirk and Spock are armed with phasers. Crater's laser is the same model as the laser pistols from "The Cage."
• Recycled Script: This episode bears a resemblance to an earlier George Clayton Johnson story called "All of Us Are Dying," later adapted by Rod Serling for The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Four of Us Are Dying". That show also involved a person who could make himself into whomever he chose.
• Recycled Set: The botany section where Sulu has his lunch, is a redress of the sickbay set.
• Science Marches On:
  • It's mentioned that buffalo are extinct. It is true that overhunting brought the buffalo very close to extinction at the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1960s, it was a fairly reasonable assumption that buffalo might be extinct in the future, although probably not the best guess since conservation efforts had started decades earlier. Today they are no longer considered endangered at all. (The episode also mentions passenger pigeons, which were already extinct when the episode was made.)
  • Salt tablets are an important note in the episode, described as a standard and necessary item for an outpost on a hot, arid planet. This reflects earlier beliefs that, because salt is included in perspiration, salt supplements were required to keep the body healthy in such a climate. Improved understanding of how the human body regulates temperature, moisture, and electrolytes has seen the salt tablet largely vanish, replaced by pure water (for simple hydration) and sports drinks like Gatorade (for replenishing electrolytes, beyond just sodium, lost through perspiration).
• Uncredited Role: Garrison True and Larry Anthony both speak several onscreen lines, yet are not listed in the closing credits.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the original script, the moral dilemma of killing 'the last of its kind' had been more pronounced, with the creature, disguised as McCoy, trying to reason with the crew. Also in that version, Professor Crater lives in the end, mourning the loss of the creature. Gene Roddenberry's rewrite for the final draft toned down the emotional aspects of the McCoy relationship in favor of a more straightforward plot; as a cornered animal, the salt creature panics and actually kills its longtime companion; Professor Crater.
  • The original draft lacked much of a presence of Spock. Actually, it was Scotty who accompanied Kirk to catch Crater. In the final episode Scotty does not appear at all, though an archive recording of his voice is dubbed in briefly.
  • Sulu's botanical collection was much more lavish in the original script, including a plant resembling the face of a Chinese dog, etc. This was eliminated for budgetary reasons, Beauregard remaining the only moving "exotic plant".
  • In the original story outline, Professor Crater was, at one point, supposed to drive a futuristic tractor around the archaeological site.
• Working Title: The Unreal McCoy. Another early title was Damsel With a Dulcimer from Samuel Coleridge's "Kublai Khan" poem. (In the poem, Coleridge thinks that if he could remember and reproduce her song, he could re-create in the actual world the wonders he's seen.)

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