Printable Version

 CHAPTER FORTY NINE
The Man Trap, Season 1, Episode 1.

THE FACTS!

The Enterprise orbits an orange planet called M-113.

The Stardate is 1513.1.

Mr. Spock is temporarily in command while Captain Kirk visits the planet's surface with Ship's Surgeon McCoy and a red shirt who is wearing a blue shirt.

Their mission: routine medical examination of Archaeologist Robert Crater and his wife, Nancy.

Nancy Crater and Ship's Surgeon McCoy have a history of doing it.

Captain Kirk picks some wheat and calls it a flower.

McCoy suggests that Kirk pays women to do it to him.

The crew enters the Ziggurat!

Leonard McCoy and Nancy meet after ten years!

The Red Shirt's name is Darnell but he isn't dressed in drag.

Nancy Crater looks different to each member of the crew. McCoy sees a big breasted young brunette! Captain Kirk sees a big breasted gray-tinged cougar. And Darnell sees a big breasted youthful blonde!

Darnell thinks she looks like a hooker he met on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet.

Darnell is reprimanded for calling somebody's wife a whore and told to wait outside.

McCoy's nickname is Plum.

Nancy leaves to get her husband and throws her panties at Darnell as he waits outside.

Darnell follows her!

Space is the final frontier.

The Enterprise is apparently on a five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations and to go boldly where no man has gone before! Also, to do medical check-ups on aging archaeologists.

Doooo dooooo do doo doo doo do doooooo. DOOO doooo dooo dooo doooo dooo dooooo. Daaaah! La la la la la la la la LA LAH! DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUUUUNNNN!

Bob Crater meets the crew and makes a snide comment about them crossing interstellar space to preserve his health. That's what I was thinking, Bob!

Bob tells them to get the hell off of his planet but to maybe have someone send some additional salt against the heat if they wouldn't mind and maybe ignore the fact that he's just yelled at them for trying to help.

Captain Kirk quotes the Star Fleet Rules and Regulations concerning Research Personnel on alien planets requiring that their health is checked on a yearly basis.

McCoy begins scanning Bob with a mini-electric razor.

McCoy and Jim bicker about Nancy's gray hairs.

McCoy trusts tonsils.

Nancy screams from somewhere outside.

They all rush out to find Darnell dead with a green jawbreaker in his mouth and red dots all over his face.

Nancy claims she saw Darnell eating a Borgia Plant and couldn't stop him in time.

Jim and Leonard and the dead guy beam back up to the ship.

Nancy is concerned about salt tablets.

Spock scolds Uhura for making an error in her frequency logs. Even in the future, women are bad at math!

Uhura flirts with Spock.

Spock acts stupid.

Uhura's skirt is mighty short! Mmm-hmm! Rowr!

Uhura reprimands Spock for not showing any concern over a dead crewmate while she doesn't show any concern either. Except for the fact that Spock isn't concerned.

Spock reports that the Borgia Plant is similar to Nightshade and that the red dots on Darnell's face are not a symptom of poisoning by the plant.

Dr. McCoy reports that Darnell wasn't poisoned and is actually healthy enough to get up and walk away. Except he's dead.

Jim yells at the doctor.

It is now Stardate 1513.4!

The Enterprise receives an urgent message from Space Commander Domingus requesting an explanation for their delay in delivering needed supplies.

Captain Kirk is racist and tells Uhura, "Tell Jose he'll get his chile peppers when we get there!"

Captain Kirk says he hand picked the peppers himself!

Spock gives Kirk a report with a really uncomfortable looking blue tooth headset.

Dr. McCoy discovers that Darnell has no salt in his body.

Captain Columbo and a landing party head back down to the planet with some questions.

Captain Kirk sends Red Shirt Green to find Nancy.

Jim grills Mr. Crater.

Captain Kirk gets a belly ache from mysteries.

Captain Kirk says on of the missions of the Enterprise is to protect human life.

Rob Crater escapes before he can be taken aboard the Enterprise for safety reasons.

Nancy has killed two more Red Shirts! Even though Green was wearing a yellow shirt and Sturgeon was wearing a blue one.

Nancy transforms into Crewman Green!

Green joins Kirk and the Doctor.

Kirk tells the Doctor to stop thinking with his penis.

Kirk, McCoy and Fake Green beam up to the Enterprise.

Kirk heads to the bridge and passes by a real Red Shirt!

Fake Green tries to steal some salt from a hot Red Shirt but she slaps his hand and gives him what-for!

Spock scans the planet and finds only one person: Bob Crater.

Hot Red Shirt tells Fake Green to go chase an asteroid.

More crew members hit on Hot Red Shirt.

Hot Red Shirt is delivering her food to Sulu. What a waste!

Sulu works on the Floral Deck.

Sulu named his pink squeaky plant Gertrude.

Sulu wonders why people refer to inanimate objects as females.

Hot Red Shirt is more concerned with the plants grabbing her than Sulu's wandering hands.

Gertrude squeaks like crazy when Fake Green enters the room and stares at Sulu's food.

Gertrude retracts like a scared penis.

Hot Red Shirt thinks Fake Green might be going Space Happy.

Fake Green, the Yellow wearing Red Shirt, turns Black.

Fake Green shapeshifts his English into Swahili and hits on Uhura.

Uhura gets called to the bridge before she can enjoy a nice strangling.

Doctor McCoy has evil Tiki Idols on his headboard.

Captain Kirk prescribes drugs to Doctor McCoy.

The Black Fake Green turns back into Nancy Crater and runs into McCoy.

Nancy tries to get into McCoy's pants.

Hot Red Shirt and non-threatening crewman Sulu find a dead man in tin foil on Deck 9, Section 2.

Kirk suspects that the death of his crewmen has been caused by some strange life form.

Nancy tastes McCoy's sweat as he passes out from drugs (or cinnamon candies).

Nancy turns into Doctor McCoy! I hope he has his malpractice insurance paid up!

Kirk suspects the life-form paralyzes men with some strange power or assets.

Kirk is told about the dead crewman on the Enterprise.

Spock finds the real dead Green.

Spock is unsure what he's found so he calls over Kirk to investigate.

Kirk raises the threat level on the Enterprise to General Quarters 3 or Orange.

Some tough guy Red Shirts show how tough they are by walking slowly and toughly back to their quarters during the GQ3 Alert.

Bob shoots at Spock and Kirk, knocking down some very valuable and ancient architecture!

Nancy McCoy enters the Bridge where all the girls are gossiping about the twitchy shapeshifting alien.

Kirk shoots Bob with his stun ray.

Bob admits his wife is a hermaphrodite and the last of its kind.

Bob compares his wife to a buffalo.

Bob admits the real Nancy is dead and buried.

Kirk calls Sulu and raises the alert to General Quarters 4.

For anybody not paying attention, Bob lets Kirk and Spock know that the shapeshifting Nancy thing needs salt to live and the planet ran out of salt so they all died except the last one which is Nancy the Buffalo.

Kirk says the only difference between the buffalo and Nancy is that Nancy is killing his crew.

Kirk describes Nancy as a creature that can paralyze and draw the life from any one of them.

Spock sets up salt licks on every level of the Enterprise as bait to catch the creature.

The creature is still McCoy.

Kirk and his top advisors have a meeting about how to catch the creature.

The creature needs love as much as it needs salt to live. So it must have loved the Red Shirts to death! Sexy!

Spock suggests using truth serum on Bob to find out the location of Nancy.

Fake McCoy resists using truth serum but will in this case. Although I suspect a trick!

Off-camera, the creature hits Spock with its Phaser which must really be a part of it since the phaser was part of the shapeshifting.

Spock bleeds green goo all over the medical table.

Bob is killed by Nancy.

Spock's blood salts are too different for the creature to feed upon.

Nancy turns back into Nancy and goes to McCoy's quarters for help.

Kirk finds them and calls McCoy 'Bones'.

Kirk offers Nancy some salt pills.

Nancy eats the salt pills and then paralyzes Jim.

Spock punches Nancy multiple times.

Nancy knocks out Spock with one blow.

Bones comes to his senses and sees the real Nancy. Eww! Gross!

Nancy has gray hair and green skin and a big sucker mouth with bad teeth and sandbags under her eyes.

Jim screams.

Bones shoots Nancy and wounds her. I mean, it.

It turns back into Nancy and begs Bones to spare it.

Bones asks God to forgive him and then kills her dead!

Jim apologizes to Bones.

Captain Kirk thinks about the Buffalo.

Warp 1!

STUDY QUESTIONS!
Question God and Religion!

Since when is a routine medical examination the province of the Starship Enterprise? Aren't they supposed to be exploring strange new worlds and going nowhere that men have not gone before? Shouldn't this mission have been taken up by a Space Ambulance? Later, Kirk quotes some rules from the Star Fleet Manual about research personnel requiring medical check-ups. If it's so important, shouldn't Star Fleet have special crews and ships doing only that? Shouldn't that be some other crew's five year mission?

Isn't there supposed to be some sort of ethical dilemma with a doctor working on a man's wife when the doctor had previously 'worked on' that man's wife? That was a Euphemism!

Why do Ancient Civilizations in space always look like they were built by the Egyptians? Can't a space faring people discover a deserted planet with an ancient civilization that looks like modern day New York? Wouldn't that be more likely? To find a post-apocalyptic ruin instead of a bunch of abandoned ziggurats?

Where does God fit in in the Star Trek Universe? Do we have to wait until "Star Trek V: When We Meet God" before they discuss it? I bet it comes up much sooner than that but since I'm not a dork, I mean a Trekkier, I don't know the answer to my question.

Isn't this some sort of military operation? At the very least, it's the crew of a ship with a Captain and ranking sub-ordinates. So why is Dr. McCoy so informal with his Captain? He calls him Jim and suggests he pays for sex! Captain Kirk should bust him in the chops and demote him to Nurse McCoy!

Why doesn't the Star Trek crew ever visit Wrigley's Pleasure Planet? What a missed opportunity! It should have been the locale for their first Major Motion Picture! Space Boobies!

Do you think the opening of Star Trek added the 'five year mission' part in the hopes that the network wouldn't be able to cancel the show until the five years were up? What do you think they would have done after five years? Would the crew have had to return home? Or would the ship have just run out of fuel and floated off into deep space?

Is Darnell the first official Red Shirt to die while going on a surface mission with the main crew? Or is he not considered a Red Shirt seeing as how his shirt was most definitely blue? Or is there a Red Shirt that dies in the Captain Pike episode for those nerds who want to claim that as the first official episode?

So, Mister Spock is supposed to be very smart and logical but with no emotions. But he acts as if he can't understand anything that has to do with emotions. So he's not really very smart, is he? And since he's half-human, you know he can feel emotions anyway. So, don't you think he's faking being stupid just so he doesn't appear to have any human traits? Is Mister Spock a self-hating human?

Why is the Enterprise delivering Chile Peppers to Space Commander Domingus? I thought they were an exploratory vessel? When are they going to start exploring and stop taking on these routine missions that can be done by other Starfleet ships that don't have other work to do? And why is Captain Kirk hand picking red peppers?

Why do mysteries give Captain Kirk a belly ache? Maybe Doctor McCoy should check that out. It's probably an ulcer!

Do you think Captain Kirk is lying about one of the missions of the Enterprise being to protect human life? It isn't mentioned in the opening narration! People compliment the show all of the time for having a multi-cultural cast and showing the future with all humans working together. But have they really learned anything? Now they have a mission to protect human life. But what about non-human life? Is it all secondary to human life? I bet that question will be answered in a future episode! But probably not until The Next Generation when they were more liberal minded enough to ask what makes a human life better than an alien life.

Is Nancy Crater really naked throughout the entire episode? That's pretty sexy even if her nakedness looks like clothing. That's the only way to explain how she shapeshifts the clothing she's wearing when she turns into Crewman Green. Right? It would be too much to believe that she can shapeshift clothing as well as her physical appearance! I guess she's not even really shapeshifting but projecting a different vision of herself depending on the thoughts behind the eyes looking at her.

Even in the year Stardate 1513, sexual harrassment is still alive and well! Do you think the crewmen of the Enterprise have to take Sexual Harassment classes? They practically do it to Hot Red Shirt with their eyes when they dream of her being their own personal Yeoman! Is that a euphemism for something really sexy and dirty?

Who designed the women's uniforms for Starfleet? Hot Red Shirt's skirt is so short I can almost see her thingy! I might even be able to see her thingy but I'm not sure what I'm looking for. I mean, because my television isn't High Definition, so I can't make out her naughty thingy thing against the other stuff that isn't her naughty thing. She sure is hot!

Do you think Gertrude the pink flower constantly repeats itself in different ways while sort of circling the point and never quite getting to the point because the point is the way the language is unable to really get to the point while trying to succinctly get to the point of it? And so the language isn't there to make things clear but to sort of demonstrate how language can never really make anything really clear? Unless the words really meant something different! It's hard to tell seeing as how Gertrude repeats everything until you no longer know what she's trying to say and you've fallen asleep with your face in the middle of Melanctha.

What is Space Happy? It sounds awesome! Do people get super giddy when in space for too long? Does it ever happen to anybody ever again in Star Trek?

If the General Quarters 3 alert sends everyone to lock down in their quarters, what is the difference when it is raised to General Quarters 4? Does everyone have to hide under their beds also? Do they lock themselves in the bathroom? Maybe they have to lock their doors in GQ4 while only keeping them shut in a GQ3 alert?

When Kirk describes Nancy as a creature that can paralyze and draw the life from any one of them, isn't he also describing the rest of the women aboard the Enterprise? Ha ha! Is it jokes like that which keep me from having a girlfriend?

If Spock is half-human, how come his 'blood salts' are quite different than full humans? How could his ancestor's blood salts be so different than humans and yet still be alike enough to interbreed? Are Vulcan blood salts dominant? How is salt any different than other salts? I mean, really? Sodium Chloride or something, right? How come nobody ever asks me what Blood Salts Type I am?

Isn't the Federation some sort of military outfit for humans? Why isn't their a Chaplain aboard the Enterprise? Aren't any of these people religious? Bones asks God to forgive him, so they obviously have some sort of faith or religion. Why is there a doctor and an engineer and a captain and a Number Two and a navigation officer and a communications officer and a gay but no Chaplain?

Gene Roddenberry named many of the episodes of the first season of Star Trek after his favorite gay bars: 'The Man Trap', 'Charlie "X"', 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', 'The Naked Time', 'The Enemy Within', 'Mudd's Women', 'What are Little Girls Made of', 'The Menagerie', 'Shore Leave', 'Arena', 'Court Martial', 'Space Seed', 'This Side of Paradise', 'A Taste of Armageddon', 'The Devil in the Dark', 'The Alternative Factor', and 'The City on the Edge of Forever'. The ones I didn't list were probably gay bars too.

Pickle Boy's Obscure Facts #3 of 1000: Harlan Ellison wrote that last one!

Doctor McCoy has only had sex with one woman in his life.

Wrigley's Gum paid $50,000 to have the Star Trek Universe's Pleasure Planet named after their product. The gambit worked and every nerd in America switched to chewing Wrigley's and making dirty innuendos while doing so.

Lucrezia Borgia was supposed to have poisoned many people and was the daughter of arguably the worst Pope in history, Alexander VI. So if there were an animal that sodomized people on the planet M-113, it probably would have been called the Pope Alexander Pig.

A. Compare Captain Kirk with any of the Jewish Patriarchs. Which one is more powerful? Which won was sexier? How are their missions inter-related?
B. Why are the women's outfits so short on the Enterprise? We see that it actually distracts crew members from their job when Hot Red Shirt struts up and down the decks. Do you think the uniforms would be different if the Enterprise didn't rely on ratings to keep it on its five-year mission?
C. Write a Star Trek Fanfic piece that takes place on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet!

DRAWING TIME!

Draw a picture of some real female Star Fleet uniforms. Or make them even skimpier, please!

WHAT DID CHRISTIAN LITERALISTS LEARN?

Women are shape changing, evil, life-sucking vermin that deserve to be killed even when they are the last of their kind and remind you of a buffalo.