54 Years Ago Today; Star Trek (TOS) airs for the first time on US TV 🖖 [View all]

[Dennis Donovan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Trap



"The Man Trap" is the first season premiere of the American science fiction television series, Star Trek. Written by George Clayton Johnson and directed by Marc Daniels, it first aired on September 8, 1966.

In the episode, the crew visit an outpost to conduct medical exams on the residents, only to be attacked by a shapeshifting alien creature seeking to extract salt from their bodies.

This was the first Star Trek episode to air on television, although the sixth to be filmed; chosen as the first of the series to be broadcast by the studio due to the horror-based plot. "The Man Trap" placed first in the timeslot with a Nielsen rating of 25.2 percent for the first half-hour and 24.2 for the remainder. It aired two days earlier on Canadian network CTV.

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Reception
Broadcast
A month prior to the premiere of Star Trek, Desilu held a screening for NBC executives to help decide which episode to broadcast first, and several stories were considered. Executives were concerned that "Mudd's Women", one potential choice, would have reviewers discussing "space hookers"; they felt another possibility, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", contained too much exposition, even though it was filmed as a second pilot. The final choice was between "The Man Trap" and "The Naked Time". Justman felt that "The Naked Time" would make it easier for viewers to understand the characters, but later agreed with NBC's decision to show "The Man Trap" first. In the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, he suggests that it was "scarier and more exploitable than the others".

"The Man Trap" was the sixth episode produced. Although Roddenberry initially disagreed with NBC's decision, he and production executive Herbert Franklin Solow came to believe it was the correct choice. Shatner also disagreed with the network, feeling that "The Man Trap" was the worst episode out of those available. The episode was the first episode of Star Trek broadcast in the United States, on NBC on September 8, 1966. "The Man Trap" formed part of NBC's "Sneak a Peek Week", in which the network showed the premiere episodes of several new shows in prime time slots, ahead of the rival channels ABC and CBS, who were still showing repeats from the previous season. Leading into Star Trek was the first episode of Tarzan showing Ron Ely, and leading out was Richard Mulligan's The Hero.

"The Man Trap" placed first in its timeslot, with Nielsen ratings of 25.2 during the first half-hour; some 46.7 percent of all televisions in use at the time were tuned in to the episode. In the same timeslot, The Tammy Grimes Show on ABC and My Three Sons on CBS received ratings of 14.1 and 9.4 respectively. During the second half of the episode, the rating for "The Man Trap" dropped to 24.2, with 42.2 percent of televisions tuned in. Bewitched on ABC increased that network's rating to 15.8, and CBS's Thursday night movie increased their rating to 10.7.

The following episodes saw a drop in ratings after "The Man Trap". "Charlie X" was broadcast the following week; the studio did not want that episode to run second, but "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the only other completed story. It placed second in the timeslot during the first half hour, with a rating of 19.1 and an overall share of 35.9 percent of viewers. It was beaten by My Three Sons on CBS with a rating of 19.2. During the second half hour, Star Trek was pushed into third with a rating of 12.3 by the Thursday night movie on CBS and the season premiere of Bewitched, which was also the first episode of that series broadcast in color. The following week, with "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the series returned to the top place with a 19.9 rating during the first half hour, and second in the second half hour to Bewitched. The Trendex rating report for the first few weeks of Star Trek saw it ranked in 33rd spot for the period with an average rating of 18.7.

Overseas broadcasts and re-releases
The episode was not the first to be broadcast in the United Kingdom, which instead premiered Star Trek on BBC One with "Where No Man Has Gone Before" on July 12, 1969. The episodes continued to be broadcast in a different order than they had appeared in the United States. "The Man Trap" was shown nearly three months later on October 4 as the 13th episode. This was during the period when the channel was still broadcasting only in black and white; it was not until "Arena" on November 15 that the series was shown in color. During subsequent repeats of Star Trek, the channel reverted to NBC's schedule and showed "The Man Trap" as the first episode. Canadian network CTV aired episodes of the first season of Star Trek on Tuesday nights instead of Thursdays and so ran "The Man Trap" on September 6, 1966, two days before NBC. Airing American programs early was a common practice among Canadian broadcasters in order to avoid direct competition for viewers and advertisers with American border stations airing the same program at the same time. The practice became obsolete once simultaneous substitution of commercials was permitted.

A high-definition remastering of "The Man Trap", which introduced new special effects and starship exteriors as well as enhanced music and audio, was shown for the first time in the United States on September 29, 2007, in broadcast syndication. The episode was made available to over 200 local stations across the United States with the rights to broadcast Star Trek.

Critical reception
In an interview published in the 1988 book The Star Trek Interview Book, Johnson claimed that the response of critics to "The Man Trap", and the initial episodes of Star Trek in general, was "complete bewilderment". In previewing the broadcast of "The Man Trap", The Daily Reporter said that Star Trek had the "usual far-fetched suppositions" present in other science fiction works, but praise was given to the acting skills of Shatner and the plots of the initial episodes. The Edwardsville Intelligencer called the reveal of the creature in the episode "the kicker of a great sci-fi plot". Daily Variety columnist Jack Hellman gave the episode an unfavorable review over its "lack of meaningful cast leads", who "move around with directorial precision with only violence to provide the excitement." The weekly edition of the magazine offered a similar opinion, stating that the Enterprise "trudged along for a long hour with hardly any relief from violence, killing, ugly stuff and a distasteful monster".

Among more recent reviews, Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an "A-" rating, describing it as "done very well" with a plot that is dark and ambiguous. Torrie Atkinson and Eugene Myers reviewed the episode in 2009 for Tor.com, saying that it suitably introduced the characters, although certain elements of the show were not yet in place. These included the lack of the death of a redshirted character, as the crewmen who died in "The Man Trap" did not wear red shirts, along with the lack of red and yellow alerts, instead referred to as general quarters three and four in this episode. The duo added that the episode demonstrated that the series was "something special", and that it remained more culturally diverse than modern television. They gave it a rating of four out of six.

Ryan Britt, also writing for Tor.com, said that "The Man Trap" was not a good introduction to the series, but praised the screen time given to Rand, Uhura and Sulu. He added that the latter two were more interesting in this episode than they would be at any point until the start of the movie franchise. Britt said that "The Man Trap" was different than the rest of the series, and more akin to The Twilight Zone owing to the background of the writer. In Hollywood.com's ranking of all 79 episodes of The Original Series, Christian Blauvelt placed "The Man Trap" as 73rd, calling the creature "incredibly pointless". It was also listed as one of the show's "cheesiest classic creatures" by Wired magazine in 2007; however, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as the tenth best villain in the franchise.

In 2015, WhatCulture ranked this the 18th best episode of all time in the Star Trek science fiction universe.

The Guardian noted "The Man Trap" as an episode about a salt-eating shape-shifter, on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek's first public broadcast in 2016.

In 2018, PopMatters ranked this the 7th best episode of the original series.

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