By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
What was the first episode of Star Trek? That’s actually something of a trick question: not only did The Original Series have an early pilot with (except for Leonard Nimoy) completely different actors, but producers shot episodes in a different order than they were originally shown on television. That first pilot (“The Cage”) would later have some of its footage reused in “The Menagerie” before being released as a separate episode. Meanwhile, “The Man Trap” became the first Star Trek episode that fans saw on television.
It’s a very solid sci-fi adventure featuring one of the ugliest (not to mention creepiest) monsters in genre history. The network carefully selected “The Man Trap” as the first episode to show, and their gambit worked. The new show instantly drew a legion of hardcore fans, and it would eventually become an even bigger cultural phenomenon once it was rediscovered by college students in the ‘70s. Ironically, though, nobody hates the first episode of Star Trek more than its biggest star: William Shatner!
Captain On The Bridge!
In “The Man Trap,” the Enterprise swings by an outpost to administer medical exams to all of the local residents. This is meant to be a routine mission, but things go sideways once Captain Kirk and his crew are assaulted by a shapeshifting monster. It’s hard for them to confirm who the alien is, especially when it can take the form of people like Dr. McCoy’s old flame. Eventually, the monster is revealed in all its horror as a salt vampire, constantly on the hunt for its next meal.
These days, “The Man Trap” is considered a very solid episode of Star Trek. Over on IMDB, it has a rating of 7.2, which is perfectly fair: while this is a decent sci-fi adventure, it’s nowhere near the heights of Original Series bangers like “Balance of Terror” and “City on the Edge of Forever.” However, Star Trek icon William Shatner really hated the episode. In his memoir Star Trek Memories, he noted how he and his fellow stars had already shot several episodes (including “Mudd’s Women” and “Charlie X”) but that the network “chose our absolute worst.” He went on to call it “a dreadful show” and reiterated “one of our worst ever.”
Still Salty About His Star Trek Premiere
It may sound shocking that Star Trek’s biggest star hates the episode that made him famous. However, Shatner may have been persuaded by some of the negative reviews this episode got back when it first premiered. A Variety reviewer dubbed “The Man Trap” a “dreary and confusing” episode, one that proved that this new sci-fi series “won’t work.” TV Guide was similarly negative and included in their mean review that “the sky’s not the limit for this Trek.” Leonard Nimoy agreed with Shatner, admitting in a documentary (which, confusingly, is also named Star Trek Memories) that this was the cast and crew’s least favorite episode compared to others that were already completed.
Fortunately, all’s well that ends well for the intrepid cast: Star Trek: The Original Series helped capture the public imagination in a big way. The show’s loyal audience basically invented the modern fan convention, and they also spearheaded multiple write-in campaigns to keep the show on the air.
Heck, Star Trek even inspired the first fanzines and modern fanfiction tropes, including slash fiction (Kirk/Spock) and the first Mary Sue. As for William Shatner, he became arguably the most famous sci-fi actor in the entire world, so there’s no need for him to be so weirdly salty about “The Man Trap.”
Obviously, being salty is downright dangerous. Do you want alien salt vampires, man? Because this is how you get alien salt vampires!
