Star Trek Thoughts: The Man Trap
Oct. 29th, 2013 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerTo get around to other things, I took a break from watching episodes of Star Trek. During that break, though, I noticed that Blu-Ray sets of "The Original Series" didn't seem that expensive at a local store, and in looking around a little I found a better price yet at which to upgrade from the soft-looking, cropped-to-widescreen DVDs I'd recorded from the science fiction channel. I still don't intend to watch every episode, and I suppose that thought pointed out how I'd already watched all the episodes I'd recorded from the formative first season. When I opened up that season up anyway with vague thoughts of maybe watching "Where No Man Has Gone Before" again and testing the promise on the back of the case that the collection could switch between the old and the new special effects, I noticed a difference from how the series had been shown on that channel and in a few others sources easily available to me: the episodes were arranged in the order they'd first been broadcast back in the 1960s. On seeing that, I decided I'd instead watch the episode those who had tuned in at the beginning in 1966 had experienced.
Not bothering to record "The Man Trap" might have been less a matter of the handful of collected reviews I'd sought out than due to older impressions that it had been the first episode aired just because "the executives" wanted to "lead with a monster." As I started watching it, though, I was a little intrigued by that first sight of Starfleet officers being Spock in the captain's chair and Uhura at the navigator's console; Uhura then flirting with Spock did make think of how they got paired off in the new Star Trek movies. The creature of the episode was established in a suitably mysterious way, appearing different to every member of the landing party (although this idea did seem to be downplayed later on). Despite the title of the episode, it did wind up threatening male and female characters alike with some measure of suspense. As a "threat," though, it did make me think of the contrast between that and an episode like "The Devil in the Dark."
That wasn't the first thought I had connecting those two episodes, however. In both of them, Spock reacts with some vehemence to an unknown creature threatening Kirk, going from being curious about the Horta to threatening it and just getting rather emotional in the case of this creature. While with the earlier episode I can think that at that point in the production Spock's character was still being established, I still had the impression once again that this was something "Kirk/Spock" fans could watch with knowing grins. Despite how I think that's as far as I go, it does keep me wondering just how often thoughts like that are occurring to me; I find myself contrasting this to certain anime series I watch where I see other fans nudging each other and grinning over the innuendo pairing off characters of the same sex (female more often than male, in this case) and seem to just sort of shrug it off myself with a bland "they're good friends". Maybe that's connected to the suspicion that nowadays the innuendo is included for calculated effect; some fantastic voyage back through time to the 1960s to mention this to the cast and crew seems more likely to get someone punched in the face.
Not bothering to record "The Man Trap" might have been less a matter of the handful of collected reviews I'd sought out than due to older impressions that it had been the first episode aired just because "the executives" wanted to "lead with a monster." As I started watching it, though, I was a little intrigued by that first sight of Starfleet officers being Spock in the captain's chair and Uhura at the navigator's console; Uhura then flirting with Spock did make think of how they got paired off in the new Star Trek movies. The creature of the episode was established in a suitably mysterious way, appearing different to every member of the landing party (although this idea did seem to be downplayed later on). Despite the title of the episode, it did wind up threatening male and female characters alike with some measure of suspense. As a "threat," though, it did make me think of the contrast between that and an episode like "The Devil in the Dark."
That wasn't the first thought I had connecting those two episodes, however. In both of them, Spock reacts with some vehemence to an unknown creature threatening Kirk, going from being curious about the Horta to threatening it and just getting rather emotional in the case of this creature. While with the earlier episode I can think that at that point in the production Spock's character was still being established, I still had the impression once again that this was something "Kirk/Spock" fans could watch with knowing grins. Despite how I think that's as far as I go, it does keep me wondering just how often thoughts like that are occurring to me; I find myself contrasting this to certain anime series I watch where I see other fans nudging each other and grinning over the innuendo pairing off characters of the same sex (female more often than male, in this case) and seem to just sort of shrug it off myself with a bland "they're good friends". Maybe that's connected to the suspicion that nowadays the innuendo is included for calculated effect; some fantastic voyage back through time to the 1960s to mention this to the cast and crew seems more likely to get someone punched in the face.