Star Trek (The Original Series) The Man Trap SEASON 1, EPISODE 01

Wiki Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Trap

Reasonable, but not outstanding, episode, chosen by the TV executives as the one to open the series. There’s been debate why they chose this, as it’s not quite as exciting as some of the other early episodes they could have gone with, but it’s serviceable, and has some decent dramatic tension. One thing that is really outstanding and surprising about this and the other early episodes is how much they’re getting right – the whole Kirk/McCoy/Spock dynamic is in place right from the get-go, and this episode shows them off nicely. It also has Uhura doing quite a lot of lines, and setting her character up in an interesting way. She baits Spock about being tired of hearing the word ‘frequency’ and starting to feel like part of the equipment. I liked that little scene.

We also see Yoeman Rand and Sulu off the bridge – Sulu has got some weird plants, I can tell you.

And whilst some crew members die, none of them are wearing red

I’m watching the new remastered version of these series, and they do look quite spectacular – this is a nice restoration.

I’m not going to score these ones, I think I’m just going to start putting each and every episode into my favourite order, highest first, and I’ll ignore the Pike-centric pilot that was never aired. So to start:

1. The Man Trap