50 Years Ago: The Monster Squad: "Queen Bee" (September 11, 1976)

Monster Squad (1976 - 1977) -- not to be confused with the late 1980's movie, The Monster Squad (1987) -- is a one-season Saturday morning series developed by Stanley Ralph Ross, one of the key writers of the Adam West Batman (1966 – 1969) series. 

Like Batman, Monster Squad’s style is high-camp, meaning that all the heroes face their various crises with melodramatic solemnity, a solemnity that plays to adults as funny but kids as serious.  

Also like Batman, Monster Squad is famous for its rogue’s gallery of celebrity villains.  Some of the actors who wore crazy get-ups and twirled their metaphorical mustaches on the program included Julie Newmar as “Ultra Witch” and Jonathan Harris as “the Astrologer.”

Briefly stated, the premise of Monster Squad is that a young and hopelessly earnest criminologist, Walter (Fred Grandy) has developed a fantastically advanced crime computer at the Chamber of Horrors exhibit in the basement of Fred’s Wax Museum. This large-scale computer can rise out of a sarcophagus platform when in operation, and features a “secret government” channel and radio transmitter.

One day however, the “oscillating vibrations” of Walter’s crime computer awaken three of the museum’s figures, Dracula (Henry Polic II), the Frankenstein Monster (Michael Lane) and The Wolfman (Buck Kartalian). These figures are apparently the real deal, resurrected, and not merely wax representations of them.  However, it is never explained why the wax museum was housing the bodies of such dangerous monsters.

Regardless of their precise nature, these three “monsters” from history wish to atone for their sins by solving crimes with Walter, and thereby making reparations to society.

With Walt operating out of the Chamber of Horrors, Dracula, The Wolfman and The Frankenstein Monster are thus frequently dispatched -- in a black 1970s van -- to combat evil-doers around the city.

The first episode of Monster Squad, “Queen Bee” -- which aired on NBC the morning of September 11, 1976 -- stars Alice Ghostley as the insect matriarch, the aforementioned Queen Bee. As the episode commences, she has ordered her bee minions around the world to attack unsuspecting humans.  This “unexplained rash of bee stings” is noticed by Walt, who captures a bee and attempts to interrogate it with the Crime Computer.

One will notice here that the Crime Computer has a slot designed and labeled for insect analysis. This makes one wonder how often evil bugs show up in town…

After a time, Walt frees the bee, and Dracula tracks it in bat-form to Queen Bee’s headquarters. There, he and his monster must stop the Queen Bee’s plans before the United Nations can surrender the world to her.

The 1970's represents the great era of “killer bee” entertainment, from the movies Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973) and The Swarm (1978) to TV series such as The Starlost (1973-1974) which featured an episode about giant bees called “The Beehive.”  

In terms of “Queen Bee,” the Monster Squad episode reports about the South American killer bee briefly, but otherwise conjures up little in terms of fact.  Instead, the installment features about a hundred bad “bee” puns for Ghostley and her buzzing minions.  

“I bee-seech you,” says one character.  “Bee-ware your fate,” says another.

After a while, we also get “bee-lieve me,” “bee-guiling,” “bee-wildering,” “bee-headed,” “bee-trothal,” “bee-tray” and other variations on the theme.  One non -“bee” joke is Queen Bee’s comment that one of her minions always “bumbles.”

As you can probably guess, this approach grows tiring after a while, though it anticipates the approach to Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin (1997).  

The episode -- like all Monster Squad episodes -- plays as particularly arched, and not overly amusing. Everyone is in on the joke, but the joke isn’t as amusing as it is on Batman, and this Saturday morning series also lacks the resources, and hence production values of that camp classic.  For instance, here Dracula is put in a vat of honey, and the vat is a tiny little barrel.

Viewers who were kids in the 1970's may be most interested here to see a Mego toy re-painted and used as a prop in “Queen Bee.”  Ghostley’s “bee” communicator is actually a Star Trek walkie-talkie from the age, but painted gold.  The prop -- with a different paint job -- recurs as Walt’s crime computer remote control in the next episode, “Mr. Mephisto.”

Although Monster Squad doesn’t hold up particularly well-today, I remember that I absolutely loved it as a seven year old, and that I wished and hoped for action figures, playsets and other toys featuring these lovable and familiar monsters. There was, as memory services, a board game available at one time.

As bad as some of these episodes are, the opening theme song and introductory montage still provide me a nice kick of nostalgia…

50 Years Ago: Land of the Lost "After Shock" (September 11, 1976)

An earthquake strikes Altrusia both conceptually and literally in the third season premiere of Land of the Lost (1974 – 1977), titled “After Shock," which aired 50 years ago.

Behind the scenes, star Spencer Milligan (Rick Marshall) departed from the series, replaced by Ron Harper as Uncle Jack Marshall. And a new team of writers, led by Sam Roeca (Valley of the Dinosaurs) and Jon Kubichan replaced outgoing writers such as Dick Morgan.

In terms of the actual storyline, “After Shock” begins with a quake that sends Rick Marshall -- working inside a pylon -- spiraling home to his home in California, leaving Will (Wesley Eure) and Holly (Kathy Coleman) to contend with a shifted reality in Altrusia. 

High Bluff is buried in rock, taking all of the Marshalls’ equipment with it, and a strange new, two-headed monster (which Holly christens “Lulu”) appears in the lagoon.  Uncle Jack also falls into the Land of the Lost, a fact which conforms to the one-person-in, one-person out balance of the strange land as viewers understand it.. 

Finally, Chaka (Philip Paley) also loses track of the other Pakuni, Ta and Sa, though his explanation for their disappearance doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Chaka claims that the other Paku were separated on the other side of a crack in the land, running far away.  But we know from Land of the Lost history that Altrusia is a small pocket universe that circles around on itself, and so there’s no way for the Paku to have disappeared or left. 

It would have been better if Chaka simply saw Ta and Sa fall into a crack in the Earth, though that explanation may have scared the kiddies, I suppose.

After Will, Holly and Chaka find Uncle Jack by the lagoon, they all go in search of a new home, and must battle the fearful Sleestak for possession of “The Old Temple” near the Lost City.  It isn’t clear if this structure is supposed to be the same old temple that was featured in second season stories such as “The Musician,” though it looks completely different here.

As for Jack, Ron Harper is a capable actor, and he did a great job as Virdon on Planet of the Apes (1974).   The writing here establishes Jack as an engineer, which helps to explain how he is able to build so many interesting and helpful devices in the Land of the Lost, like wheels for the heavy temple door.  

Gazing at “After Shock,” one can debate, certainly, the idea of change as a positive for Land of the Lost and change as a negative factor.  The episode starts out promisingly as Will reminds an upset Holly that “we aren’t alone.  We’re just on our own.”  In some sense, this is the moment the series -- and Rick Marshall -- have been preparing the kids for since the family first fell into the land of the lost.   Everyone has always known that separation was a possibility.

There’s an argument to be made that the arrival of Uncle Jack is thus truly unnecessary, and the series should have continued just with Will, Holly and Chaka living together, in no need of a father figure.  Instead, Uncle Jack’s arrival feels like the idea of change…without real change.  He’s a new Dad, essentially, and so the story line and characters don’t truly move forward in a meaningful way.

Even the idea of losing the cave at High Bluff and moving to the Old Temple is promising, but its potential largely undelivered by future episodes.  The temple set is a really good, really intriguing one, and very different from the old cave.  The set is dotted with all of these large stone doors, ostensibly leading to other unexplored chambers.  But no episode of the series ever explores what chambers or tunnels lay beyond those doors.  That’s a disappointment, because a core aspect of the series has been, in episodes like 

“Downstream” and “Follow that Dinosaur,” an exploration of new territory.  Instead, the Marshalls and Chaka move in during “After Shock” and never really look around their new digs.  Even as a seven year old kid, I wondered why the family didn’t explore its new home. I wanted to know what was behind those doors.

“After Shock” also shows some of streamlining of core, long-standing Land of the Lost concepts. Now, both Chaka and the Sleestak Leader clearly and understandably speak English, for example. It’s a shift, and again, one with ups and downs.  If one chooses, one can register Chaka’s sudden understanding/learning of English as a side-effect of his experience in “The Musician,” near the end of the second season, when his intelligence was “evolved” by the Builders of the Land of the Lost. 

I used to consider Chaka’s new Tarzan/pigeon-English a continuity error, but after watching several episodes of the second season in which he and the Marshalls waste precious minutes of story time trying to communicate with one another via the Pakuni language, I can’t argue that this streamlining is a dramatic mistake, especially considering the events of “The Musician.”

“After Shock” is a pretty strong episode of Land of the Lost, the beginning of a new era that promises some intriguing story-lines.  The problem isn’t that the new direction is bad, but rather that follow-up episodes don’t necessarily deliver on the potential promised by this installment.  The second episode, for instance -- called “Survival Kit” -- is one of the worst episodes of the entire series and entirely inconsistent with what we know of the Sleestaks, the Land of the Lost, its history, and its inhabitants. 

60 Years Ago: The Green Hornet: "The Silent Gun" (September 9, 1966)

In the fall of 1966, all the major American TV networks sought to duplicate the success of ABC’s superhero phenomenon, Batman (1966 – 1968).  So along came such campy efforts as Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific.  

But ABC-TV itself adopted a different strategy, and aired The Green Hornet, a superhero series with no camp touches whatsoever. 

William Dozier, who also produced Batman was adamant, in fact, about not imitating the tongue-in-cheek Batman style. “This is a much straighter show. It’s not a pop show,” he asserted. “The only thing about Batman we want to imitate is its success.” (Newsweek, July 18, 1966).

Van Williams was cast as publisher by day/vigilante by night Britt Reid, and a pre-stardom Bruce Lee played his loyal companion and crime-fighting partner, Kato.  

With their own distinctive car -- the magnificent Black Beauty -- these heroes evaded law enforcement and fought to a standstill the dark forces of many a criminal organization. And again, unlike Batman, the villains on The Green Hornet were all based reality. They were thugs and mobsters, not strangely-dressed clowns or buffoons.

Writing in SFTV #1 in December of 1984, TV historian and scholar James Van Hise wrote that the series featuring The Green Hornet proved itself “something very special…” and represented “one of the few times a character was transferred faithfully from one medium to another and with exciting results.”  

I would tend to agree. Alas, The Green Hornet was canceled after just one season of twenty six episodes, and most long-time fans agree that the 2011. Seth Rogen Green Hornet movie failed to live up to the promise demonstrated by the 1966 series.

The first episode of The Green Hornet, “The Silent Gun,” aired on September 9, 1966 -- just one day after the debut of Star Trek (1966 – 1969) -- and concerns a new weapon being used by criminals: A gun that makes no sound when it fires, and no light flash, either. The weapon was developed by the O.S.S. during the Second World War, but the plans have been revived by a local gunsmith.

The Green Hornet and Kato investigate the case, interfering in criminal operations. Before long, the Green Hornet is selected as the next target of the silent gun, but that’s exactly how the superhero wants it...

Today, it’s intriguing (and indeed, rewarding) to watch these nearly fifty-year old The Green Hornet episodes and note that they reflect not where the superhero trend was at that time (see: Batman), but where it stands today: with a focus on hard-action, and a kind of grim fatalism. 

The Green Hornet goes about his task here without humor, and treads into some moral gray areas. For example, in “The Silent Gun,” he pretends to be a criminal himself, and make deals with other underworld figures. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty to bring the criminals to justice. That seems like a very modern, very 21st century concept.

Also, in a bow to reality, this costumed crusader only goes out at night, and is often cloaked by the darkness.  Adding to the sense of  ubiquitous darkness, the first scene of the episode (and of the series itself) is set at a funeral.  And then, a murder occurs at a funeral.  

You just don't get much grimmer than that.

In “The Silent Gun,” The Green Hornet goes up against a thug called Carley (Lloyd Bochner) and, again, the villain is a realistic figure, not one based in fantasy. The episode culminates with some real violence as villains tumble downstairs, or otherwise get beat up.  One thug gets a blast from a steam pipe to the face.

I wonder if the violence quotient is one reason why the show didn’t pick-up the same following as Batman did.  There’s a feeling in “The Silent Gun” of real life consequences for bad behavior, and action that isn’t candy-coated or cartoonish.  There are no ZAPP or BIFF balloons here, for certain.

Even supporting characters are treated with shades of gray in “The Silent Gun.” One woman wants two-thousand dollars to tell her story about a murder that was committed.  If she’s going to talk, she wants money...she seeks a reward. The Green Hornet disabuses her of that notion by, basically, showing up at a pre-arranged meeting and bullying her into doing the right thing, at least from a psychological perspective. 

The Green Hornet is a grounded series that was created in a time when audiences wanted something more fanciful.  

  

60 Years Ago: The Time Tunnel: "Rendezvous with Yesterday"

"Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America's greatest and most secret project...the Time Tunnel..."

-opening narration to Irwin Allen's temporal opus, The Time Tunnel (1966-1967)

Love him or hate him, it's fair to state that producer Irwin Allen boasted a unique and distinctive take on science fiction television throughout the 1960s. His genre programs are undeniably kiddie-oriented, but they also reflect (in an almost reflexive, unthinking way...) a major philosophical conflict of the epoch.

In particular, Allen's adventurous cathode ray tube fantasies straddled the line between almost hysterical "techno-phobia" -- the fear that new inventions (like nuclear weapons or computers) would annihilate us outright, or at least put us out of work -- and, oppositely, the age's burgeoning Camelot/Kennedy-style "can do" optimism. This was, after all, the dawning of the Apollo Age; a period in which America's space program would achieve what was once believed impossible: a trip to the moon.
If you gaze across the wide array of Allen's TV programming from this age, you can detect how this unusual conflict plays out in various forms and colors. In Lost in Space (1965-1968), the future man of 1997 was able to reach the stars in advanced spaceships (such as the Jupiter 2) and build robots with human personality and individuality, but the first space flight also became hopelessly and irrevocably lost in the stars.

In Land of the Giants (1968 - 1970), the same conflict between techno-phobia and techno confidence was also present. In that series, man has developed (by the far-flung year of 1983...) high-tech "sub-orbital" spaceships like The Spindrift...but it still plows through a storm and ends up marooned on a planet of giants.

And in The Time Tunnel (1966-1967) -- which has aptly been described as "Lost in Time" -- mankind has developed the technology to conduct time travel at a top-secret facility (a huge subterranean complex in the Arizona desert...). 

But the behemoth, when activated, almost immediately misplaces two scientists (Dr. Doug Phillips and Dr. Tony Newman) in the corridors of time. 

Permanently.

On one hand: technological achievement and advancement. 

On the other, technological terror plus error. 

What these Irwin Allen speculative programs seem to tell us, I suppose, is that humans boast the intellect and skill to create amazing devices; but not the wisdom, perhaps, to adequately control them.

Of all Allen's storied sci-fi series, The Time Tunnel was perhaps the least successful on its original sortie. It aired for just a single season of 30 hour-long episodes on ABC. Broadcast from September 9, 1966 to April 7, 1967, the series involved the aforementioned scientists -- Newman (James Darren) and Phillips (Robert Colbert) -- tumbling (literally...) through various historical (and future!) time periods, a circumstance which enabled the series to frequently re-use footage and costumes from such films as Titanic (1953), The Buccaneer (1958) and Khartoum (1966).

Despite this crafty, cost-saving measure, the Time Tunnel pilot was still one of the most expensive ever produced at the time, costing a then-whopping $500,000 dollars. You can readily observe where all the considerable expense went in the pilot episode: there are some amazing matte-paintings of the Time Tunnel complex. The whole facility looks like it was outsourced to Krell construction workers. 

Also, the Time Tunnel control room set is vast and impressive: a testament to 1960s-style futurism. There are banks of giant computers with lots of blinking lights, reel-to-reel tapes, and that massive, whirly-gig tunnel itself taking center stage. The visual effects are opulent too, particularly views of the lead actors somersaulting through a moving, glittering temporal vortex.

The Time Tunnel's first episode, "Rendezvous with Yesterday" (written by Harold Jack Bloom and directed by Irwin Allen), features guest star Gary Merrill as Senator Clark, a budget-obsessed politician who visits Project Tic-Toc (location of the Time Tunnel device...) in the Arizona desert. The colossal underground complex, which houses over 12,000 technicians and stretches over 800 floors, has already cost the U.S. government a whopping 7.5 billion dollars. This is simply unacceptable!

"Is time travel worth it?" Senator Clark asks pointedly.

The response from Dr. Phillips is that time travel is "potentially the most valuable treasure man will ever find."

Still, the impatient senator isn't convinced that time travel is a worthwhile endeavor, and he demands a demonstration of the not-yet-operational time tunnel. Scientist Tony Newman impulsively complies and -- without permission or preparation -- jumps through the machine.

The result? Lots of smoke and explosions. And then Tony lands on the HMS Titanic on April 13, 1912, just hours before the "unsinkable" liner is destined to strike an iceberg and go to a watery grave.

Unfortunately, the techs at Project Tic-Toc, including the lovely Dr. Ann McGregor (a woefully underutilized Lee Meriwether), can't return Tony to the present. Not even with their high-tech "location probes" or other tools. They are able, however, to visualize Tony's chronological location with a "tele screen." And, as a last resort, the technicians can also yank Tony out of one time period and into to another random one...and hope they get lucky.

It's sort of...a temporal crap shoot.

Back aboard the Titanic, Newman realizes immediately attempts to change the time line by warning the ship's captain, a regal Michael Rennie, of the impending disaster. The captain doesn't believe Newman's stories and voices a variation of a line oft-repeated on this series; something along the lines of: "you don't expect me to believe that wild story, do you?"

One might also note, at this juncture, that Tony seems to have no preparation or schooling whatsoever for the event of actual "time displacement." He's one of the key designers/inventors of the time tunnel juggernaut and yet he has no plan, no philosophy, no agenda whatsoever about dealing with the temporally-challenged natives of other time periods. Apparently on instinct, he simply warns people about the future and is immediately incarcerated or beaten-up for his trouble (another tiresome convention that is repeated throughout the series).

Now, my point here is simply this: whether or not time can actually be altered, why does Tony want to change the flow of time at all? 

Was the time tunnel constructed so that the American government can interfere in the past? 

I mean, if the captain of the Titanic had actually listened to Tony's warning and averted the nautical disaster, some several hundred additional souls would have survived the maiden voyage and thereby altered Tony's entire time-line (since he is born in 1938, after the Titanic accident).

Let me make this even more basic: what if one of those "new" Titanic survivors caused a car accident that killed Tony's Mom before she gave birth to him? See my point?

Besides wanting personally to survive the Titanic disaster (and I don't blame him for that...), what could possibly motivate Tony to reveal the details of the future to the denizens of 1912? 

When Doug returns to the past next, he mindlessly adopts the same plan. He even brings a newspaper from the day after the disaster to convince the Captain of Tony's veracity. I mean...jeez, what's the end game here? Saving the Titanic? Changing the course of 20th century history? Altering the time line? What?

Closely examined, the motives of the characters in this story make no sense. By my reckoning, Tony and Doug should be focused on one thing: keeping a low profile and escaping the disaster. They don't need to be sounding alarm bells, and they sure as hell don't need to commandeer the Titanic's radio room! One might expect more dispassion and weighing of variables here. Especially from two genius scientists, right?

It occurs to me while watching The Time Tunnel that the series would have been much more interesting if in stories like "Rendezvous with Yesterday," the heroes had to preserve the flow of time as they had already experienced it. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Tony and Doug landed on the deck of the Titanic and realized it wasn't going to sink at all? That they had to aim it at an iceberg themselves, to ensure that their histories remained sacrosanct? I realize there would be moral questions there, but they'd still be "heroes" in the conventional TV sense, since they'd be preserving our chronology.

Oh wait, this was the premise for Voyagers! (1980)...

Anyway, I'm not trying to be dismissive of The Time Tunnel. It is what it is: a product of the time period from which it arose (the 1960s), and for a very specific audience (children). It's harmless escapist fantasy, nothing more...and if you saw it as a child, I'm sure you would get a nostalgic rush watching it. 

That established, it's not a very smart series by today's standard (and remember, Star Trek was a smart series, and it also aired in 1966). Oh, there's definitely an occasional moment of real drama here, such as the instance in "Rendezvous with Yesterday" when Doug and Tony must inform the captain of the Titanic that he is destined to die that very night. However, for the most part, time travel mysteries and human emotions are curtailed, slighted, or outright ignored in favor of James Bond-ian fisticuffs and action. It's all cowboys, Indians, soldiers, spies, aliens, and disasters. Color! Action! But not much real characterization or drama.

During the over-two-dozen episodes of The Time Tunnel, Tony and Doug visited the "Crack of Doom" (don't laugh...), the volcanic eruption at Krakatoa on August 27, 1883. They went to Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941 (but didn't encounter the U.S.S. Nimitz there....) They experienced the French Revolution first hand ("Reign of Terror), averted the (first) assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln ("The Death Trap") in 1861, witnessed D-Day ("Invasion") at Normandy, met General Custer ("Massacre"), Billy the Kid ("Billy the Kid") and...Robin Hood ("The Revenge of Robin Hood.")

Yes, before watching The Time Tunnel, I too always thought Robin Hood was a mythical hero, not a historical one, but who's counting? Doctor Who played with this very idea recently, too.  Another episode "One Way to the Moon," landed our wayward heroes on a rocket ship in flight, one bound for Mars...with a saboteur aboard.

As the series wore on, The Time Tunnel increasingly lapsed into empty-headed, monotonous phantasmagoria. The final episode, "Town of Terror" was set in the future year of 1978 and involved strange aliens with tin-foil faces and black capes who, for some unfathomable reason, are referred to as "androids"(!). 

These fishy-looking invaders have taken over the idyllic town of Cliffport, Maine (population 700), where they begin sucking all the oxygen from the Earth. Tony and Doug land in the town and put a stop to the plan, but not before an alien saboteur gets to Project Tic-Toc and starts sucking the air out of the room there too. It takes an inordinate amount of time for the brilliant project scientist, Dr. Swain -- gasping for air -- to realize the oxygen is being depleted.

The last moments of the series are actually the most interesting, at least from a certain perspective. Following the landing in Cliffport, Doug and Phillip are shunted back in time again...to the Titanic. 

Now, on one hand, this return to the beginning was no doubt a lead-in to summer reruns of the first season. However, considering that there was no second season of The Time Tunnel, viewers might interpret this twist of fate to mean that our heroes were not merely stuck in time, but trapped in a loop too. 

Alas, we may never know...

Again, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here -- and all sci-fi TV has its fans and adherents -- but The Time Tunnel is sometimes difficult to take seriously. The lead characters - Doug and Tony - are about as cardboard as could be, not to mention the most physically fit and physically skilled "scientists" of all-time. Some of the technobabble on the series is inconsistent too. Sometimes the scientists in the tunnel control room can talk directly with the time travelers on a microphone, and sometimes the men can't hear them.

And you have to wonder, too, why are the time tunnel techies always rolling the dice and scrambling these unlucky guys from one time period to another? 

I'll tell you what...if I came from 1968 and ended up in 1978 (as Tony and Doug did in both "One Way to The Moon" and "Town of Terror"), you know what? I'd just call it a day. 

I'd rather live ten years in the future,than risk ending up in 1184 BC ("Revenge of the Gods"), or 1215 AD ("The Revenge of Robin Hood.")

Close enough for government work, and all.

60 Years Ago: Star Trek: "The Man Trap" (September 8, 1966)

Stardate: 1513.1

The U.S.S. Enterprise visits planet M-113 to check in on archaeologist Dr. Robert Crater (Alfred Ryder) and his wife, Nancy (Jeanne Bal). Together, they have been studying the ruins of a long-dead alien civilization.

Nancy also happens to be Dr. McCoy’s (De Forest Kelley) old love, and Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) teases the physician about her nickname for him: “Plum.”

Soon, however the light-hearted visit turns deadly serious. An Enterprise officer accompanying the others in the landing party, Darnell (Michael Zaslow) is found dead, with strange markings on his face.  

Another officer, Green (Bruce Watson) meets the same grim fate.

The crew soon learns that Nancy is actually a shape-shifting alien, the last of her kind on this far-flung world. To sustain herself, this alien draws all the salt from living human beings.  

When Nancy is brought aboard the Enterprise for her own safety, however, she changes form again, becoming Green, a Swahili officer, and even, finally, Dr. McCoy himself. She eventually kills Crater, even though he has been her protector over the years.

Although the Enterprise crew expresses reservations about killing a being that is the last of its kind, it is given no choice when the salt vampire attempts to feed on Captain Kirk.

The very first episode of Star Trek (1966-1969) that aired on NBC -- “The Man Trap” by George Clayton Johnson -- remains an involving story 60 years later, one that draws its primary interest from the focus on the “lower deck” characters in the ensemble: Mr. Sulu (George Takei), Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Yeoman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney).

The episode’s central threat -- a salt-sucking vampire -- is memorably depicted, but in the end the story does not quite go far enough in pursuing Star Trek’s peaceful philosophies. 

For example, Kirk and Spock both express regret about the death of the alien (by phaser fire).  They make mournful comparisons to the buffalo of North America. They clearly don’t want to kill the alien they encounter here.  

And yet, that’s exactly what happens.

At its best, Star Trek employs the philosophy that, to paraphrase Kirk in "A Taste of Armageddon" -- suggests man does not need to kill…today.  

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the others often find ways NOT to kill the alien or enemy of the week, and instead hammer out some sense of understanding with it.  

In a way, “The Devil in the Dark,” a story about a silicon-based life form, the Horta, is a superior or perfected remake of “The Man Trap” story.  There, a monster scorches and kills human beings, but Kirk and Spock don’t merely speak regretfully about killing it, they find an alternative to doing so.  

They reach out, communication is forged, and humanity makes -- if not a new friend, at least not a new enemy -- to quote Captain Picard in “Darmok.”

In “The Man Trap,” it is never quite clear why the salt vampire feels it must continue to kill, instead of simply asking for the salt it needs to survive.  Captain Kirk could easily make a ship-wide announcement noting that no action will be taken against the alien if it reveals itself now. That though crewman have died because of it, no more need to do so.  

Again, Kirk loses crewmen in other episodes (like the aforementioned “Devil in the Dark,” or the personnel of Cestus III in "Arena,") but if peace can be forged with the perpetrator, he nonetheless makes the attempt to forge that peace.  I know it's early -- the first Star Trek episode, essentially -- but no real olive branch is extended to the alien.

What seems more genuinely intriguing about “The Man Trap” today is the upper deck/lower deck kind of character/narrative structure.  

On the bridge, we have Kirk, Spock and McCoy contending with the mystery or threat of the creature.  

But the supporting characters are also given a lot of fun stuff to do.  As a consequence, we begin to get to know them.  

For instance, we see Sulu in his botanical garden, caring for his plants (including Beauregard). 

We follow Janice on her rounds, as she brings Sulu dinner, and is stalked by the unreal Green (really the monster).

But perhaps Uhura fares best among the supporting cast. Early in the episode, we see her upbraid Spock about his failure to respond emotionally when he learns that someone in the landing party has died.  She notes that Captain Kirk is the closest thing he has to a “friend.”  This tells us not only about Uhura's courage and forthrightness, about about the Spock/Kirk friendship.

The moment in which Uhura talks with Spock about Vulcan’s lack of moon is also flirtatious and delightful. 

The only drawback, of course, is the sixties sexism inherent in that moment. Uhura complains, for example, that she is sick of the word “frequencies” and just wants Spock to compliment her looks. 

I don’t often hold it against Star Trek for being sexist in a sexist time period or context, especially because it looks ahead, to the future, so often. But on the other hand, the series' evolved view of humanity is so well-enunciated over time that its accomplishments in that regard makes moments such as this stand-out all the more for their egregious backwardness. This hour feels a genuine, sincere and serious-minded trip to the future, but the sexism of this moment drags us right back to a mid-1960s mind-set.

Imagine, for instance, if Mr. Chekov were to approach Spock and informally note that he is tired of the navigation panel, and he would just like to be seen as a carefree young man.  

It would be ridiculous, right?  

Uhura is an accomplished communications officer, in the upper hierarchy of command on a state-of-the-art starship. There is no way she would voice distaste for her own chosen field (communications) with her supervising, or superior officer.  She is on the Enterprise because she wants to be there. Because she deserves to be there. And I can tell you, as a teacher of communications, that her subject of study is fascinating, even if opening hailing frequencies (like setting a course, activating the warp speed, or conducting crew physical exams..) can be a bit of a bore at times.

I do love the interaction between Uhura and Spock on a more general basis, and I believe that the interaction we see in “The Man Trap” validates the relationship we see between the characters in the J.J. Abrams alternate universe.  

It’s clear, in other words, that there is a bond and attraction between the two characters.  We also see it played out in next week’s story, “Charlie X,” wherein Uhura sings a kind of naughty song about Spock in the rec room; teasing him to his face.  I just wish that in "The Man Trap," Uhura’s malaise with her profession wasn’t about, specifically, wanting to be seen by her co-workers and fellow officers “as a woman.”  

A far more intriguing moment for this character involves “Uhura’s Crewman,” who speaks Swahili to her, and reminds her of her home-sickness for her own country.  

This seems far more realistic a problem, to me, than being tied to a console, doing the job you love.  It seems like Uhura, Sulu, Kirk and the others would feel lonesome and isolated at times, but that they would keep such feelings close to the vest.  

Here, only the alien (apparently reading Uhura’s thoughts...) is able to sense her connection to her home-land, and her sense of mourning over its absence in her life.  This scene tells us that Uhura has layers and characteristics we don't know; and that she keeps to herself.

“The Man Trap” works as well it does because it delves into these “lower deck” characters and makes them seem relatable. We see Sulu’s obsessions and curiosities (which he revisits, in other forms, in “The Naked Time” and “Shore Leave,”), we get a sense of Uhura’s sense of humor and loneliness, as I’ve noted, and we even get some notation about the ship’s gossip mill. Rand, for instance, wants to know what happened on the planet surface.

There’s a feeling of family here too. When a transporter officer is instructed to beam up the dead body of a comrade, he notes, “We’ll bring him home.” That’s a surprisingly informal and touching way of affirming an order, or fulfilling a duty.

In terms of the main characters, "The Man Trap" establishes Kirk and McCoy's banter and occasionally argumentative relationship well.  Kirk is all jokes and smiles with McCoy until his crew is jeopardized.  Then he becomes hard-headed and demanding.

.

 I often note that Star Trek is two things: funny and kinky.  

Season One is probably the least humorous of all the seasons, but the kinkiness is already in place.

The opening act of “The Man Trap” -- in addition to being effectively filmed -- fits the bill. Here, Kirk, Bones and Darnell beam down to the planet an meet Nancy.  

They each see her differently.  Kirk sees her as she should be, a “handsome,” age-appropriate gray-haired woman.  Perhaps he sees her in this fashion because the creature knows that Kirk is the captain, and she can't kill him.  Or perhaps because Kirk is not looking to feel attracted to McCoy's old love.

Then McCoy sees Nancy how he remembers her from their love affair, as a very attractive younger woman.  His memory comes back to life perfectly.

And finally, Darnell sees Nancy -- wildly -- as a bombshell, a fantasy woman he met on “Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet.”  

I love and admire the editing of this opening sequence. We go from a character’s line of sight (Kirk, McCoy, Darnell) right to the different woman they are gazing at, with no explanation for the fact that there are three women where there should only be one. It’s direct and well-done, and captures the strangeness and intellectual nature of Star Trek right off the bat.

But in terms of kinkiness, we also have a mention of a planet devoted to pleasure, and later, a notation about Crater’s private paradise on M-113. On the latter front, Kirk suggests that Crater has lived a life of sexual fantasy, which is why his research has largely stopped. The alien monster is apparently his sex slave, turning into any partner he desires…all for the necessary salt tablets in payment.  

It’s crazy to think that this suggestion makes it into the episode, and aired on network TV in 1966.

In Star Trek lore, “The Man Trap” is remembered as being a kind of “monster” show, and a poor choice for a premiere episode.

So, yes, it is disappointing that “The Man Trap” doesn’t offer fully realized Trek philosophy. It is disappointing that it is not about actually saving a creature that is the last of its kind instead of giving the act of murder a note of contrition.

And yet one can still see the series inching already towards its full potential.