The Man Trap (TOS)

Season 1 Episode 3

Transcript

auto-generated transcript has not been edited for formatting or accuracy.

hey everybody Welcome to humanist Trek! it’s a Star Trek podcast about the humanism in Star Trek I’m Sarah Ray
and I’m Allie Ashmead
We’re back to talk about the Man Trap that is the first aired episode of the original series of Star Trek before we get to that though we were just kind of chatting about like moving to Colorado from Florida and like the housing market and how that has all been we’re finally in our house now and we got the the furniture our bedroom furniture was delivered today so that’s super exciting and they didn’t mess up our record like I I was worried that they might be really really loud and banging and bumping around but I didn’t hear I didn’t even hear them yeah so it was great we just went up there checked it out looks great super excited but it has been a journey to get here you moved out here before we did we and we were both we both pretty much defined it yeah I don’t know it was a complete coincidence that we were both
like [  ] this I’m out of here I’m going I’m going to Colorado it was a complete coincidence but yeah I and I I remember I remember I was gonna I’m like Sarah I got some bad news uh-huh we were doing a show about Florida yeah and I was like I need to let you know I’m thinking about moving to Colorado and then I think you said so are we and I’m like are you [  ] me but yeah it was so funny yeah and we we’d never like met or hung out or not really we did a show together because we were in different parts of Florida yeah I never never met you face to face but
you know when you know we need you know you’ve got a good connection with somebody they’re your people you know you know so it was awesome that we both ended up and I’m like yes and then then we then we started like thinking okay we gotta start over again you know so we can do anything we want and and this
is how the show was born yeah so it’s it was a journey like we sold our house doubled our money thought we were gonna get you know take that and buy a nice house out here turns out that’s not how that works out here at all I know you put in a ton of offers we put in a ton of offers people were
beating us out like with the twenty thousand dollar appraisal Gap like you’re gonna pay twenty thousand dollars over what the house is valued at yeah I can’t compete with that yeah like I mean I can but I’ll be looking at houses that are a hundred thousand dollars and need lots of work so we lived in an Airbnb
for a while and then we lived in an apartment on the third floor and we were Way Beyond living in apartments I got my wife two kids a cat and a dog and we were all we bought some cheap mattresses from Walmart and threw them on the floor and we were all like sleeping in a room together and it’s
nice to not be doing that anymore it’s climbing up three three flights of stairs to get your groceries that was the worst I hated it every other apartment I’ve ever lived in has been a first floor apartment for a reason you want to stomp around above me fine yeah but I am not carrying my [  ] up three yeah we didn’t even buy furniture well that’s why we’re getting Furniture delivered like no but no point we left you don’t want to carry that [  ] up and then down again no we left a bunch of stuff when we left Florida we dragged like our old bed frame and like a whole bunch of stuff out to the the end of the
road and we’re just like somebody come get it yeah because we traveled out here in our two Jeeps with like a U-Haul trailer not a big U-Haul trailer either so we had to pack our whole lives into these two U-Haul trailers so there was a lot of stuff that just didn’t come with us
yeah and then we’re finally at the place now where we’re yay getting things back yeah that’s so good now my journey was a little different from yours I moved here by myself with two cats and that was a whole that’s a whole nother show with that that ride that
drive that’s a whole nother show but I was able to sell my little house in Florida for a stupid amount of money you know just because the market was going crazy everywhere so I got really fortunate but then I get here to look
for houses and I just literally had to battle with people and never even met just to try to get a house it was like dog eat dog we’re over bidding on the asking price so crazy and you and I lost that I think I lost out yeah on about seven houses
and finally got this one that I got now I did have to bid high and I had to bid more than everyone else and I was I think ended up being down to three people and I finally like they see they seemed like they just wanted they liked me and they wanted to give it
to me nice I never met them but I guess they communicate a lot with the the realtor and I had sold my house I didn’t have to wait for anything that was a big part they don’t like doing contingent you know contingent on the sale of your house so I was like hey I got the money you know so I was a sure
thing and so they went with me yeah if you have a contingency like nobody will get nobody wants to touch you they want to sell their house yep so yeah I got the house now granted it is built in 1975. it’s a lot of house and the people who live there lived there for a really
long time like maybe 30 years so they had an opportunity to like rig stuff and maybe things aren’t up to code plus they have a huge ass Koi pond in the backyard which I’m not a fish person nope but I was like I’ll take it you know but I really would like to re-home the fish so that they don’t so I
don’t kill them because I’m not a fish person and it’s a lot of time and resource water yeah and I I just and we’re out here where it’s always a drought we can’t afford water for [  ] like that it’s wasteful and plus I just I really don’t want to kill this fish they they I’m I don’t want to be I think what did you say like a cage like the cage like the cage yeah you’re a keeper I don’t want to be their keeper I don’t deserve fish I don’t deserve them and I think they’d just be better they have a better chance of Life somewhere else I can’t release them in the wild because they they will destroy the natural ecosystem right but I do want to find there’s a whole other conversation that we didn’t go down on the cage that we don’t have time to go down now but maybe it’ll come back again I’m sure it will the way I feel about the zoos and the way you feel about these damn fish yeah like why am I okay with dogs and cats though I don’t know because they’ve been domesticated for years I know that’s a good question oh I feel I’m a bad human right I feel some type of way about that but come on they [  ] love it yeah they do they ain’t miserable they get fed right see but now we’re making those same arguments of like well they’re oh geez they have a nice life oh good oh I hate being wrong no it doesn’t suck I hate being a hypocrite I am a total hypocrite and when it comes to that so
yeah yeah good point we’re not gonna think about that right now so well let’s get to the episode we came to talk about today it is the Man Trap the first broadcast episode of the original Star Trek series sir contact with an object it’s moving toward us no visual contact yet The Collector is full intensity
[Music] and we start out with the classic captains log we get our very first Captain’s Log yeah and our very first star date yeah 15 13.1 which we don’t really know what that means no that doesn’t those are just numbers yeah somebody has tried to like write them
all down and figure out like how far apart they are but each number doesn’t represent anything like there’s not like equate to like a year like that we know I always thought that they had some equation to I don’t know I think the writers I think the rule for the writers was just like if
the episode is in the future you make the number bigger like okay there’s not a lot of there’s no consensus around like yeah what the what the numbers mean gotcha so we’re orbiting Planet m113 yep so Spock is in command we have a whole new crew oh that’s right
Spock is in command forget everybody we talked about in the cage because the only person that’s around is Spock everybody else everybody else is gone and then also I want to mention before we get in there I’m gonna start a body count yes because Star Trek’s known for like killing off like unknown
crewman they haven’t introduced the red shirt yet but eventually they will but they’re definitely killing off unknowns though oh yeah so I’m starting a body count with this episode awesome and we’ll do a nice little segment at the end to honor their lives
those boxing command our new Captain James T Kirk and our new Doctor Leonard McCoy beamed down to the planet they’re going to conduct some like routine annual medical evaluation on Robert and Nancy crater who are like archaeologists just kind of yeah they’re
kind of what they got there’s apparently some ancient civilization down on this planet and I guess they’ve been studying it for for years so but the problem here is that Nancy is Dr McCoy’s that girl and he just can’t get enough of her so he’s like all nervous and real kind of excited to see her again you know you
get those butterflies in your in your first love or whatever I don’t know that it was his first love but it was definitely an important love well I mean he’s look at his eight so it was only 12 years ago and he’s he’s on up there so I doubt him with his first love right so we have to talk a little bit about
the set design the again the show had like zero budget through the entire series 1960s and so like classic Trek sets are a lot of styrofoam rocks that have been sculpted to look like [  ] and then they did a good job this Temple looking thing looked really good that there this Temple thing that they were living in I guess and doing their research and then they set all of these kind of things against this weird colored background to so that it doesn’t look like a blue sky and it’s all on a Sound Stage it’s all interior yeah but so they they color and light the back so that it’s like an orangey pink color on this particular one it’s not an earth horizon or whatever this is another science thing that nobody is talked about we haven’t talked about but like the reason our atmosph the reason our skies are the color they are is the atmosphere right so if we’re on a planet with a different atmosphere how are we breathing good point technically they should be the same color right there right or close to it yeah I would think so I don’t know anyway what do we need it’s a TV show yeah so Kirk and McCoy go inside this sort of Temple entrance looking thing and they’re talking about the one that got away and in walks Nancy and she’s all young and beautiful but we’re treated to right away we know what the mystery is that we’re gonna solve something’s not right here yeah because each of the three of them are seeing a different version of Nancy yep so yeah I want to mention we they brought along this poor unsuspecting crewman you ought to know yeah he’s probably not gonna make it right so his name is crewman Darnell I don’t know his rank that’s not really important no it doesn’t matter so so Nancy to McCoy she looks 25. just like he saw her when they last saw each other 12 years ago she looks like she he’s like you haven’t aged a day and then but then Kirk sees kind of like a grandma type figure where she’s got gray hair matronly kind of woman and then this poor you see you know is about to explode because he sees this young blonde woman who’s looks like somebody he met on a pleasure planet or something so he’s like really really hot for her but there yeah they don’t know we know that they’re seeing different women but they don’t know at this point that they’re seeing completely different women we get a bit of a little character story here that never really comes back up again Beyond this episode where apparently Nancy’s nickname for Dr McCoy was plum yep and Kirk kind of gives him a little you know chides him a little bit about that but then it’s never brought up again yeah I yeah I’ve never heard I don’t remember that was weird yeah so Nancy scampers off to go find her husband and then when we pop back outside she’s Blondie again and flirting it up real hard with Darnell and then she like takes part of our clothing and tosses it at him and then seductively scampers off oh and of course you know what’s he gonna do he’s gonna follow because he’s you know thinking with glands I don’t know but that’s kind of like that’s what she wanted and then and then we Fade to theme now I do want to mention that the the guy playing Darnell I recognized him as someone who played on the Soaps when I was growing up he’s super young there he’s got to be like 20s and it’s um Michael zaslow if you ever watch The Guiding Light he was he was on The Guiding Light I was all my children I mean I I want my mom watched soaps right and so I watched whatever she was watching but she’d never really got into Guiding Light so it was all my children for me love God and light so this guy he played a villain super villain like Roger Thorpe was his name okay but yeah and even though he was evil he was really good looking so we loved him but yeah so you were like ooh I know that guy yeah I was like he even though he’s yelling you know some things don’t change and I was like I know him but yeah so we’ve got ourselves a mystery episode here and Kirk does the supplemental log that reveals that now they know that they’re each seeing a different version of Nancy right and in the temple Dr crater arrives and he’s all grumpy he’s like that the classic old man any old man you ever tried to get to go to a doctor he doesn’t trust them he didn’t want to waste his time I’m fine I don’t need no doctors and they quote some regulation at him and so he’s fine whatever do your scan and here we get our first real good look at the medical tricorder which has become a very iconic Trek thing and even like when we were talking about the the communicator and the how that influenced the phone right cell phones this is a thing that like even today there’s a there are organizations that are trying to develop the technology to like scan with your cell phone so that like you like our watch we’re wearing Apple watches like yeah and it’ll tell you the blood oxygen level and you know my heart rate and all of that [  ] so like sleep levels like are you an REM sleep or deep sleep or light sleep yeah I even have an app that tells me like at the end like how how well did you sleep
and that’s it like that’s Star Trek technology like on a small scale but if we yeah it is it totally is it’s insane how much like Trek has influenced technology over the years and I think that’s awesome so the the medical tricorder thing bring that to reality I think that would be awesome yeah
so crater is like wait did you say McCoy like like Leonard McCoy like the McCoy that Nancy’s always talking about [  ] yeah so it is the same McCoy yep and there’s a little discussion here about how old Nancy actually looks right and their creator slips a little bit here he says when she lets you see I mean when you see her again oops oops because yeah but I don’t think they caught it no they didn’t cut it because I think Kirk was like so doc was like oh she’s she still looks 25 and Kirk is like I mean she had some gray and she’s like no she’s a handsome woman and they don’t they don’t I don’t know that I want to be called handsome but that’s what they called women back then she says she’s handsome but hardly 25 and then her husband says that McCoy saw Nancy with the eyes of his past attachment so maybe that’s why there’s such a difference but he knows what he knows what’s happening and he almost not quite but almost lets it slip almost so but we’re starting to now reveal bits and pieces of what’s actually going on here so McCoy continues his medical evaluation and then he tries to put a tongue depressor into craters and this is like you know we maybe that’s why we all hate a doctor so much because they’re always trying to stick something somewhere like like in the future seems so much easier they ain’t got it it’s just you right right yeah but maybe that’s what it is always stick in something somewhere we also get like this is kind of a foreshadowing too of of McCoy’s character right where he he kind of like not a big fan of Transporters like technology is great and all but I’m still a good old-fashioned doctor and I’m gonna do doctor and things so yeah that’s that’s a little bit of his character kind of yeah shining through and he stays consistent he never does get he hates the transporter like that never changes so we’re interrupted Nancy’s screaming outside we go outside and we find Nancy weeping over Darnell who’s like laying up on the Rock Ledge and I just this is the Fantastic bit of makeup here I just love this so much it’s so bad because it’s so bad it’s good his face looks like he’s been to the you know the Chinese medicine place where they do cupping they say cupping is if you don’t know they take this like glass bulb thing that’s open on one side and they they like put heat into it and it creates pressure and then they put that on your skin and it like suctions on your skin it leaves these big red circles all over and I had it done on my back it’s it feels really good yeah the medicine that they claim like the medical claims they make about it is kind of horseshit like they say that it like pull draws the blood towards your like up in your skin to allow fresh blood to flow underneath of it but what it does is it breaks the capillary yeah it’s kind of like a bruise in a way but not it’s a more yeah it’s a hickey like it is the same thing that happens when you suck on somebody’s neck and leave a hickey and that’s never had any health benefit for me no but I I would go my wife talked me into going one time and it does it feels kind of like a massage because it’s a good suction the pain feels good yeah yeah so if you like doing it fine but there’s no real like medical anything behind it but that’s what this guy’s face looks like he is covering all over his face yeah and it it’s it also kind of looks like someone’s kissed him a bunch of times but yeah but in this hickeys with a circle mouth but yes he’s been sucker faced and oh and then they found something in his mouth like a green plant yeah something or other it looked like a water green something it’s like spearmint git was really green Kirk like reaches in and does that finger sweep thing that you do when you’re doing CPR yeah and he pulls out a piece of spearmint gyeah oh and then what do we get to hear McCoy say for the first time the very first time He’s dead Jim yeah classic got me yes so Nancy’s Alibi she’s like look I was just out looking for Dr crater I saw Darnell and he was about to put some spearmint gin his mouth and so I was like no don’t but he’d already done it and so then he died I found him like this you know yeah she’s like and she said well yeah she said she found him with a Borgia plant in his hand which is some plant that’s like native to this planet right but I guess like so like she’s looking at McCoy McCoy’s looking at her she’s like I don’t why don’t you believe me because he’s looking at her like she doesn’t he’s got some skepticism on his face yeah and I think he’s staring her because he sees her true self with the gray hair and he’s just like what wait what I think she just accidentally let that slip because she was distraught so she’s a good actress I don’t know that could be so Dr crater’s trying to get them to leave again like his whole thing is like just get out of my planet please go away you kids in your rap your hip hop music you kids in your track recorders and your medical jumbo oh my God so they decide to delay the medical evaluations until tomorrow and Kirk radios up to the Enterprise to beam back up and we get another odd little breadcrumb here where Nancy asks like oh hey wait a minute did you get our request yeah we had to put in a special request yeah we had a we had asked for some salt and I was wondering you know can we get some extra salt right like when the waitress comes to the table and like you guys you guys need anything are you good how’s the food oh I need salt yeah and then they never bring it and they never bring it back on the Enterprise Spock is still in command and Uhura comes down we get to see Uhura for the very first time she is working it with Spock so like she’s almost so Spock is pointing out an error that Uhura made and she’s just trying to joke with him and and make conversation but he doesn’t get it he’s just like he’s of course he’s evoke and he’s no sense of humor he has you know this is our first real like logical Vulcan version of Spock we’ve come to know and love yeah so I think in the cage we saw him smiling I was like oh no that’s that’s not right that’s wrong he doesn’t he doesn’t smile so this is more the spot that we all are very familiar with just you know deadpan don’t he doesn’t laugh no emotion so even so yeah Uhura is this trying she’s like her hardest to flirt with her throwing herself yeah and I think it’s cute though yeah for sure it’s just a you know like a fleeting conversation yeah and then they’re interrupted by a call from the transporter room we’ve got the the away teams back one dead and Uhura lights up Spock here for not showing any emotions she’s like Kirk’s the closest thing you’ve got to a friend one of these people is dead we don’t know which one it could be him true yeah and he’s like the closest thing you have to friend which which I love because there’s no emotion that really develops into what we know you know yeah carried on to the end of these characters is that they really do have a friendship that they’ve developed yeah so this is kind of like the first seed of that that I thought was great down in sick Bay McCoy and Kirk are investigating Darnell’s cause of death and Spock Skypes down and tells them about the spearmint git’s like it’s like Nightshade right so it’s not good stuff it’ll make you sick it’ll kill you right but it doesn’t have a side effect of cupping marks all over your face yeah it’s supposed to cause so was it the Nightshade our Earth form of nightshade is supposed to cause alkaloid poisoning yeah but McCoy doesn’t see any signs of this and so he’s like this guy shouldn’t technically be dead but can’t you know Kirk is like okay you’ve got to find out what killed him and he tries to like wants to talk about seeing Nancy as a young woman again but Kirk’s like we have a dead guy here we need to figure this out okay yeah wind your neck in you know so we come into another Captain’s Log and then Uhura gets a call from their next mission and they’re like yo where you guys at yeah we need these supplies like right away but they’re gonna stick around because they’ve got a dead crewman and they’re trying to investigate what’s going on right Spock’s done some more research on this crater people yeah yeah he he found that they’d been on the planet for like five years and because they’re archaeologists you know they they dig up artifacts and they ship them out so there’s been regular vessels visiting and shipping out artifacts until the last year so something somehow the drop in Shipment has happened over the last year but then McCoy he discovers something and this is so weird because he calls up on the radio and he’s like hey I found something but I don’t want to say it over the speaker like like I guess what just trying to create drama it is and like it was trying to get everybody down into the sick bear wherever but like I would have maybe Rewritten that to say something like hey I found something you guys should probably come take a look yeah right like I don’t want to say it over the speaker is weird like it’s not classified information it’s not like a you know it’s not a folder at Mar-A-Lago or anything ah good one yep he will just leave that there and we’ll just leave that right there so everybody heads down to sickbait and I don’t know if it was sick Bay or not because later they they say they call or something and they call it the dispensary and the dispensary is something very different for us yes and here in Colorado we that means something totally different and it’s not a bad thing and I’m down to go to The Dispensary yeah they’re actually the place we go green dragon is having a a BOGO sale nice on gummies nice yeah cool I do prefer the gummies though over like smoking marijuana I don’t I do both it depends on what what I need so I don’t know if it’s like because I like smoke smoked for so long because I smoke cigarettes for a carton a week for a long long time and that was really hard to quit oh yeah but like I don’t know if it just doesn’t taste good to me if I just haven’t had the right stuff like it could be because it like if it just tastes like an ashtray I’d rather have a gummy yeah I mean I go depending on how I want to feel if I eat a gummy I know I’m gonna go [  ] go to sleep yeah if I want to get some if either I want to be creative
I want to sit and watch something and laugh my ass off or or I want to be productive and clean my entire house and you know all that that’s that’s when I’ll smoke because I don’t get that with the gummies and it also it also depends on the
strain right but yeah I Vaped too yeah and that that does it but it’s not the same as not the same actual bud I mean it’s like probably a third of the I feel the potency of actual bud I mean
so this gives you a nice high but you it’s it’s very even and but but it’s still light right Bud oh my god I’m sitting sometimes I’ve taken a hit and I’m sitting there contemplating my life because oh my God why did I do this it’s it’s so intense and so much better yeah
uh so Kirk and Spock head down to Sick Bay which may not be sick Bay maybe the the dispenser that’s how we got on this conversation that’s where we learned that all of the salt in Darnell’s body has been leeched out McCoy can’t explain it but Kirk
remembered that the craters had mentioned kneading salt so they get together another Landing party to beam back down and of course this Landing party also includes some more Porsche I know okay we got Darnell has already kicked the bucket with in his he’s been
sucker-faced so now we got these poor other two UCS that are coming down sturgeon and green are their names they actually have names later on in the Star Trek universe we don’t even care about their names they don’t even get names but yeah
so they’re back on the planet they’re questioning the professor and they’re like demanding to see Nancy but he doesn’t know where she is either so the one Porsche muck goes to find Nancy and the other one the [  ] is always always missing and that’s not the red flag that everybody’s like oh why can’t we ever find this lady so the one one goes to find her and then the other one goes to beam up a sample of the spearmint gback to spock so that he can analyze it and see what’s going on every time you see Spirit oh my God it just makes me laugh Creator keeps trying to get them to leave like that again that’s his thing I’ll like look you guys just get out of here we don’t need you here but we could use some salt and we started out with he says we started out with 25 pounds of salt right and then he pulls out this I Dream of Genie bottle that has like a little handful of small tablets the tablets are some kind of Crystal Light it was like a tablet and then [  ] McCoy shakes one out into his hand and goes to lick it like what the hell man we just know better we just lost a dude to the spirit and now now you’re gonna lick the salt because supposedly allegedly licking something
right yeah but he licks it and he’s like yep it’s salt like what would have happened if he had just died right then yeah no more McCoy no more McCoy so Kirk and Spock get on the radio and they arrange quarters for the craters because they’re all going to beam up and while they’re talking the professor runs
off it’s like runs away oh [  ] that I’m not going back I’m not going to that ship then Robert encounters the for the number two the the dead you see and he’s got marks on his face and this is sturgeon at this point so this is sturgeon has sucker Mark he’s been sucker faced and so Robert like kind of just like starts yelling for Nancy Nancy where are you and then he says oh then he says oh hey I got a dog I got the good stuff over here salt in my hand anyway and but she doesn’t answer because she’s busy leaning over another body poor green and he’s also been sucker-faced and he’s dead too so Nancy’s standing over green and then turns into green so now we know we’re dealing with the shape shifter he’s a shape-shifting [  ]
yeah so Kirk insists like let’s go back to the ship and try to find Nancy from there because we can cover more ground from like high-tech scanners on the ship than we can like walking around down here well before that though they so they go out run after Robert and he runs away from the dead body and then they
find the dead body they find sturgeon yes and they’re like you know oh no another sucker face you know we lost another one and so they they don’t see green anywhere so they call for green and then fake green comes in and says hey I I found this dead body also and I went
looking I was looking for the killer oh that sounds lame but yeah but that’s what he said and he’s kind of just staring all creepily because we we know but the audience knows that ain’t green right but he’s trying to act normal but yeah so yeah so Kirk says we should go back
to the ship and try to find Nancy from there because it’s easier to use like the high-tech scanner stuff on the ship than it would be to just walk around and there’s a great line here where Kirk tells McCoy he needs to be more like Spock and stop thinking with his glands
I just thought that was hilarious yep so Kirk McCoy and shapeshifter green beam up and now we’ve got a shape shifter loose on the Enterprise yep and Kirk and McCoy have no idea nope yeah so up in the transporter room Kirk sends McCoy to go get some sleep he says we’re gonna go look for the
craters you you need to rest so meanwhile like green fake green is like Jones of Basalt he’s like he breaks away from them and he’s just like he’s like I’m I’m just providing some inner monologue he’s like okay where can I get this off I’m I’m chosen really bad and then he he runs into
Yeoman Candace Rand yep and she happens to have a tray of food and what’s on the tray but a salt shaker and why would there be a salt shaker on an Enterprise on a spaceship when you can just tell the story yeah because you can replicate
your food yeah and but yeah whatever he’s just staring at her she he’s not saying anything and he’s staring at the tray he’s creepy and she goes and sprinkles salt in her food and he reaches for it and she smacks his hand and like says something to him like you know keep your hands to yourself or
whatever but then she goes into the lift and he follows her and I also think this episode is like the first time we’re seeing the inside of the turbo lift like I think we I think so yeah in the first episode we saw them like step into it the doors closed but now we’re like camera inside the turbo lift I think
this is the first time yeah I mean she gets off and then she kind of I love this line she’s like coach why don’t you go chase an asteroid I love that I’m just gonna that’s gonna be my line but then they’re like as she walks away then there’s like some more classic
misogyny [  ] where these guys there’s like three other crewmen standing there that are like snickering not calling and [  ] yeah one of them says something like oh I wish I had a personal Yeoman to come do all of my blah blah whatever like okay bag yeah yeah it was Rife full of that kind of
[  ] yeah so so she’s actually on her way to see Sulu which is the first time we’ve seen Sulu and he is like surrounded by plants in the in the body lab sure something like that they must have wished they were still figuring [  ] out so they that’s where they put him well okay so if you don’t have because at the time we haven’t learned anything about like replicators or whatever right so we’re we’re growing plants we’re growing food we’re you know all of that kind of stuff that kind of makes sense that comes back in later
series too with like the Hydroponics base yeah with neelix and they love their yeah so yeah so she’s bringing Sulu some food and also Sulu should be on the bridge like that’s what I’m saying we know Sulu to be a bridge officer right that’s one thing how did he end up as a
botanist I don’t know like I said they they’re still figuring things out and maybe they come up with a an explanation of how he ends up as the science was it one engineer something he’s a pot he’s the navigator navigator yeah pilot Navigator check off and and oh that’s right right but I don’t know
which one’s which I don’t know either way send us emails oh my God yeah so anyway so they’re chit chatting about his plants and they’ve got this one plan in there I and I you and I I think had the same thoughts [Music]
this is kind of like a Venus flat trap on steroids but it’s cute it’s cute it’s like pink and fluffy and so cute little noises yeah and it moves and Janice calls it Beauregard and then Sulu insists that it’s a Gertrude it’s a female so they have this conversation which I think you we talked about that
is if neither of them well here’s the thing if if either of them is a botanist right then you should be able to sex the plant right I would think but but also like there is a conversation that to be had and they they mentioned something about like it’s stupid giving like gendered names and pronouns to inanimate
objects like why do we call a ship she yeah she’s a fine ship like that’s stupid yeah and why why we do that is stupid and they didn’t really dig into it a whole lot more than that it was just kind of a no but it’s a glance but it’s an insight into human nature we do it we just have this need to like assign
something to someone like people name their cars all the time I’ve never been a car name in person like I a cars don’t have names but I know a lot of people name their cars that’s I’ll get that and it’s you usually a female name yeah yeah I agree I have no idea but so meanwhile shapeshifter green is still creeping
through the hallways like a creep and he’s follow he follows them into the botany lab and he starts drooling over the salt shaker again yep and Audrey three starts freaking the [  ] out is like squeaking and calling it like pulls itself down into the into the base of the plant yeah and I guess that’s for some reason why we don’t know why that scares green off but fake or fake green he just runs away without right he didn’t even get no salt he could have got salt from the tray but he didn’t get no salt because of a plant I don’t get it right yeah that was that was kind of weird like again telegraphing for the audience the plant knows that this isn’t the real green okay like whatever they had to have something and then from like here on and and we might have seen it before but I really started noticing it here when green is out in the hallway then they start doing this visual language visual language for I’m jonesing for salt which is to like bite their bite your knuckle and that is kind of like sexy it is like you’re like you see some hot little something and you’re like I’ve never bitten my knuckle no like that’s not a natural stupid response it’s kind of silly yeah it’s yeah I I think it’s dramatic Hollywood TV language it’s porn it’s porn language bite your knuckle but yeah so he’s hunting for salt again and this is where I think is this where he sees it bumps yeah oh and then so then he found chicken while he turns into a black man but it’s basically because a white man couldn’t possibly be attracted to Aurora right I guess I mean it’s you know but the whole conversation because it was appropriate at that time right they were not about to it wasn’t I think that kiss with them happened in 1969 so they were they weren’t there we’re not ruffling feathers yet yeah so so they had to put a Megan into a black man they had to they had to so yeah he he but he’s like someone from her mind like all his features he and that’s why she’s like you look familiar and but he looks like he’s about to pounce on her like he just wants some salt but he also speaks to her in Swahili which is her native language and so she’s like all in she’s like having a fanny flutters and everything going on it’s so she’s almost in a trans and she’s she gets caught from the bridge she kind of ignores it he’s got her like pinned up against the wall yeah it was a bit it was a lot cringe and and then Zulu and Janice or Yeoman Rand step out of the elevator and the kind of just like wakes her up and then she’s like okay I’ve got to get a marriage yep so then we jump to McCoy’s quarters he’s he’s not sleeping so he calls up to the bridge and I really don’t understand what this call was for like yeah other than like Kirk was like hey we haven’t found anything yet go back to sleep like otherwise why what I guess that was the only thing I can think of is the setup for the pill right because otherwise it has no realm it has no purpose right so Kirk says go back to sleep take a red pill do you want to know what it is no very Matrix very Matrix reference and then Kirk takes what looks like a piece of this spearmint gand Pops it into his mouth like Kirk what the hell are you doing man like everybody’s putting stuff in their mouth yeah I know right the red pill the boys we poorestly planned whatever back in the hallway shapeshifter random crewman now comes across a guy who and this is a great look and I don’t remember seeing much more of this like in the series but I guess we’ll find out but it was like this guy had on like a NASA like sparkly kind of the old school go outside into space Space Walk yeah yeah and I don’t think we see a whole lot more of that going forward so I thought that was interesting on the bridge Kirk and Spock decided they’re gonna go back for Dr crater and get him to explain where the hell Nancy is and it’s not it wasn’t spearmint gthat he popped into his mouth while my clothes on the phone it’s he’s got a plate of that you know that when you have like a class or a meeting for work like early in the morning and they give you like coffee and like yeah the continental breakfast they get like little it’s a little fresh fruit medley thing yeah that’s what it was it was like that it was there’s some melon and there’s some strawberries and maybe some blueberries space food yeah and I think it was like crunchy because I think every time he would take a bite crunched I think it was crunchy still everybody putting weird [  ] in their mouth shapeshifter random crewman comes across McCoy’s quarters and I
thought this was interesting too that I find you you see these signs above like the turbo lift and stuff but it really it really caught my attention at McCoy’s quarters and it’s got those like name plates from like you know when your your office makes you a desk I still have my original desk plate with
my name on it from let me see 19.99 Oh wow was it was like my first legit office job not not like the tail not like the call center jobs this was like legit like okay I’ve made I work in an office I work in an office yeah yeah office space type job TBS reports all that nice and it has like they all have
the same font they’re all got that stick on you know oh yeah yeah well and I think like in later series their your name’s not on the door no it’s like Cabin numbers or whatever I don’t think anything on the doors yeah you just know like hey that’s Kirk’s cat
I don’t know right I don’t ever remember seeing a label no on a door so anyway they go they’re outside McCoy’s quarters so the shapeshifter turns into Nancy again and McCoy steps out and then they go back into his quarters and she really starts like laying the
moves on him and and she talks him into taking the red pill what the hell McCoy oh you’re so tired you look so tired you need to sleep yeah she’s like your ass out she’s like I I want to wear you out but I don’t want to wear you out you need to sleep first so he takes a red pill
and then out in the hallway Rand and Sulu and all of these people seem to just be like wandering around the ship aimlessly because now they come across spacesuit guy dead guy and he’s dead and he’s been to the cupping doctor and he’s got cupping marks all over his face
I can’t keep track of like which hallway who’s been walked down and where everybody’s at because there’s a lot of hallways on the Enterprise but it seems like we’re all in the same one what a coincidence but so yeah so they take him down I guess to six Bay or dispensary whatever
we’re calling it and then and then they page just the General Medical and sit down to Sick Bay and then but then I think by this time that red pill is starting to kick in and he is like I’m feeling good and I’m
about to drift I’m I’m about to go to sleep and then I’ll wake up later and have some munchies but that he was he’s about out but Nancy is like sitting there you know sweet talking him like close your eyes and go to sleep and then the weird the crazy thing she like takes her fingers and like wipes the sweat off
of his brow and then goes to lick it and that’s when Uhura calls down like she’s gonna lick the salt out of his sweat and so then Uhura calls down specifically for McCoy like she before it was like Hey all doctors and medical personnel report whatever and now this time it’s like yo I’m calling Dr McCoy
because you didn’t respond right Dr McCoy where are you at yeah so of course what’s she gonna do she’s gotta turn into McCoy and be McCoy now yeah so she couldn’t now she could have killed him she could have I I can only guess why she didn’t because it’s not really a she it’s it’s a thing
we don’t even know if it has if that right species has gender we have no idea but I’m assuming maybe it has feelings and maybe she didn’t kill McCoy then because everybody else she’s killed him yeah yeah he’s just dropping body let the bodies hit the floor like everywhere but she didn’t kill him she just made
sure he went to sleep and then took his identity and interesting choice yeah like yeah so she was fake McCoy for a little while so we’re back on the planet Kirk and Spock Corner Professor crater and he’s they’re like [  ] where’s your wife and nobody can find your wife flip both slippery as [  ] so Sulu radio’s down and says hey we found another cupping victim and then spot goes around a corner and he finds crewman green also a cupping victim and they’re like hey wait a minute wait a minute didn’t he go with us on them
so now we know it wasn’t green that transported up so Kirk calls for a general quarters lockdown Intruder Alert and then we have a little bit of like a kind of a standoff between you gotta fight crater and Kirk and Spock yeah they didn’t really have like a good old Star Trek fist fight or anything no but
Robert just couldn’t hang I don’t think Robert crayer can hang but but he starts shooting at him and then but he’s not trying to kill them he’s just trying to like scare him away the whole thing this whole time has been like you just get off my Planet get the [  ] off get to get on my lawn yeah your kids and your hip hop phasers back on the bridge they’re trying to account for everyone going to quarters so they’re like you know deck five are you everybody in and Rand mentions that shapeshifter green was following her earlier and being all creepy and who her is like there was a weird creepy guy following me around too maybe it’s the alien yeah yeah of course yeah of course they look different right and meanwhile like shapeshifter McCoy is right there yep and he’s like oh maybe I can help yeah he’s he’s like I I want to help with the creature maybe we should just give him some salt give him some salt that’s what he needs to survive and Spock like huh you know why are you being so nice to this creature yeah so on the planet where Kirk and Spock and this is where I really noticed that like the they they had dumped some sand inside the studio because they’re like okay you go that way and I’ll go this way and we’ll come around him flank him you know and they’re like Army crawling through the sand and it’s like legit sand on the floor of the sand stage yeah that’s crazy there’s probably still still sand in that sand there’s no way they got rid of it all right have you ever tried to clean sand out of your car like you go to the beach you know you never get all the sand even with a vacuyeah so they they distracted the professor they shoot him they stun him and then he finally fills them in he lets it spill yeah Nancy’s the last of her kind it’s not really Nancy yeah and then he talks about like the buffalo on Earth and how there used to be millions of those but they were eradicated because that’s why humans are good at yeah and that’s the same with like whatever this creature that Nancy is she’s the last of of her species yeah and that’s so he referred to his wife in past tense because she had died or I guess this creature killed her like one or two years ago but they need salt to stay alive and then there’s almost again like another a line that felt like a throwaway line but it was really I really I think sums up the episode is like about a creature having a right to survive like like who who are we to I yeah we have a right to survive in the species or whatever do yeah we don’t we shouldn’t be ending species but we do we do all the time right or or we are indirectly the Cause right yeah yeah so now we know these creatures just need salt to survive but ran out of salt and there’s only one left what a thing right you know salt yeah so now we’re up to General quarters level four and I couldn’t really tell a difference between level three and level four like oh there’s the whole thing is just everybody go to your quarters and lock your doors right so I don’t notice a difference there but then there’s a meeting in the conference room and they’re trying to work out like how do we find this creature they put some bait salt bait out all over the ship yeah but it’s not attracting it because the shape shifter salt sucker is sitting right there in the room with them that’s right and they have no clue and he’s being like quiet and super creepy with just looking around and and at that point they had already brought Robert back and they’re like I think Kirk’s like Robert would you be able to recognize the Creature if even though it might look different would you you know recognize the creature and he and I don’t know what he said did he just said I don’t know or maybe Kirk thought that he was like yeah oh yeah I would recognize it okay so then McCoy and the professor start kind of riffing back and forth about like this creature is not really a threat you know it’s just trying to survive like it just needs it just needs food so give it some food McCoy was showing like a uncharacteristic compassion and signaling to Robert that I’m I’m the one it’s me did he do you think he got I think he did okay maybe that’s why maybe that’s why Kirk didn’t really believe Robert and so he’s like we’re gonna stick you with some truth serwhich is so Antiquated like that’s what they like like back in the like 70s and 80s we’re gonna shoot you up the shoes theorem that was like a thing I don’t even think that even works no well that’s that’s another like one of the unscientific moments here like there’s not really a such a thing as a truth serand even like when you do like lie detector tests they’re not all that no they’re not accurate yeah shapeshifter McCoy Spock and the professor I’ll leave yeah because then they go They’re going to go get they’re going to go right so they’re going down to the dispensary to get them some truth Sarah I bet that’s what yeah some true serums and then we cut to an alert that calls Kirk down to the dispensary and this is when I really noticed like the dispensary like I by that time I turned the captions I usually watch with captions on because always always I don’t always hear and I yeah yeah I always do and every Everybody do this watch with captions on because if for no other reason like if you don’t think you need them fine but like normalize watching shows with captions because hearing impaired people need them and like you we should be making that a standard yeah I agree I love I watched nothing without captions I’m the same way I don’t know why it just I can I I take it in better like I did too I was gonna say I probably don’t miss anything yeah when I see it on because a lot of times I something is muffled yeah or real quiet what’d they say Oh I wanna I’m and I’m also a chronic googler so if if some if they’re talking about something and I’m like I’ll pause and I’ll Google it and it’s nice to know how to spell it I’m just I’m terrible I’m like it’s it’s very hard to watch a show with me yeah because I’m like pause I need to Google that but yeah or I need to Google that actor or actress anyway go ahead so this is this was the moment that I was like dispensary what the hell yeah I thought we were going to Sick Bay so I guess there’s two different places I don’t know so the creature attacks Spock but it doesn’t kill him right and Yeoman Rand finds Professor crater and he’s got cupping marks all over his face now and then Spock talks about how he’s fortunate that his ancestors like spawned in different oceans than humans did right he’s his physiology is like keeps him from like it’s a different kind of salt being sucker face yeah which I thought was cool because it you know it’s a nod to that evolutionary history of you know water creatures evolving into land creatures and and I had to look this up because I couldn’t remember the timeline but it was 2006 when they discovered tiktalik which is like an ancestor species that they believe was you know not a missing link that because that word doesn’t really doesn’t really communicate everything about it but but or transitional species something like that but was an ancestor species of you know an animal that lived in the water and then evolved into the land animal it wasn’t the salamander don’t think so I mean it might have been like I guess salamanders like Evolution big one but jumped out of the I remember just learning that we were like salamanders I don’t know I don’t remember this Virginia schooling what do you expect anyways box blood salt is different so and I had a there was a problem I had here too because like why would this salt-sucking creature be specifically attuned to Earth’s salt and is it is it iodized salt is it Himalayan pink salt is it sea salt like what kind of salt are we talking about here yeah yeah so I thought that was kind of weird so the shape shifter turns back into Nancy in McCoy’s quarters and like wakes him up she’s freaking out begging him for like help me they’re trying to kill me they’re trying to kill me and then Kirk and McCoy get in a standoff and Kirk tries to lure the shapeshifter of assault and he’s and he does his thing with like like when you call a dog with a treat and he’s like come on come get the salt got some salt for you come on come on it was he’s like leaning over and everything it was weird this kind of bothered me because I’m like okay I know that’s supposed to be a creature but like it’s kind of like still a person meaning a little bit you know but whatever so then shapeshifter Nancy goes after Kirk and McCoy refuses to shoot he’s like this is the monster shoot it and he’s like no Spock comes in he’s like no that’s my boo and then Spock comes into the room and he starts this two-fist punching weird punch thing where he’s just both hands together and he’s like hidden on the left and then right and then the left and her head is you know just whipping back and forth yeah it’s hilarious I whip my hair back and forth but but yeah it’s like well if if this was Nancy would she be able to take this obviously no and then Nancy like slaps Spock clear across the room yeah like if she don’t like a flower so it’s obvious this isn’t Nancy yeah but still like McCoy is still like long shooter yep so Nancy shapeshifter moves back in to get Kirk and then while they’re like struggling it changes its appearance to the Salt monster yeah and the real the real okay and then starts like attaching its suction cups doing the cupping on it this is the shittest this is the best costume yeah what do you mean it’s horrible it’s this it’s [  ] it’s it’s like a furry furry suit kind of like a Yeti but then it’s got green skin and I can’t remember what the eyes look
like but this the mouth was like a circle with a bunch of teeth like a sucker like a sucker yeah and then the icing was the blonde like or blonde or like grayish hair wig and it was just it looked ridiculous it was so ridiculous you know somebody went down to costuming it was just like give me
whatever you have today I mean whatever you got extra left though will I take this I take this and yeah it was awful it was so bad it was funny so McCoy finally shoots and didn’t she like one last time she was like no don’t she turned in she turned back into Nancy so the turn of like appeal one last time to
Leonard and I then he he shoots her again and then she’s dead she’s dead Jim and but and she was killed by The Real McCoy uh-huh The Real McCoy but yeah yeah
so then up on the bridge we get what we come to kind of know and love as the kirkspock McCoy button on an episode where they’re all standing around chit chatting and that’s they do a lot of like their relationship building yeah kind of character development stuff in that moment where they they pick on
Spock sometimes and you know they just like they just kind of wrap it all up relief yeah and then so so Kirk says he’s thinking about the Buffalo yeah and then that’s it we leave orbit and go into the credits so my big theme for this one was like does a life form have the right to
survive and does the life form have a right to do whatever it takes to survive like does it have a right to kill to survive should we be killing cows to make hamburgers we don’t yeah you know like yeah
we are not going to die without a cow right I mean every every species has a right to survive if we have a do we have a right to kill I mean no you never have a right to kill it’s never going to be excused but if if that’s what you got to do like if it is
like literally survival like right now we’re humans we’re sitting pretty good we’re not like most of us aren’t starving there’s some that are starving mm-hmm truly starving like truly no there’s lots of countries but they’re not killing to survive
I don’t know maybe they are I don’t know and when it comes to like my species versus yours like if you’re trying to survive and I’m trying to survive like in this case you’ve got salt monster trying to survive and humans trying to survive and how do you reconcile right
who gets what like yeah who take yeah it’s tough and then there’s only one salt monster right so that it’s not and I and that’s me assuming that it takes some you know male and a female right or two we don’t know anything about the reproduction we don’t so because I would think if they know it’s the last one I
think it would and they you know if they could procreate without an amazing they would humans would just take that one and right find a way to you know clone it or something yeah or if there were two left we’d take those two and try to put them together in a cage that’s what my first like the first episode yeah and
like would you want to be forced to copulate with some just because you’re the last one right would you want to be forced to have sex with someone to to make a child just so that you could and we do that all the time yeah oh my God the poor cows and the horses look the what do you call the the herd
animals that we like like cows and pigs and yeah horses even but yeah it’s written in our DNA to try to survive whether you’re a human or a frog you know what I mean I mean every single little all evolved for survival right yeah right so I mean and
that’s that is just what we do to attain that is is just dictated based on we our need to survive yeah but I mean I think we’re like most humans again we’re past that desperate desperate phase of oh I’m don’t know where my
next meal is coming from right both again some some people are living that way yeah something wrong Captain who are you where do you come from have you noted evidence of unusual powers what is it that powers Your Vessel Captain is there anything else a lot of people have to call inanimate objects she that is a
very intriguing question all right so now let’s bring Becca back in for the exciting answer reveal for the Man Trap question the question was in this episode something happened for the first time that would happen 19 more times across the life of this series
what was it we said bone says He’s dead Jim the answer is Dr Leonard McCoy played by actor D Force Kelly uttered the famous line He’s dead Jim [Music] [Applause] virtual high five high five
okay so we got one right one right oh man I do know stuff about Star Trek and if I’m not mistaken the first utterance was dead gem I think he just said because he was like Kirk walks up to the body and and says and says whatever green or whatever his name was I don’t remember now and what a
crewman whatever the first one and [  ] I forgot his name and and McCoy says dead Jim well I think that’s interesting and I’m you might be right because there’s a bunch of different ways he said about it I did read that there it was he’s dead it’s dead we’re just dead there were different different variations of this my brain may have filled in the park so he’s in there just hasn’t been yeah yeah all right so what’s our next question for Charlie X was it and why was it such a special event wait wait let me think let me think I remember all the characters like I vaguely remember the series but I have no idea stay tuned yeah next week no idea I mean I it’s either one of three of the characters it’s magell Barrett coming back as nurse Chapel okay so the only three people it could be is like maybe one of the two from the Antares or that floating head from the floating head was it called this dazian that appears you have no idea what I’m talking I have no idea no all right I don’t know I’m trying to remember Cameo appearance tune in next week to find out yeah I don’t know no idea [Laughter] all right well that’s our episode before we go we want to honor the dead so we’re going to lay all these dead crewmen out and should we like pry their eyes open and scream to the sky to let stovacs damn I love that part and that is my favorite thing about them but yeah so we have may he rest in peace crewman Darnell crewman’s sturgeon I don’t even think I got a good look at his face at all um poor guy he was he was just there for a hot second rest in peace and crewman green who did get quite a bit of air time being creepy and then the unknown crewman on the ship who was killed in the hallway [Music] that was so sad so so sad and then we’ve got to say a rest in peace may they may they rest in peace Robert crater Nancy who were the cause of all the [  ] anyway so we’ve got six dead how do you count as six
wow that’s a lot in one episode yeah I think as we find as we start actually counting I think that’s probably not that much well so we’ll see we’ll revisit that thought yeah later on what I’d love to do is like chart these out on a graph
too over time just to kind of see what that looks like I think that’d be fun yeah yeah and then we can like determine which one was the bloodiest which one was the bloodiest episode the word yes the bloodiest episode and the worst death like well let’s figure out who suffered the worst death yeah
all right well that’s our episode we’re gonna go watch the next one now for next week we’ll be watching Charlie X and I’ll give you the Paramount Plus oh my God the episode capsule for this one is fantastic they really put a lot of thought and energy into this one yeah
a powerful teenage boy wreaks Havoc aboard the Enterprise yeah that tells me a lot that’s it yep all right well we’ll see you next time on humanist track where we review and talk about the episode Charlie X live long and prosper humanist Trek is available wherever you replicate your
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