ST: TOS: S1, E1: The Man Trap

This episodes starts off establishing a friendship between Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy right in the opening Captain's Log when Kirk makes note that they will be seeing a woman from McCoy's past. There is no way for Kirk to have known that with out having talked to McCoy. That is more than we get in the entire Pilot episode.

McCoy is humanized very quickly when it is established that this is a lost love they will be visiting, and maybe one that he is not entirely over 12 years later. Kirk ribs him gently about this at the beginning of the episode further establishing the relationship that they have. They are comfortable enough with each other to poke fun while on the job. By comparison, Pike seemed to keep everyone at a distance, he didn't even want yeoman around him to deliver reports. When on the planet they discover the first dead member of the away team (a blue shirt, btw) McCoy doesn't say, "He's dead, Captain." he says, "He's dead, Jim.". He uses Kirk's first name. He is familiar with Kirk and comfortable with him, they are on a first name basis. Not even "He's dead James.", it's a nickname basis. That line will become iconic as the series ages. I had never thought about the implications of it before, that it gives us so much information in so little time.

She doesn't realize that Spock's sex rage is forthcoming.

Spock is cold in this episode, he is logical. That is to say, he is Vulcan, and not a human with pointy ears. He doesn't understand when Uhura, pretty aggressively, flirts with him right on the bridge. She is the initiator here, approaching him while he is in the Captain's Chair. This is a far cry from Pike's Enterprise where woman look coyly at the captain and are objects of lust and distraction. Our take away from this is that Uhura is a strong, assertive woman, with her own desires. I also had not realised that there was a TOS precedent for the the Uhura/Spock pairing set up in the 2009 Star Trek movie.

The antagonist creature in this episode is once again an alien that is not really malicious  but just trying to survive. As a "last of it's kind", you can kind of feel for it even as it starts to kill it's way through the away team and crew. Using McCoy's memories and the image of his lost love against him, you can feels bad for both the creature and McCoy. The doctor has a hard choice to make and is only capable of it after Spock rains down his famous two handed hammer punch upon the salt sucking alien in defense of Kirk. As ugly as it's true form is, as brutal as its killing methods, you still feel bad for witnessing the death of a species.

The salt sucking alien had lived on a planet with no salt left on it. I guess it probably licked the sweat from it's  "husband". Maybe that was some sort of foreplay, part of the reason he excepted it. He was it's meal ticket, supplying it with small jars of tiny salt cubes. The alien seemed to be doing fine with that level of consumption, but boy, once the buffet shows up it goes hog wild. The incredibly socially inept Green dies almost moments after his feet materialize on the planet surface. I guess the prospect of getting off that rock of a planet, and no longer having to depend on an aging "husband" for sustenance was enough to make it go into a, wait for it, salt rage.

All in all a fine first episode. The terms have fallen in line, the women, though now in short skirts, seem to be more respected. He had a little bit of Sulu in this episode, and his role was unclear. Is he a botanist? Why was yeoman Janis stealing his food? I'm waiting for Chekov and Scotty. Listening to the opening of the Pilot without the "Boldly go..." narration was really weird, I am super happy to have had it here.