Star Trek TOS Rewatch: "The Man Trap"
Since I'm going to be home for a bit, I've decided to rewatch Star Trek TOS. I wonder how far I'll get? Anyway, here I am at the very first episode: "The Man Trap". This was the one that introduced viewers to characters and Star Trek universe. There's a bit of Early Installment Weirdness, but on the whole the series is already knows what it wants to do.
It begins with a landing party beaming down, and Kirk bantering with McCoy. ("Is that how you get girls to like you? You bribe them?") He's already "Bones". Slightly oddly, "The Man Trap" involves an ex-girlfriend of McCoy's, while in the future we'll mostly see a long parade of Kirk's exes. (I don't think I'll be spoiling a 54-year old show too badly if I reveal that "Nancy' is actually an alien "salt vampire".)
Spock is already Spock - mostly. We first see him in charge on the bridge, where Uhura is trying to flirt with him (unsuccessfully)
Uhura: Tell me how your planet Vulcan looks on a late easy evening when the moon is full.
Spock: Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura.
Uhura: I'm not surprised, Mr Spock.
However, his "logical" persona comes a bit unstuck at the end of the episode, where he has an extremely emotional outburst. ("It's killing the captain!") And as the Vulcan neck pinch has yet to be invented, we see him throwing punches.
The relationship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy is not yet quite there. Kirk is clearly friends with McCoy, but the snarky banter between Spock and McCoy is not yet in evidence. There's a germ of a friendship between Kirk and Spock, but their relationship is yet to develop it's relaxed, teasing quality.
Uhura, Janice Rand and Sulu all get decent scenes. Sulu is hanging out in the botany lab in this episode. I don't recall if we see him there again. Is it a characteristic they dropped? No sign of Scotty in this episode. All in all, they do a good job of showing us the Enterprise as a working starship with a busy crew.
Oh, and not one, but four redshirts get killed in this episode. Oddly enough, none of them are wearing red shirts! However the episode establishes the Star Trek tradition of killing day-players and extras.