The last of its kind
| Episode of the series Spaceship Enterprise | |
|---|---|
| title | The last of its kind |
| Original title | The Man Trap |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| length | 50 minutes |
| classification | Season 1, Episode 1 1st episode overall ( list ) |
| First broadcast | September 8th, 1966 on NBC |
| German-language first broadcast |
September 28, 1987 on Sat.1 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Marc Daniels |
| script | George Clayton Johnson |
| production | Gene Roddenberry |
| music | Alexander Courage |
| camera | Gerald Finnerman |
| cut | Robert L. Swanson |
| Guest appearance (s) | |
| |
| chronology | |
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Successor → |
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The last of its kind (original title: The Man Trap ) is the first episode of the first season of the television series Starship Enterprise . It first aired in English on NBC on September 8, 1966 . In Germany, it was first seen in a dubbed version on Sat.1 in September 1987 , after ZDF ignored it when the series was first broadcast in Germany from 1972 to 1974.
action
We write the year 2266, stardate 1513.1. The Starship Enterprise is orbiting planet M-113 because of a routine medical examination that Dr. McCoy has to perform with the archaeologist Professor Robert Crater and his wife Nancy. Besides him, Captain Kirk and the crewman Darnell are beamed down while Commander Spock is in command of the Enterprise. The assignment is a bit delicate because McCoy had a love affair with Nancy Crater ten years earlier. Strangely enough, the woman does not appear to have aged to McCoy, while she appears to Kirk her age and Darnell believes she is seeing a woman he met on Wrigley's planet of pleasure.
Professor Crater, who explores the ruins of an ancient civilization, behaves dismissively towards visitors and even refuses a medical examination. However, he requires salt tablets as a dietary supplement, as these are needed in the dry climate of M-113. When McCoy starts investigating Craters, everyone hears a scream from Nancy. Darnell is lying dead on the ground outside because he allegedly ate from a local plant, which Nancy, she asserts, could no longer prevent. Spock's analysis later confirms that while the plant is poisonous, it could not have caused the noticeable spots on Darnell's face.
McCoy found Darnell's autopsy on board that there was no more salt in his body. Another member of the ship's crew dies a short time later on M-113. Crewman Green is also killed. Nancy suddenly transforms into the slain crewman and is beamed to the Enterprise, where it finds more victims. On the planet there is a fight between Professor Crater, Kirk and Spock. Crater is finally overwhelmed and confesses that the real Nancy has been dead for more than a year and has taken her role and place, a being on the planet, the last of its kind, a shape-shifter who lives on salt. He compares this creature to the extinct North American bison . The creature finally seeks McCoy, whose form it also takes for a while, and Kirk to kill, whereupon McCoy shoots it after some hesitation.
particularities
McCoy says for the first time the words that are often repeated in later episodes: "He is dead, Jim!" Only his quotes that begin with "I am a doctor, not ..." are more frequent. The following dialogue between Uhura and Spock is also remarkable.
Uhura: "Why don't you tell me what your planet Vulkan looks like on a mild summer night when the full moon is shining?" Spock: "The volcano has no moon, Miss Uhura." Uhura: "I'm not surprised at all, Mister Spock . "
In later productions such as Yesteryear (1973) and Star Trek: The Film (1979), various large celestial bodies were shown near the volcano, which in retrospect were not explained as moons, but as a sister planet with the moon. For a DVD version of the first movie, two of the celestial bodies shown were removed because they could be viewed as moons.
production
During filming, the episode was referred to as The Unreal McCoy for a while , referring to the shapeshifter who then takes on McCoy's appearance. This title was also used by James Blish for the book version at Bantam Books .
The last of its kind was selected as a pilot episode from among several episodes already filmed, although it was the sixth episode overall (production code 6149-06). The second pilot film The Tip of the Iceberg ( Where no man has gone before ) was only broadcast as a third episode. The episodes The Charlie Case and Mr. Mudd's Wives would also have been eligible. The original pilot film The Cage , shot in 1964 , was integrated into the double episode Talos IV - Tabu by means of a framework story .
Web links
- The Man in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The last of its kind on the Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha
- The last of its kind at Fernsehserien.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Simone Stölzel: Infinite Expanses: Solution-oriented thinking with Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2012, ISBN 9783647404592 , p. 24 ( limited preview in the Google book search)