These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One

by Cushman, Marc

  And the reply:

  Dear John: I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, we have just completed an episode for which we built the exterior and interior of such a vessel and, since then, have used it still another time....” Gene Roddenberry.

  Aftermath

  While hosting Saturday Night Live on December 20, 1986, William Shatner made a notorious reference to this episode. In a comedy sketch Shatner, appearing as himself at a make-believe Star Trek convention and taking one too many questions from fans overly-devoted to the series, goes into a rant, telling the Trekkies to “get a life.” Seeing how he has hurt their feelings, Shatner immediately backpedals and explains that what they just witnessed was a “recreation of the evil Captain Kirk from episode 37 [sic], ‘The Enemy Within.’” The actors playing the fans perk up and shower Shatner with applause.

  In the 2011 Family Guy episode “The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair,” baby Stewie accidentally creates an evil duplicate of himself. The homage to Star Trek includes lighting and music reminiscent of “The Enemy Within.”

  11

  Daniels Leaves His Marc / “The Man Trap”

  Marc Daniels (James Lind Library)

  Marc Daniels was one of the series’ most beloved directors. He would tie with Joseph Pevney (yet to join the series) at 14 episodes each, more than double that of any other director. Daniels was now preparing to take his first Trek. Lucille Ball knew and respected him, as did Roddenberry.

  His credentials were certainly impressive. Daniels, like many directors from the early days of television, began as an actor on stage in New York, where he also studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

  During World War II, Daniels saw two years of combat before being reassigned to assist on an Army-sponsored project intended to boost the morale of a nation: Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army, made into a motion picture in 1943.

  Back in New York in 1946, Daniels found work as an instructor with the American Theatre Wing, sponsored by the GI Bill. The Wing provided workshops for war veterans in theater, opera, radio, and the experimental medium the press was calling “tee-vee.”

  After a two-year internship, Daniels was given the opportunity to direct a new anthology series for CBS staged in New York. Ford Television Theatre premiered in October 1948. By January, it was a hit with the critics and building a loyal audience. For its presentation of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Variety reported that the “direction by Marc Daniels of both the ‘thesps’ and cameras was standout.” A few months later, the same trade reported:

  Television matured quite a few notches Monday night when the CBS hour-long Ford Theatre carried a video adaption of Moss Hart’s “Light Up the Sky,” which closed a few weeks back on Broadway.... As adapted to “tele”... and directed by Marc Daniels, with most of the Broadway legit cast intact, Hart’s comedy of anguish and ecstasies came off as one of the TV treats of the season.

  Daniels said at the time, “In doing the nine shows this year we were able to perfect our production technique to the point where we could do ‘Light Up the Sky’ in five days from the purchase of the property. This included adapting and preparing the script.” (44-5)

  Daniels was learning to think and direct fast, a talent which would benefit Star Trek.

  In the fall of 1950, Daniels left Ford Theatre to direct and produce Nash Airflyte Theater, a 30-minute series. Variety said:

  With the flock of hour-long productions involved in a cooperative race for suitable properties, Daniels is exploring the short-story, one-act field for his adaptations and has at his command a vast supply of heretofore untouched properties.... Here a good scripter has infinite possibilities to develop a play for the TV medium unfettered by previous treatment, or the ogre of cutting.

  Daniels had now introduced another innovation: the 30-minute anthology -- a format later to be utilized so well in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, One Step Beyond, and The Twilight Zone.

  In 1951, Daniels had a major hand in yet another innovation, one that would inadvertently lead to the funding for Star Trek. For the fall TV season, he collaborated with Desi Arnaz in developing the technique of utilizing three film cameras in front of a studio audience, making I Love Lucy the template for all sitcoms to come. For its October 17 review, Variety said:

  It’s a slick blending of Hollywood and TV showmanship, for which much of the credit belongs to [cinematographer] Carl Freund on the camera masterminding and Marc Daniels on the direction.

  Daniels stayed closely involved with Lucy during that first formative year, but on May 14, 1952, the same trade reported:

  I Love Lucy will be without the services of Marc Daniels next season. After he finishes off the last of the 38 [first season episodes], which he directed from the outset, he’ll drop off the show because of money differences. Desilu Corp. refused to meet his demands for upped coin.

  Daniels later said, “Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, but then we didn’t know we were creating history. We were just doing a show.” (44-7)

  Five months after he resigned, the dispute was settled and Desilu hired him to direct the first season of a new sitcom, at double his previous price -- I Married Joan starred Joan Davis and Jim Backus. The critics and public loved the show. Variety in its review said, “Marc Daniels’ direction saw to it that the film erupted with proper climaxes.”

  In the fall of 1953, Desi Arnaz moved Daniels to yet another sitcom, this time for Ray Bolger, best known today as the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Variety said, “Marc Daniels again demonstrates his deft directorial touch.” Daniels stayed long enough to get the show established, then resigned after filming his 13th episode. He had done much for Desilu, now he wanted to do for himself. One month later, NBC aired a special two-hour presentation of “Backbone of America.” Daily Variety said:

  One of the literary events of television’s brief but brilliant career flashed across the nation’s screens last night and the “average” American family must’ve felt the warming influence of their own depiction.... Direction of Marc Daniels [was] well executed.

  In 1960, Daniels directed a two-hour live presentation of Mrs. Miniver for CBS. Daily Variety deemed it to be “one of the more satisfactory attempts at TV remakes of screenplays this season.... Credit its success to the acting of Maureen O’Hara... and to the careful direction of Marc Daniels.” Next, he directed the premiere episode of The Chevy Mystery Show. Daily Variety said, “Movement and positioning of the players was handled with adeptness and originality by director Marc Daniels,” and credited him with getting the new series “off to a crisp start.” He also directed “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” an episode of The DuPont Show of the Month. The cast for this movie-length television presentation included William Shatner. The critic for Variety wrote:

  Apart from the excellence of the physical production and the flawlessness of the performances, this “Pimpernel” had just the right touches and flavor to make an immensely enjoyable show.... Daniels handles a large cast with ease and fluidity, and his show clicked off with the pace of a racehorse.

  Regarding 1961’s The Heiress, Variety wrote, “Under the skillful directorial hands of Marc Daniels, the production had a swift, direct, pungent movement.” Later in the year, another two-hour drama -- Laurence Olivier in The Power and the Glory -- brought more praise from the trade: “Marc Daniels’ direction was sensitive.” For this job, Daniels also received a Directors Guild Award nomination.

  In 1962, Four Star Productions put Daniels under contract to direct The Dick Powell Theatre and to produce and direct pilot films for the studio. One, Saints and Sinners, created by Adrian Spies (later to write for Star Trek), and starring Nick Adams as a newspaper reporter, sold as a 30-minute drama, with Daniels as the resident director. Warren Stevens was in one episode and this meeting resulted in Daniels casting him for the Star Trek episode “By Any Other Name.”

  In 1963, Daniels created another TV event. On August 30, Daily Variety announced:

  Marc Daniels has
been signed to produce and direct a t-version [Variety slang for TV-version] of The Advocate, which will set a precedent when it beams performance on its Broadway opening night.... The director will take over a fully-rehearsed Broadway cast... and restage the play to meet the needs of a taped video presentation.

  The big night was October 14. The critics were ecstatic. Eleanor Roberts of The Boston Globe wrote, “This was more than TV theatre. It was true theatre transplanted to the little box.” Donald Kirkley of The Baltimore Sun wrote:

  The TV direction of Marc Daniels left nothing to be desired. In style and content it was like something in the Play of the Week series, which remains the outstanding result of cooperation between stage people and the electronic medium. This is not surprising when one considers that Marc Daniels also was responsible for “A Month in the Country,” one of the best of the P-W series.

  Donald Mainwaring of The Christian Science Monitor wrote:

  Congratulations are due all around. First to the Group W program department whose notion this was, and especially to the director of the television version, Marc Daniels, who can add this play with pride to an already large number of television successes.

  Never resting on his laurels, Daniels kept busy for the remainder of 1963, directing the critically acclaimed one-hour drama East Side/West Side, starring George C. Scott, and Gene Roddenberry’s The Lieutenant (the episode featuring Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett).

  In 1964, he worked for Burke’s Law and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. James Doohan was a guest player in the latter, less than a year away from Star Trek. Daniels also did several episodes of Ben Casey. Among the guest players were Susan Oliver, fresh off “The Cage” and Star Trek-bound Eddie Paskey. Also present was Alfred Ryder, whom Daniels would book for his first Star Trek assignment “The Man Trap.”

  For 1966, among other series, Daniels directed for Mission: Impossible, where he met guest player Barbara Luna, who he would later cast in “Mirror, Mirror,” for Star Trek.

  During all of this, Marc Daniels had given direction to a sky full of movie stars: Bing Crosby, Henry Fonda, David Niven, Ronald Reagan, Fredric March, Charles Boyer, Julie Harris, Joseph Cotten, and Boris Karloff, among so many others.

  And Broadway stars like Paul Muni, Paul Mazursky, Farley Granger, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Zero Mostel.

  TV stars who received direction from Daniels included series’ leads James Arness, Elizabeth Montgomery, George C. Scott, Chuck Conners, Robert Cummings, Barbara Eden, Gene Barry, Robert Culp, Eddie Albert, Vince Edwards, Richard Chamberlain, Richard Crenna, Robert Lansing, Gary Lockwood, Robert Vaughn, and Patty Duke. And William Shatner ... and Lucy and Desi.

  Daniels was now 54 and, as proven by his past, willing to take on a challenge. When his agent called with an offer from a chancy show like Star Trek, he naturally said “yes.”

  Episode 5: THE MAN TRAP

  Written by George Clayton Johnson

  (with Gene Roddenberry, uncredited)

  (additional story elements by Lee Erwin, uncredited)

  Directed by Marc Daniels

  NBC publicity photo

  (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)

  From TV Guide, September 8, 1966 issue:

  This science fiction series centers on the crew of the USS (United Space Ship) Enterprise as they travel on an extended space patrol. Tonight: the Enterprise stops on planet M113 for the annual medical checkup of archeologists Bob and Nancy Crater -- but Nancy doesn’t seem to be herself.

  Nancy is an old flame of Leonard McCoy, and the good doctor’s eyes now seem to be clouded by past fondness. As Captain Kirk struggles with growing doubts concerning his Chief Medical Officer’s judgment, a member of the landing party suddenly dies under mysterious circumstances. All McCoy can tell Kirk is that the crewman -- the first of many to die in this story -- had all the salt instantaneously depleted from his body.

  Able to change its form and appear as various crew members, the chameleon-like alien “beams up” to a new feeding ground -- the Starship Enterprise.

  “The Man Trap” is a study of loneliness. This is not a simple Man against Beast tale but more so Man against Himself. The message: the mind believes what it wants to; if not, the heart certainly will. And hang on to your salt.

  SOUND BITES

  - Uhura: “Tell me how your planet Vulcan looks on a lazy evening when the moon is full.” Mr. Spock: “Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura.” Uhura: “I am not surprised, Mr. Spock.”

  - Kirk: “You could learn something from Mister Spock, Doctor. Stop thinking with your glands.”

  - Kirk, to Uhura: “Keep a tight fix on us. If we let out a yell, I want an armed party down there before the echo dies.”

  ASSESSMENT

  On the surface, “The Man Trap” appears to be a mere monster story. But the theme of loneliness is handled in a way not before seen on television. Only on an alien world with a ravenous creature that kills to survive and can change its form to take on the appearance of its past victims could the subject of love and loss of love be examined in such a unique way.

  Because the monster takes on the image of “that one woman from his past,” McCoy is distracted from his duty. Beyond this, Professor Crater lost his wife. He admits that he almost destroyed the creature when it killed Nancy. Had he given in to his impulse to kill, he would have been completely alone. Instead, he chose to allow the creature to replace the woman he had loved. “Nancy lives in my dreams,” Crater says, “and it becomes her for me. It doesn’t trick me. It needs love, too.”

  With this, “The Man Trap” is elevated above a standard monster tale.

  There are many standout moments. The speech in the briefing room about the creature being the last of its kind, nearly extinct like the buffalo, is one. Another is Crater’s confession that he has transferred the love for his wife to the creature, so much so that he cannot even pinpoint the exact date of his wife’s death. “A year... or was it two?”

  There are also some bad moments: the screeching plant in the botany lab that is clearly a man’s hand wearing a fluffy pink glove, the tacky sci-fi type music on the soundtrack played whenever the creature lurks nearby, and a few unnatural lines of dialogue, courtesy of Mr. Roddenberry’s rewrite, all to the chagrin of George Clayton Johnson. These include: “Go chase an asteroid,” “Do you suppose he’s gone space happy or something,” and “May the great bird of the galaxy bless your planet.”

  These peeves aside, “The Man Trap” is a personal story for McCoy, and contains elements of mystery, suspense, horror and action-adventure. It provides us with a tour of the Enterprise and does a splendid job of introducing many of the main characters. And, to NBC’s pleasure, it delivered on that bold speech made by Kirk at the start of each episode about exploring strange new worlds -- one reason why the network approved this as the lead-off episode for the series.

  THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

  Script Timeline

  Lee Erwin’s story outline, ST #13, “The Man Trap”: April 7, 1966.

  Erwin’s revised story outline, gratis: April 15, 1966.

  George C. Johnson’s 1st Draft teleplay, based on Erwin’s outline, now “Damsel with a Dulcimer”: May 23, 1966.

  Johnson’s 2nd Draft teleplay: May 31, 1966.

  Johnson’s rewrite, gratis (Rev. 2nd Draft teleplay, now changed back to “The Man Trap”): June 8, 1966.

  John D.F. Black’s script polish (Mimeo Department “Yellow Cover 1st Draft”): June 13, 1966.

  Gene Roddenberry’s rewrite (Final Draft teleplay): June 16, 1966.

  Additional page revisions by Roddenberry: June 17, 20 & 21, 1966.

  George Clayton Johnson, at 36, was a veteran writer of The Twilight Zone, contributing to eight episodes. Johnson had also written for Route 66 and Honey West, and provided the story for Frank Sinatra’s big screen hit Ocean’s 11. In the near future, he would co-author the science fiction book Logan’s Run, which spawned a movie and a short-lived TV series. And he acted once -- in The Intruder,
a 1962 movie starring William Shatner.

  John D.F. Black said, “I knew George for a long time. I knew George very well and I was glad he was on the show because I knew he could write. The only thing Mary and I could ever agree on about George’s writing was that he wrote a soap opera, meaning with a touch of sentimentality.” (17)

  Johnson’s first Star Trek assignment, “Chicago II,” based on Roddenberry’s idea about a planet patterned after Chicago of the 1920s and run by a crime syndicate, wasn’t working out. After reading Johnson’s treatment, Roddenberry wrote John D.F. Black:

  I feel this story lacks action. There is a lot of background and a lot of soul searching, but not much happening.... While well-written, and makes me want to keep him authoring for us, has too many points of similarities with other tales we’ve put to work. Therefore, rather than lose him... he and I are making a simple switch of stories. (GR5-1)

  The premise for “Chicago II” would be resurrected and merged with a story by a freelance writer to become “A Piece of the Action.” In the meantime, the new story selected for Johnson was another from Roddenberry’s 1964 Star Trek series proposal. Johnson was the second writer to get a crack at it. Roddenberry first assigned “The Man Trap” to Lee Erwin, who had written an episode of The Lieutenant. Erwin delivered his outline about a salt-sucking vampire on April 8, 1966. Justman told Roddenberry: