gave the episode an unfavorable review over its "lack of meaningful cast leads", who "move around with directorial precision with only violence to provide the excitement." The weekly edition of the magazine offered a similar opinion, stating that the Enterprise "trudged along for a long hour with hardly any relief from violence, killing, ugly stuff and a distasteful monster". Among more recent reviews, Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an "A−" rating, describing it as "done very well" with a plot that is dark and ambiguous. Torrie Atkinson and Eugene Myers reviewed the episode in 2009 for Tor.com, saying that it suitably introduced the characters, although certain elements of the show were not yet in place. These included the lack of the death of a redshirted character, as the crewmen who died in "The Man Trap" did not wear red shirts, along with the lack of red and yellow alerts, instead referred to as general quarters three and four in this episode. The duo added that the episode demonstrated that the series was "something special", and that it remained more culturally diverse than modern television. They gave it a rating of four out of six. Ryan Britt, also writing for Tor.com, said that "The Man Trap" was not a good introduction to the series, but praised the screen time given to Rand, Uhura and Sulu. He added that the latter two were more interesting in this episode than they would be at any point until the start of the movie franchise. Britt said that "The Man Trap" was different than the rest of the series, and more akin to The Twilight Zone owing to the background of the writer. In Hollywood.com's ranking of all 79 episodes of The Original Series, Christian Blauvelt placed "The Man Trap" as 73rd, calling the creature "incredibly pointless". It was also listed as one of the show's "cheesiest classic creatures" by Wired magazine in 2007; however, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as the tenth best villain in the franchise. The Guardian noted "The Man Trap" as an episode about a salt-eating shape-shifter, on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek'''s first public broadcast in 2016. In 2018, PopMatters ranked this the 7th best episode of the original series.Star Trek news site Trek.Report gave the episode a ranking of 3 of 5, noting that actions of the crew were not affected by the "Prime