create a flexible single-piece mask, which was then painted. Chang added a white wig and attached glass lenses to the mask for eyes. Once Gimpel was wearing the mask, cuts were made into its wrinkles to offer the actress some limited vision while wearing it. Gloves were modified by Chang to give the fingers the appearance of tentacles with suction cups. William Ware Theiss created the rest of the costume out of a fur bodysuit. Johnson praised both Chang and Gimpel, saying that while the latter embodied the character, the design work meant that, in the final scene, it was as if the crew had to kill a "helpless dog". After filming, the costume was kept in Justman's office, becoming the first in an ever-growing number of alien costumes accumulated there. It reappeared on-screen in "The Squire of Gothos". Although referred to officially as the "M-113 creature", during production it was called the "salt sucker" and fans of the show have taken to referring to the alien as the "salt vampire". Later appearances Don Lanning was part of the team working on the creature effects for the 2009 film Star Trek. He was the key sculptor for the production, and personally revamped some of the aliens from the original series, including the salt vampire seen in "The Man Trap". He described the original design as "hokey", and said that he tried to change it to "something organic". The new version of the creature was unused in the film, which pleased Lanning. The creature did return in Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Rather than a single salt vampire, the 20-player PvE mission "Mine Trap" saw a Romulan colony overrun with them. A salt vampire also makes an appearance in an episode of the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks. In December 2019, an animated version of the creature made a brief appearance in the opening scenes of the Star Trek: Short Treks episode "Ephraim and Dot". Themes In his book The Influence of Star Trek on Television, Film and Culture, Lincoln Geraghty wrote that episodes such as "The Man Trap" demonstrated a recurring theme within the series: the more barren the planet, the more likely that characters will be in danger. Other episodes which he said supported this view included "The Cage" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". Geraghty also pointed out that elsewhere in the