Entertainment
Star Trek’s Biggest Actor Hates The Episode That Made Him Famous
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
What was the first episode of Star Trek? That’s actually something of a trick question: not only did The Original Series have an early pilot with (except for Leonard Nimoy) completely different actors, but producers shot episodes in a different order than they were originally shown on television. That first pilot (“The Cage”) would later have some of its footage reused in “The Menagerie” before being released as a separate episode. Meanwhile, “The Man Trap” became the first Star Trek episode that fans saw on television.
It’s a very solid sci-fi adventure featuring one of the ugliest (not to mention creepiest) monsters in genre history. The network carefully selected “The Man Trap” as the first episode to show, and their gambit worked. The new show instantly drew a legion of hardcore fans, and it would eventually become an even bigger cultural phenomenon once it was rediscovered by college students in the ‘70s. Ironically, though, nobody hates the first episode of Star Trek more than its biggest star: William Shatner!
Captain On The Bridge!
In “The Man Trap,” the Enterprise swings by an outpost to administer medical exams to all of the local residents. This is meant to be a routine mission, but things go sideways once Captain Kirk and his crew are assaulted by a shapeshifting monster. It’s hard for them to confirm who the alien is, especially when it can take the form of people like Dr. McCoy’s old flame. Eventually, the monster is revealed in all its horror as a salt vampire, constantly on the hunt for its next meal.
These days, “The Man Trap” is considered a very solid episode of Star Trek. Over on IMDB, it has a rating of 7.2, which is perfectly fair: while this is a decent sci-fi adventure, it’s nowhere near the heights of Original Series bangers like “Balance of Terror” and “City on the Edge of Forever.” However, Star Trek icon William Shatner really hated the episode. In his memoir Star Trek Memories, he noted how he and his fellow stars had already shot several episodes (including “Mudd’s Women” and “Charlie X”) but that the network “chose our absolute worst.” He went on to call it “a dreadful show” and reiterated “one of our worst ever.”
Still Salty About His Star Trek Premiere
It may sound shocking that Star Trek’s biggest star hates the episode that made him famous. However, Shatner may have been persuaded by some of the negative reviews this episode got back when it first premiered. A Variety reviewer dubbed “The Man Trap” a “dreary and confusing” episode, one that proved that this new sci-fi series “won’t work.” TV Guide was similarly negative and included in their mean review that “the sky’s not the limit for this Trek.” Leonard Nimoy agreed with Shatner, admitting in a documentary (which, confusingly, is also named Star Trek Memories) that this was the cast and crew’s least favorite episode compared to others that were already completed.
Fortunately, all’s well that ends well for the intrepid cast: Star Trek: The Original Series helped capture the public imagination in a big way. The show’s loyal audience basically invented the modern fan convention, and they also spearheaded multiple write-in campaigns to keep the show on the air.
Heck, Star Trek even inspired the first fanzines and modern fanfiction tropes, including slash fiction (Kirk/Spock) and the first Mary Sue. As for William Shatner, he became arguably the most famous sci-fi actor in the entire world, so there’s no need for him to be so weirdly salty about “The Man Trap.”
Obviously, being salty is downright dangerous. Do you want alien salt vampires, man? Because this is how you get alien salt vampires!
Entertainment
New safety rules for under-16 Snapchat users
Snapchat is rolling out new content-sharing protections for 13- to 15-year-old users.
The platform announced Wednesday that younger teens will get a “friends-only” experience for their Spotlight posts. That public feed consists of vertical videos short-form similar to Instagram Reels or TikTok.
The new rules make Spotlight content posted by 13- to 15-year-olds visible only to the user’s mutually accepted friends. Previously, under-16 users could post to Spotlight, without attribution to their profile.
“This allowed teens to participate, while helping to protect them from potentially unwanted contact that can come with public posting,” the Snap Company said in its announcement.
Under-16 Snapchat users will have a dedicated profile space for certain content.
Credit: Courtesy Snapchat
Now younger Snapchatters will get a space on their profile for creating, saving, and sharing Stories and Spotlight Videos with only their mutually accepted friends. Teens ages 16 and 17 can share content publicly with some safeguards.
“This new experience is designed to encourage creativity and self-expression within a trusted audience,” the company said.
Age checking on Snapchat
Currently, Snapchat relies on self-attested age and age inference, but safety advocates generally say social media platforms need high-quality age assurance to ensure their safety measures are effective.
When Mashable tested Snapchat’s age attestation prior to the announcement, we found that Snapchat defaulted user age to 18 years old.
Mashable Light Speed
With the new policy, if Snapchat determines a user is under 16, despite their stated age, that minor will be shifted into the friends-only sharing setting. That change will appear in the Snapchat app if they choose to post a Spotlight video.
Snapchat safety concerns
Last week, the advocacy groups Heat Initiative, Anxious Generation, ParentsTogether Action, and Design It 4 Us published the results of a survey of teen Snapchat users, alleging that the platform’s safety measures aren’t effective enough.
A third of the poll’s 1,016 respondents said they’d seen or received unsafe content or messages in the past week. More than half said they’d had at least one such experience in the past year.
The top three types of dangerous experiences reported by up to a third of teens were unwanted contact, bullying, and sexually suggestive content and messages. More than 40 percent of respondents who’d received unwanted messages believed the sender was an adult.
A Snap Company spokesperson told Mashable that the report “does not fully reflect the significant investments Snap has made to help protect young people.”
In the blog post Snap published Wednesday, the company noted that it works to prevent the delivery of friend requests from potential strangers, and that the platform doesn’t allow teens to be messaged by anyone they haven’t added as a friend or who’s not in their phone contacts. Additionally, when teens accept a stranger as a friend, Snapchat is designed to send warnings when minors begin chatting with that user.
“After years of advocacy by parents, kids, and experts, it’s encouraging that Snap is finally making some changes to try to prevent young children from posting in adult spaces, which has put kids in danger on the platform for years,” Brooke Istook, president and chief strategy officer at Heat Initiative, said in a statement to Mashable.
Istook added, however, that “fundamental dangers for kids that are baked into Snapchat’s design” remain unaddressed, including the facilitation of unsafe connections between teens and adults and the algorithmic recommendation of unsafe content.
Snapchat has been the target of youth safety activism and the target of legal action, like many major social media platforms. In January, Snap settled a lawsuit brought by a teenager who claimed that Snapchat’s design features, like algorithmic recommendations, led to addictive use and mental health harms. Soon after, Snap introduced new parental controls for teens.
UPDATE: Jun. 10, 2026, 8:27 a.m. PDT This story has been updated to include a statement from Heat Initiative.
Entertainment
Using Claude Fable 5 means your data will be collected. It’s not optional.
Anthropic just released its most powerful public model yet — Claude Fable 5. However, along with the model’s release, the AI giant also made a significant update to its data retention policies.
Fable 5 was released to the public on Tuesday. Fable 5 is a “safe for general use” version of Anthropic’s most powerful model, Mythos, which has been restricted from public use due to its potentially dangerous cybersecurity capabilities. Anthropic created a set of safety guardrails for Fable 5, and its benchmarks blow away much of the competition, per Anthropic.
But it looks like Anthropic has also blown away its data retention policies for Fable 5.
“To ensure we’re responsibly deploying Mythos-class models, we are requiring limited data retention and review as part of our safety work,” reads an update on Anthropic’s official Claude support page. “Prompts submitted to, and outputs generated by, Mythos-class models are retained for 30 days for trust and safety purposes, on every platform where these models are offered.”
The update was first noticed by Jun Park, the CEO of AI training company hillclimb.
Mashable Light Speed
“New policy from Anthropic: if you use Fable/Mythos, they collect your data. No exceptions. Not even for enterprise partners,” Park posted on X.
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This change is significant for Anthropic’s enterprise and API customers, says Jessica Eaves Mathews, a lawyer who specializes in copyright, trademark, and AI law.
In a post on Mathews’ Substack (as highlighted by CyberNews), the lawyer explains how Anthropic already retains user data for 30 days under its free and paid consumer plans. However, Matthews says this change nullifies part of any agreement Anthropic has with its enterprise and API partners.
“Every other Claude model available through the API, including Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6, and Haiku 4.5, can operate under Zero Data Retention (ZDR) agreements,” Mathews writes. “Fable 5 cannot. If your organization previously had a ZDR agreement with Anthropic, that agreement does not apply to Fable 5 traffic. This is a policy change that overrides existing enterprise commitments for this specific model class.”
Mathews says that any organization that believed that their data would not be stored by Anthropic should know that there is now a “mandatory exception” for Fable 5 and all future Mythos models.
While Mythos-class models seem to be quite powerful, companies should know about the change in Anthropic’s data retention policies and make adjustments where necessary.
Entertainment
Tons of Fitbits are on sale ahead of Prime Day
Best early Prime Day Fitbit deals at a glance:
Amazon’s Prime Day sales event is right around the corner (I can’t believe it’s that time of year again!), and I’m genuinely shocked by the deals we’re seeing this early in the game.
Usually, Amazon doesn’t put Fitbits on sale until the very last minute, and then they’re gone. (And some years, they don’t go on sale at all.) But right now, we’re seeing all-time lows on select Fitbit models, including the Charge 6.
Here are the best early Prime Day Fitbit deals you can shop right now:
Best deal overall
$99.95
at Amazon
$159.95
Save $60.00
Why we like it
The Fitbit Charge 6 isn’t the newest Fitbit on the market, but it still has (almost) everything you’d need in a smart wearable. (I say almost because the Fitbit Charge 6 doesn’t have an altimeter, but if you’re not a trail runner, this probably isn’t a deal breaker.)
The Charge 6 tracks your calories, steps, sleep, heart rate, and more. It also has built-in GPS, 40+ exercise modes, a seven-day battery life, and includes a three-month Google Health Premium (formerly Fitbit Premium) membership. Once the three months are up, you’ll need to either cancel or renew for $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually.
Mashable Trend Report
Right now, you can get the Fitbit Charge 6 for $99.95 at Amazon. This is the lowest price we’ve tracked on this model since its release in 2023.
Best runner-up deal
Why we like it
If you’re willing to spend a little bit more, the Fitbit Versa 4 is on sale for $149.95. This isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen (it was $104.96 in April 2024), but it’s still a pretty good deal.
Unlike the Charge 6, the Versa 4 has an altimeter and Bluetooth wrist calling. So, if you’re looking for a wearable that acts more like a smartwatch, the Versa 4 might be the better buy. That said, it doesn’t have the more “serious” health sensor that the Charge 6 does (e.g., ECG and EDA).
The Versa 4 also comes with three months of Google Health Premium.
Best budget deal
$79.95
at Walmart
$89.95
Save $10
Why we like it
If you’re just looking for something that’s affordable and efficient, the Fitbit Inspire 3 is your best option at $79.95.
It’s a no-frills fitness tracker that’ll give you the basic features you need to stay on top of your health. It can track your heart rate, steps, and stress levels. (It also offers menstrual health tracking, which is nice.)
You’ll also get 10 full days of battery life and, like the other models mentioned above, three free months of Google Health Premium.
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