Mudd's Women by: Stephen Kandel, from a story by: Gene Roddenberry, and directed by: Harvey Hart

 

“Mudd’s Women” is written by Stephen Kandel, from a story by Gene Roddenberry, and directed by Harvey Hart.  It was filmed under production code 4, was the 6^th episode of Star Trek Season 1, and was broadcast on October 13, 1966.

 

Sometimes you remember you are watching a show from the 1960s.  “Mudd’s Women” is a quintessential example of this phenomenon.  I don’t want this review to boil down to this episode is a very sexist episode that doesn’t make internal sense, but this episode is very sexist and doesn’t make internal sense.  Gene Roddenberry came up with the idea and handed scripting duties to Stephen Kandel who wrote for several television series spanning the 1960s to as late as the 1980s, but this episode generally doesn’t come together in terms of plot.  The premise is that the Enterprise follows a small cargo ship which gets destroyed under the supervision of one Harry Mudd, played by Roger C. Carmel.  The twist is that the cargo are beautiful women who enrapture the crew and are being sold as frontier wives.  Now, this does have its historical roots in the idea of Star Trek being Wagon Train to the Stars reflecting ideas of the American frontier but in space.  This is perhaps the closest that Star Trek has gone to explicitly condoning the idea of manifest destiny and that might be one of the least Star Trek things that the show has actually established.  Yes, exploration of strange new worlds fits with manifest destiny, but as Roddenberry has set up the show the point is humanity as not interfering and not subjugating alien species so “Mudd’s Women” just feels like an outsider.

 

There is an angle to take on “Mudd’s Women” that it’s attempting to have a feminist message, the women’s beauty is down to a drug which sort of represents an unattainable beauty standard, but that is undercut ending with the reveal that the drug is a placebo and the women can just create their beauty.  This doesn’t work since they show the women physically transforming and becoming beautiful once actually taking the drug.  This gets at an underlying issue with Harvey Hart’s direction, it doesn’t really flow nicely.  The direction of this episode is one where there just is never a static shot that starts and ends being static which is certainly a directorial choice, but unlike other films and television episodes that will use a moving camera to convey something these shots just move to move.  It’s also kind of jarring when it doesn’t necessarily follow who is speaking which again can be done really well if it’s intending to draw the focus to something else, but here it feels as if Hart is just doing this for either no purpose or to pander to the male gaze.  That isn’t to say that “Mudd’s Women” is all bad: Roger C. Carmel’s performance is devouring the scenery with several insane accents as he lies himself into a hole with the final lines of the episode being this genuinely funny exchange between Mudd and Kirk, and the performances are genuinely great with DeForest Kelley being the standout of the main crew here (and the occasional really nice one line from George Takei).

 

Overall, “Mudd’s Women” is just an underwhelming experience where the utter camp of the first half really doesn’t overcome the genuine sexism and weird messaging that it includes.  There might be an interesting story to tell here, but the bad direction and script don’t work well.  While it doesn’t make me as uncomfortable as say “Charlie X” did on rewatch, it definitely reduces its female characters to objects while actively trying to avoid that and failing to do so.  4/10.