Mudd's Passion by: Stephen Kandel and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“Mudd’s Passion” is written by: Stephen Kandel and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22008, was the 10^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on November 10, 1973.

 

Leave it to Roger C. Carmel to come into an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series and make it one of the most lively episodes the series has seen thus far.  “Mudd’s Passion” is the third episode of Star Trek to feature the character of Harry Mudd and it’s probably the strongest of the three.  Stephen Kandel once again writes the script from his own original ideas like “I, Mudd” was meaning he is not beholden to Gene Roddenberry’s ideas as he was in “Mudd’s Women”.  Every scene Carmel is in means that he is the one stealing the show, his distinctive voice and personality coming through the rather limited animation of the show’s general budget.  This still has some of the issues trapping any episode featuring Harry Mudd, specifically the sexism inherent in who his character is and the fact that the episode sees Mudd once again using the sex angle to sell his wares.  This time it’s a literal love potion that can be used to force someone of the opposite sex to fall madly in love with you with one touch.  It’s explicitly explained to be for heterosexual pairings as is to be expected from a children’s cartoon from 1973, but what’s stopping this from being as bad as the literal sex trafficking plot and apologetics of “Mudd’s Women” is that this time the twist is that the love potion actually works.  The framing of the episode keeps Harry Mudd as a complete conman, we initially see him like a carnival barker asking people to step right up and see as he demonstrates the use of the love potion.  Of course, it’s being used on an alien that is disguised as a human and in on the con which then makes the twist of it actually working being easier to swallow.  It also probably helps that this is a 25-minute episode so there isn’t as much time for the episode to really go off the deep end like “Mudd’s Women” did.

 

Stephen Kandel also actually uses the opportunity to focus on Nurse Chapel as a character, though not particularly in depth.  The unrequited romance between Nurse Chapel and Spock is one of those elements of Star Trek that feels like it has entered public consciousness more than it appeared in the show, only really showing up in the original series occasionally.  This is at least partially because Nurse Chapel as a character is one that doesn’t get much focus, but Kandel writes her here closer to an actual nurse/scientist.  She is initially skeptical of Harry Mudd’s claims about a love potion and is fully ready to analyze the drug she’s given.  Kandel does add one line telling her not to and the fact that she immediately believes him feels a bit too much like writing her like a typical female character from the 1960s (aka the prevailing idea that women are fools).  The way Majel Barrett and Leonard Nimoy play the romance is actually quite interesting, Nimoy almost struggles to keep his emotions in check as Spock when Nurse Chapel is kidnapped in the third act of the episode and the climax moves to an alien planet with dinosaur like monsters.  Kandel clearly understood in terms of setting what Star Trek: The Animated Series could actually do and wanted to take full advantage of it making this episode particularly interesting to look at.  There’s also the added tension of the love potion infecting the Enterprise and making everyone begin to fall in love with each other which is brief because if it were extended at all the target age demographic would almost certainly increase from the audience of children.

 

Overall, “Mudd’s Passion” is surprisingly the strongest of the three episodes of Star Trek to feature Harry Mudd, at least in this era of the show.  While it does have the problems of falling into sexism with love potions already being an implicitly problematic trope, but since this is an episode that uses it largely for the absurdity of a working love potion it doesn’t fall entirely into the problems of the trope.  Now I don’t quite get why it’s called “Mudd’s Passion”, but hey it’s an episode that knows exactly what it is doing and where the fun is to be had.  7/10.