Original image via Wiki Media Commons
Welcome to part four of my Star Trek watch through! It’s been quite a while since I posted one of these, but I found myself with some down time over the holidays and was able to get back to watching it. This post will cover The Original Series, Episodes #6 and #7, “Mudd’s Women” and “What Little Girls are Made of.” Other posts in this series can be found linked at the bottom, and the watch order can be found on the first post, here.
Episode #6 – “Mudd’s Women”
This episode was a strange one. It starts with The Enterprise in pursuit of an unidentified Class-J Cargo vessel… Which turns out to be carrying just three women and a man named Mudd. The Enterprise blows most of its circuits chasing Mudd’s ship and must head to Rigel 12, a nearby lithium crystal mining planet before its life support systems fail. The longer the women are aboard the ship, the more strangely the male crewmembers act. Spock, obviously, is not affected. McCoy makes a comment that one of the women made his medical equipment beep as she walked past it, saying that any alien who could make itself so beautiful would be smart enough not to have that effect on the equipment. He wonders aloud to Kirk if they are actually just acting beautiful and if that is what makes them beautiful. Near the arrival at Rigel 12, Mudd is shown tearing apart his quarters to locate a drug for the women, and after giving it to them, using a stolen communicator to contact Rigel 12 and beg for them to negotiate his release in exchange for the women.
Once on Rigel 12, the miners want nothing to do with Kirk or the USS Enterprise and instead focus on the women. Running low on power, Kirk reluctantly agrees to give the women to the miners. One of the would-be-brides, Evie, runs off into a sandstorm and by the time the miner rescues her the drugs that Mudd gave her have worn off. Kirk and Mudd arrive to retrieve the power supply crystals and Evie looks as though she has aged 10 years. She claims that the so-called Venus drugs are what have been making her beautiful, and takes some when Mudd offers them to her. Kirk points out that it wasn’t the drugs which made her beautiful. She insists that they are, but Mudd admits that she just ate colored jello, not the Venus drug. Evie decides to stay with the miner and Kirk and Mudd return to The Enterprise.
I think it worth noting that only two women aside from Mudd’s three women appear in this episode. One unidentified crew member and Uhura, who is notably wearing the yellow uniform of a commanding officer rather than the red of a communications, engineering, or security officer.
Was the point of this episode that women are only beautiful when they believe they are? I expected them to out Evie as an alien who can change her appearance at will. The concept that her appearance could change (from no-makeup to makeup much less) by just deciding she wanted to be beautiful is a little silly. In real life, confidence does play a part in beauty, but not anywhere close to that drastic of one.
Episode #7 – “What Little Girls are Made of”
Finally, the return of Majel Barrett! I loved her as Number One in the original pilot, “The Cage”, that was scrapped. She returns in this episode as Nurse Christine Chapel, who signed up to work on the USS Enterprise in order to find her fiance, Dr. Roger Korby.
The crew of the Enterprise arrives at Exo-III, where Dr. Korby was last stationed, and Captain Kirk and Nurse Chapel beam down to the cave he has supposedly been living in, where they spend hours wandering the abandoned tunnels before locating Korby and meeting a few of his friends – Dr. Brown, whom Nurse Chapel is acquainted with, and Ruk and Andrea. When Chapel questions the fact that Dr. Korby and Andrea seem close, and that Dr. Brown does not remember her, Dr. Korby reveals that Dr. Brown is also an android, created by transferring Dr. Brown’s personality to the robotic body just before the doctor died. Ruk and Andrea are also androids.
Dr. Korby shows Kirk and Chapel how an ancient machine left behind by a race known as “the old ones” makes androids, using Kirk as an example. While Korby shows Chapel around his home, Kirk returns to the Enterprise to check in. During her discussion with her fiance, Nurse Chapel finds out that he, too, is an android, built by the actual Dr. Korby as he was freezing to death. Korby-droid, who has up until now insisted that the androids cannot feel emotions such as love or anger, proclaims his love for Chapel is everlasting, and that he is exactly who he has always been, just immortal. Chapel spurns his advances as Captain Kirk arrives, revealing that the Kirk aboard the Enterprise was actually the android version of him. Kirk-droid has been killed and so has the male android, Ruk. Dr. Korby is forced to confront his fears when Andrea, the female android, proclaims her love for him and kisses him. Dr. Korby cannot stand his own creation and fires her phaser, destroying them both.
With all of the androids destroyed and no one left on the planet, the crew returns to the ship, where Nurse Chapel decides to stay on for the remainder of the mission now that she has no ties elsewhere.
Both of these episodes put women in competition with one another and in a spotlight where they could only interact with other characters romantically. In that way, they were both mildly disturbing. I enjoyed Majel Barrett’s return, as I enjoy her acting and can’t wait to see where she goes from here, but overall I was underwhelmed by both of these episodes.
Other Posts in This Series:
Star Trek – The Original Series: Season #1
“The Cage” and “The Man Trap”
“Charlie X” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
“The Naked Time” and “The Enemy Within”
“Miri” and “Dagger of the Mind” (COMING SOON)
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