Saturday, November 5, 2016

Mudd's Women: One Last Star Trek Review (at least for now!)

I swear I'm not turning this into a Star Trek blog. Just one more Trek entry and I'll get back to other topics, promise.

When last we left our intrepid twenty-first century feminist, Ian Saul Whitcomb, he'd gone through five episodes of the original Star Trek and been dismayed by its paternalism toward women. Dauntingly, he knew the next episode he faced would be "Mudd's Women," a tale of mail-order brides gussied-up by a beauty-inducing drug and taken to a mining colony as goods of commerce. Would the show's woefully dated attitudes make this the most uncomfortable episode yet?

Surprisingly, and to my great relief, no. In fact, the episode stood in stark contrast to its predecessors as the first genuine example of Star Trek as morality play, commenting on the social order of its time and suggesting that things ought to change.

(At this point, I'll give an obligatory spoiler warning, in case you haven't ever in the last fifty years watched this episode ...)

Where previous installments of the series showed the male officers of the Enterprise occasionally comparing notes on the attractiveness of female crew members, the Venus Drug of "Mudd's Women" turns them into gawking idiots, rendered incompetent by their baser instincts. Captain Kirk largely resists -- by taking his awareness of the women's hypnotic effect and making a determined effort to treat them like people and maintain his professionalism. When one of the women, Eve McHuron, complains about the eyes of all the crewmen following her, Kirk apologizes, saying, "They're not usually like that."

So despite the archaic plot device of mail-order marriage (and numerous "ooh-la-la" musical cues as the women slink and sway around), the episode carries a clear anti-ogling message throughout.

More importantly, in the climactic scenes, Eve McHuron chooses certain death over continuing to play the role society has foisted on her. She survives, demonstrating in the process a genuine character and intelligence that sets Kirk up to deliver the episode's crowning message: that there's only one kind of person -- "You either believe in yourself, or you don't."

Finally, six episodes in, I've found the Star Trek that forcefully helped make me the person I am today.

Ahead, warp factor one.

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