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such_heights) wrote2009-06-27 12:09 pm
such_heights) wrote2009-06-27 12:09 pm
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Star Trek Rewatch -- Mudd's Women
The Enterprise rescues a con man named Harry Mudd who is trafficking in mail order brides. [Memory Alpha]
The Enterprise is following a small ship in distress, which evades the ship to the extent of flying into an asteroid belt and overheating its engines.
Scotty manages to beam the crew aboard as their ship explodes.
First, a man introducing himself as Leo Walsh, who explains that they were unsure if the ship that was pursuing them was hostile or not. The other occupants of the ship follow after him.
Scotty and McCoy are somewhat... struck.
Walsh introduces the women as his 'cargo', and they have a very strong affect on the male members of the crew, who become utterly distracted by their beauty.
Meanwhile, the ship's lithium crystals are almost completely burnt out after following Walsh's ship, and Kirk sets course to Rigel XII to find replacements. He confines Walsh to quarters pending a hearing with regard to his behaviour.
Walsh tries to pass himself off as an honest ship's captain, but the computer's not having any of it.
Turns out, his name is in fact Harry Mudd and he has an outstanding criminal record and revoked ship's master's license. Kirk decides to hand him over to the authorities as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the three women are free to explore the ship. Ruth visits McCoy in sickbay and in doing so alerts some kind of medical scanner, and Eve visits Kirk in his quarters.
She attempts to seduce him but then confesses that she doesn't really want to do it, and runs out in distress.
Mudd has plans for when they reach Rigel XII, and thinks that the women can find husbands just as easily there as they could at their intended destination.
In the meantime, the women are feeling ill and start to change.
Mudd hastily digs up pills that restore them to their former appearance.
The miners of Rigel XII beam aboard to discuss crystals with Kirk. He offers to pay them, but they want to barter -- they want the three woman, and Mudd's freedom. With the ship running ever-lower on power, Kirk doesn't have much choice. He beams down to the surface with Mudd.
The women are talking to the miners, who are as susceptible to their charms as the Enterprise's crew. So much so, that a fight breaks out when two of the miners argue over Ruth.
Eve, growing ever more unhappy with her situation, runs out into the dangerous storm brewing up outside.
She's eventually rescued by one of the miners.
She cooks for him in payment for eating some of his food, much to his initial displeasure. Then her looks begin to fade again, and he grows more aggressive.
When Kirk and Mudd arrive, they explain that the women have been using a drug that controls their appearance to make them seem more beautiful.
Eve takes another pill, restoring herself.
Then, Kirk tells out that in fact it was a placebo, gelatin rather than the drug itself. A placebo so strong, in fact, that you can exude confidence and spontaneously develop lipgloss. The other two women have already married miners, but when it's revealed that Eve's beauty isn't really a fake, Childress asks her to stay and talk.
Kirk takes Mudd away again to ensure he gets his trial.
***
Thoughts? I'm pretty sure I won't be hanging on to this one! Oh dear.
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Even watching this as a kid, I knew I was being anvil'd by a Big Damn Moral Lesson, and that it didn't really work the way they meant it to. "But...all they did was take the women's makeup off to make them 'ugly'. So is it self-confidence, or Maybelline, that makes women attractive to men?"
And the sad thing is, they truly thought they were being feminist.
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Quite apart from the skanky gender issues, I find myself deeply amused by the heterosexuality yay! of the ep. "No, they're all straight, really, we promise!" Fnerk.
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Self confidence - as good as any stylist.
Good grief. I sort of like that I think they were trying to say positive things about women and sort of what to smack them for getting it so horribly wrong. It wouldn't have even been so bad without the 'it's ok you are actually sexy so you get a happy ending with this possibly abusive man stuck on this horrid rock' part. If Eve had decided to say screw it all I don't want any of them it would have rescued it a little. But in the end it was just utter utter fail.
I was also bemused by the fact that the men were all so struck by these women because they were so beautiful and so daringly dressed when they are SURROUNDED by gorgeous girls with even skimpier outfits. Hell, Uhura was sat behind them for a lot of this.
Also - really felt we should have seen some of the other women's reaction to what was happening. Although as they would probably have gone the jealousy route probably better we didn't.
It does sort of make me want fic though where half the crew are so overcome by these women that the gay men, straight women and possibly Spock (as I couldn't tell if he was affected or not) - have to take over the ship to stop something stupid happening.
Oh well, at least my watching experience was greatly improved by me buying the first season on DVD.
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And it styles your hair, too! Damn, I want that drug now...
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"No...an alien smart enough to pull this could also keep my medical scanner from going BEEP!"
That beep at the end made me crack up.
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(Anonymous) 2009-06-28 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)LOL
ST: TOS is just... so good for a laugh. :)
virginhuntress @ LJ
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