The Money of Mudd

TOS: Episode 6: Mudd's Women

One of Mudd's Women struggling over the choice of taking Mudd's illusion medicine

Episode Quick Summary
The episode opens with the Enterprise discovering a ship deep within an asteroid belt. The ship refuses to respond to the Enterprise's hailings, even as it clearly needs help before it is destroyed. Finally, the crew beams aboard the mystery ship's crew just as an asteroid destroys it. The crew of the mystery ship consists of a man named Walsh (dressed as a Musketeer), and three very glamorous women that prove to be quite distracting to the men on board the Enterprise. Walsh explains to Captain Kirk that the women are not actually crew men, but instead cargo destined to marry settlers on a distant planet. It's important to note that the women are not merely attractive. As Kirk puts it, they have a strange magnetic power on the men of the crew, including the captain himself. Walsh turns out to have violated Star Fleet protocol and so the crew launches a ship's hearing against him. In the hearing we discover that Walsh is actually a smuggler with psychiatric issues. And the women repeatedly show concern of being discovered (of what we do not initially know), and also of not fulfilling their original flight plan.

Episode Tidbits
Roddenberry originated this episode. We discover again that he is fascinated with illusion and its potentially destructive power over otherwise self-controlled men. But further, in this episode Roddenberry also reveals his interest in the effects of illusion on its practitioners. The women in this episode have a highly alluring power, and yet project a power more than a mere person would. During an inadvertent pass in front of McCoy's medical scanning equipment we see that the equipment does not recognize one of the women as medically normal, and yet, the men on the ship are unable to control themselves in the face of the women's attention. Even Captain Kirk is almost lured in by one of them, until she suddenly stops directing her attention at him and announces that she hates what she is doing. When she returns to her quarters she reveals that she does not feel well, and that it is almost time. Shortly we discover that the women depend on some sort of medicine that makes them beautiful, and when the medicine has faded they no longer have the same power of allurement. The Walsh character controls access to the drug, and uses it (through the women) to leverage control over whatever rich men are within his vaccinity. Ultimately, what we discover is that this sort of illusion does not overcome our Star Fleet crew, but it does wear at the heart of the morally good woman living within it. It is in this way, then, too, that we discover some people simply are forced into situations that are bad for them. The woman suffering under the situation makes choices for herself, but she does so within constrained possibilities. What we learn, then, is that exploitation might not take away people's choices absolutely. Instead, people can make genuine choices, its just that those choices are within an unfortunate range of options. We see, finally, our suffering maiden give up her need for illusion in exchange for honest engagement with her circumstances. In doing so she faces who she honestly is, and the reality of the unfortunately circumstances she finds herself within. By facing herself in such a manner, she discovers her own ability to believe in herself and in so doing becomes beautiful naturally, without the medicine. To discover ones freedom in any situation, then, according to Roddenberry, is not to escape absolutely from our circumstances, but instead to find a way to genuinely engage with the options available. To do so, according to "Mudd's Women" is to believe in your self, and in believing in ourselves we find the beauty that is our own.