Mudd's Women

I have two personalities:

Nicest guy you’ll ever meet

and twisted fucking psychopath

I enjoyed Mudd’s Women. Compared to The Enemy Within, it kept a reasonable pace and no scene every overstayed its welcome or dwelt on lingering shots more than was forgivable for the era of television. With that out of the way, let’s focus on the man of the hour, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and how he appears on the scene looking for all the world like a flamboyantly gay cowboy

He’s a few rhinestones and buckle away from unlimited power.

The pre-credits scene was highly enjoyable - hot pursuit of a wayward ship that strains the Enterprise’s batteries. There’s plenty of technobabble to go around, and the classic Federation theme of trying to protect others no matter the cost to one’s self is right there.

It’s just that the only people they ended up protecting who were worth a damn were the titular women. 

Is Harry trying to start a late-90s pop group or what?

These women must have been pretty hot for the 60s, because every man on the ship went to boner country over them. 

The Trial of Harry Mudd

Kirk doesn’t buy Harry’s shit. He’s hostile to him, and if he bothered looking up the man’s prior record he knows who he’s dealing with. 

At one point, Kirk asks “Any past offenses, Mr. Mudd?”

I guess I could keep mining the character to jerk off about his Discovery appearances, but I really need to get going. 

Mudd is essentially being arrested for driving without a license and failing to file a flight plan. People have said he’s human trafficking, but he’s not - he is in possession of a controlled substance though. 

The women are willing (and probably paying) pawns in Harry’s game. They’re ugly (apparently) and just want to ditch their dull farm planets and get some men in their lives. Who wants to serve their brothers? Who wants to live on a planet full of sea farmers and machines? Not these ladies! Harry is just playing match-maker and trying to make a buck, like a shitty dating service run by a war criminal. 

I don’t get why the ladies are allowed to wander the ship - I don’t get why anyone is allowed to wander the ship, like Charles Evans. This isn’t the Holiday Inn of TNG’s Enterprise, this is a space submarine. Who knows when a Romulan plot or Klingon sleeper agent is going to come aboard?

Indeed, McCoy and Kirk discuss this, but McCoy figures they can’t be salt vampires or Talosian illusions. 

Now, about these women - they take beauty pills? Why don’t they just put on makeup or something? And the end, when the woman takes the placebo she just transforms as if she put on makeup? I don’t buy it. They look tired, they don’t have makeup on, so they’re ugly? These women aren’t ugly, they just have low self-esteem - and that’s basically Kirk’s message at the end. 

“Oh no! I’ve gone from a 10 to a 9! How shall I ever find love?”

The miners don’t really have any room to bargain, they’re not exactly lookers either. They also live in a space-trailer park on a planet that’s under constant dust storms, working in what amounts to a starship-oil field. Childress is a dick, but I think that’s because he’s been spending too much time alone in his space-trailer watching subspace porn and shitposting on the subspace radio network. 

Oh, and playing solitaire with his coasters. I love how TOS tries to futurize even mundane stuff like checkers and chess by making them 3D but when it comes to playing cards they just make them round. I bet these aren’t even a prop, I bet they actually sold this crap in the 60s. It was a weird decade. Another thing - the other miners got married over subspace radio! That’s like getting married on a subreddit! Kirk couldn’t be bothered to officiate?

There’s just not much else to say. 

Rating: 3/5; Don’t Skip

Mudd makes a return in later episodes and DSC, so I wouldn’t recommend skipping it. The episode moves quickly enough and has a lot going on without ever getting boring or full of itself. 

The Enemy Within

I did not care for this episode.

The first 23 minutes or so, and the last 10, were highly entertaining as Chill Kirk and Dick Kirk (as they appear in my notes) played a cat and mouse game of Concussed Kirk chasing Rapey Kirk, but the entire middle after capturing Asshole Kirk was duller than Alexander’s mek’leth.

Zing!

It felt like they had a solid plot in separating Kirk’s impulsive hothead side from his intelligent chill side, but then they needed to pad out half an hour.

There’s just not enough interesting material to pad it out. Sure, there’s the Spock/McCoy riffing science/heart, but once it’s established that these are two halves of one Kirk it’s BORING. I kept looking at the clock to see when they’d finally figure out the transporter crap and save the away team, whom I only care about because Sulu is down there and he proved to be a fun guy in the last episode.

What a card.

So without much interesting in the way of the plot’s concept, I’m left with the actions and attitudes of Drunk Kirk and Stoned Kirk (as they appear in my notes.)

This is your Kirk on meth.

This version of Kirk tried to rape Yeoman Rand, there’s no way around it. He didn’t succeed, but he assaulted her, and she was clearly traumatized by it, even willing to let it go almost! That poor woman. Let’s not also forget he physically assaulted Fisher afterwards. No wonder Janice leaves the ship, she probably couldn’t get over the man she moons over harboring an animalistic lust inside that gets brought out by a technological glitch. I’d have transferred the fuck off the Enterprise too, it was nothing special yet. 

Then there’s your Kirk on weed, who seems very relaxed and calm and supposedly embodies Kirk’s intelligence, yet all he does is kind of mosey around like he’s got a concussion, leaving Spock to solve all his problems. Did Harvey Weinstein Kirk get all the motivation for action as well? 

Topical!

For a few minutes I was wondering why not just beam the away team up, have a ton of security armed with stun set phasers in the transporter room, and drag a pile of stunned split-up crewmen to the sick bay to sort out later? Even toss a couple of red shirts in to test the re-fusion. 

I like to imagine Chill Sulu as a total gymbro going “No need to get me to sick bay, Mr. Spock, I’d prefer to head to the gym and get my protein shake on, do some reps, maybe fence a little with Riley” and Evil Sulu going “WHERE IS MY RAPIER AND LT. RILEY I’M GONNA TAKE HIM HOME AGAIN!”

He’s lucky he pulled his shit in the 23rd century, Picard cleaned out engineering after the D’s experience with restructured water molecules. 

Of course, that thought was vetoed when Evil Kirk started dying on everyone. 

Let’s talk about Wilson.

Wilson enters an empty transporter room and sees his captain acting weirdly before bailing and says nothing to anyone about it!

Nice Kirk tells Scotty not to leave the transporter room unattended, so I’m assuming that it’s protocol not to do so - Scotty screwed up a little, but Wilson enters the unattended room and see his captain acting strangely after an issue with the transporter! His boss isn’t there! He should have contacted SOMEONE!

I don’t even care to talk about the alien doggo, this episode was garbage and an example of bad TOS. Yeah, there’s Kirk’s little “I’ve seen a part of myself no man should ever see” at the end, Spock’s coy amusement after he says his bit to Rand, and some stuff about “you can’t let the crew sense weakness” but I’m out of anything positive to say about this episode.

Rating: 2/5; SKIP.

This is a totally nonessential episode that aged badly and drags throughout its entire middle.

The Naked Time

I found this episode highly enjoyable. 

We’ve seen Spock smile twice so far, we’ve seen him annoyed, but we haven’t seen him like this. Well, I guess that at episode 5 there really hasn’t been time. Spock goes from neutral, to focused, to irritated, to having had it up to here with everyone’s shit, to his emotional nature breaking through and breaking him down. It’s a great arc and without it this would not be that good of an episode.

Then again, there is Kirk’s bit about love. Kirk loves that ship like the wife he never had (almost married that blonde lab tech though), but not because it’d be against protocol to date his space-secretary - because the ship is the only thing that he can protect, that is there for him, day after day, and that he can die with if necessary. A female crewman love interest may die in an attack or on an away mission, be reassigned, or sent to an escape pod. The Enterprise is the only woman Kirk can love without the fear of losing her obstructing his duties, because preventing her destruction is his duty. 

It is these two arcs from TOS’ principal leads absolutely make the episode. 

Oh, wait, I’m sorry; Sulu going balls out camp makes the episode. “Joey just died? Well I know what’ll cheer us up - how about we go to the gym and get our fence on!” What a card. 

Now, here’s what’s sort of bothering me about TOS this time: Joey takes off his glove to itch his nose under the thermal environmental whatever suit, right? He doesn’t bother to put it back on right away! Don’t they teach these people anything at the Academy? Or in basic training for enlisted men? Spock reminds him after the fact - he shouldn’t have to!

Note the mannequin standing in for a dead, frozen body.

I noted that this is the first episode in which I believe EVERYONE is present; this is the first episode with Nurse Chapel, after all. Why didn’t the reboots have Rand and Chapel? Probably because JJ is a plebeian and a casual. 

Apparently she’s in love with Spock to boot. Her wig was awful, which is surprising. She gets drunk off the virus and stands around rubbing herself with a piece of medical equipment...I wondered if it...nevermind. Don’t go there, keep Star Trek clean.

QUIET, CADET!

I was wondering - why do they have to burn open the access panel for the engineering door controls? My theory: along with the analog controls and lack of view screens, this was a hold-over from the early wars of the Federation. The Romulans are probably dope at invasive malware; imagine reprogramming a ship to shut off all power to life support, jettison escape pods and shuttles, then turn into a giant drone that can terrorize enemy planets. That’s practically Cardassian now that I think of it...

Riley is going to eat shit over this. Joey is dead, and while Starfleet may understand the conditions, it clearly doesn’t file it under ‘important’ since it happens again 100 years later in The Naked Now, which I remember as being much, much less well done than The Naked Time. 

No, Mr. Riley is going to get thrown under the bus for nearly destroying the fucking ship! He shut off the engines! TO A STAR SHIP! He shut off the engines to a star ship orbiting a planet breaking up. If he appears after this, Starfleet either really needs crewmen or it is really understanding when it comes to space crazy - I like to consider the latter regardless of the hazards, because we’ve all done embarrassing things when we’re drunk. Still, the man deserves a court martial for subjecting the crew to intense psychological torture in the form of repeated renditions of ‘Kathleen’. I’ll take him home again - home to the penal colony in New Zealand. 

Btw, they invented time travel off the cuff by mixing matter and antimatter and kickstarting their engines. Maybe Riley gets off with a demerit because of that.

Misc.; 3D checkers! 

Personal Rating: 4/5; Don’t Skip.

This would be just another one of those wacky 60s Star Trek episodes if it weren’t for the profound reveal into Kirk and Spock’s characters in the last 15 minutes or so. In fact, it’s such a good episode I didn’t mind re-watching it to review it; I saw it a week or two ago but life has been happening pretty hard and I didn’t take notes. 

END.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

Where No Man Has Gone Before is my favorite episode of TOS so far in this viewing.

Because it was the second pilot commissioned, it was the second episode I watched (after The Cage, naturally) but I wanted to review it in the order it was aired, which is why I had to slog through The Man Trap and attempt to make a case for Charles Evans as a victim of abuse before I moved forward.

I really enjoyed this episode because it features Kirk at his finest: punching a god-like dick in the face.

I think a lot of people might call out Gary’s attitude towards Dr. Dehner as problematic, but I've got a few thoughts on that.

The guy has a bit too much of a navy attitude (in the words of Bert Cooper) to be serving aboard a deep space mission, but he's not an idiot; after all, third-optioning his way to pass Kirk's class at the Academy was a smart move and probably impressed Kirk enough to put him on the shortlist for the Enterprise - it was something I suspect Kirk admired, and he did almost marry that blonde lab technician (who is never named or gone into any depth - I'm going to say it's Carol Marcus because that's fun.) He's also revealed to have taken a poison dart for Kirk, so we know he's Starfleet material deep down. 

Where Kirk is the consummate professional, Mitch is still very much young, dumb, and full of cum - he lacks the discipline that Kirk has earned at his level of command, and the way he remembers Kirk at the Academy (a stack of books with legs) suggests he was one of those guys who puts more faith in his fists (and by extension, power) than he does scholarly knowledge (and by extension, wisdom.) One last thing - as far as I can tell, this is the Enterprise's first mission with Kirk at the helm, and therefore Gary's first posting, so him being a bit of a dickhead can be forgiven. Plus, you know, he’s only banting with Kelso because he got shot down.

Captain! We’re detecting large quantities of Gary’s bruised ego!

I have less to say about everyone else - Dr. Dehner is clearly fresh out of med school on her first space assignment, Sulu is the head of physics instead of a helmsman (let's say he transfers to command after this to fill Gary's vacated spot), the doctor isn't McCoy, Uhura and Rand aren't present, and the red shirts are beige (uniforms standard change effected when they pick up the rest of the crew.) You could say they’re just not seen, but I think it’s a Farpoint situation where the Enterprise is going to pick them up and Doc Grandpa is a temporary fill-in on his way to the Retirement Planet. 

So you know what happens; they hit the edge of the galaxy, crazy psychic energy, Gary becomes a dick, the engines shit out, and they make a desperate bid to ditch Mitch and gas up at the same time.

Yet another desert planet, but at least the matte painting is nice.

Seriously though, did Gene have something against deserts? In The Cage, the Mojave is a giant public park and all the shitty planets are deserts or mining operations. How you can live in SoCal and think the desert sucks is beyond me, I spent a few months in the Kaibab out in AZ and loved it. The desert calls to me (but I digress.)

There’s a lot more at stake here than in The Cage, and a little more than Charlie X; Gary is going to murder the crew and set himself up as a god. I keep thinking about Marc Antony in Egypt, because Gary is going to fuck his brains out, eat a bunch of rare animals, and ultimately get murdered by someone in a fit of arrogance. 

All things considered, I found this a much more interesting, exciting episode than The Cage; the characters have more charm, it feels like Kirk is actually making a tough decision putting his friend down, there’s a nobility in Dr. Dehner’s sacrifice, and I like a good old round of fisticuffs. I really hated those fringed collars, and Spock’s makeup was just awful.

But I’m intrigued by 3D chess. 

Personal Rating: 4/5; Don’t Skip

Where No Man Has Gone Before is an enjoyable TOS episode that establishes Kirk’s character fairly well in a way The Man Trap doesn’t and Charlie X doesn’t do very well. If you’re interested in watching TOS, start with this episode. 

END.

Charlie X: Teenage Asshole, or Victim of Abuse?

I like Charlie X  because an alienated 17-year-old boy who has been fostered by a reality-bending species is a fairly interesting antagonist to feature. Yes, it's another monster-of-the-week episode, but at least this one is presented as more than a dumb animal trying to survive only to be put down for being too dangerous. 

You may remember being 17. Being 17 was one of the worst years of my life; my hormones were on fire, my home life was awful, I was constantly torn between wanting to burn down a church (punk raaaawwwwk!), fuck everything that moved, serenade a beautiful woman, find something to believe in and crusade with, go on a month-long bender, write a book, build a house, join a cult, work on a ranch, run for public office...in short, I wanted to do everything right away right away and if I didn't do it soon I would never do it at all; this is what Billy Corgan meant about the urgency of now. 

Charlie is no doubt feeling that way, but he's also got reality warping powers, a raging hard-on, and he's on a ship full of people like him for the first time. Actually, this episode was a little like my first punk show. 

Punk rock!

I don't blame Charlie for the way he acted, because based on how insecure he was and the things he did to people who rejected him or he suspected were making fun of him, I came to the conclusion that Charlie had suffered abuse under the Thasians.

Goddamn energy dicks.

It's a bit cliche, but not untrue, that the abused go on to abuse others. Was Charlie using his powers creatively, or was he doing to people the things done to him as punishment? I go for the latter over the former. How many times had the Thasians lost their patience with Charlie and removed his face, or turned him into an iguana, or made him disappear completely? It took them a while to see that he was missing, so I'm thinking Charlie ran away - speaking from experience, it may have been the adventurous spirit of youth longing to join those like him, but it was also probably abuse. (Maybe I'm biased toward the abuse argument though.)

...and she can only sob.

The crew of the Enterprise did their best to be patient with Charlie, I'll give them that. Like so many foster parents charged with the care of an abused child, they simply didn't have the tools or expertise to deal with this sort of thing and managed as best they could. I'm sure if Charlie had been able to control himself (and what 17 year old victim of abuse can?), he would have found rehabilitation and constructive therapy at Earth Colony 5. I believe that even the young Federation would have a massive and effective mental health system in place for orphans abandoned on alien worlds and lone survivors of destroyed ships and colonies. (That's the kind of hopeful optimism for the future that Star Trek gives us.) 

How could the crew know that Charlie was anything more than an emotionally troubled teenager? As far as we know, they've encountered space orphans before and have shuttled them back to the proper facilities without any incident greater than a possible tantrum - but Charlie's tantrums remove voices and faces. They could not have known. 

I am not defending what he did, I'm trying to explore the reasoning behind his behavior. We usually charge teenage murderers as adults, after all, and Charlie murdered the crew of the Antares - the damning thing is he tried to pretend it wasn't a big deal, that it would have blown up anyways and justifies it by saying the crew of the ship were not nice to him. Well Charlie, my parents are bags of shit but I never murdered them, so that's a big no-no, son. 

Punk rawwwk!

In the end, the Enterprise simply cannot contain this terrible child and the Thasians come to the rescue, hitting a mild reset button (sorry, Antares) and taking back their ward.

And Charlie is terrified!

This was the most damning evidence of abuse to me, because Charlie does NOT want to go back! He wants to stay, because even though he's acting like a jackass, he's afraid of what the Thasians will do to him. Unfortunately, Charlie fucked up too badly to stay, like so many kids who fall through the cracks in the system...but then again, Charlie isn't some foster kid who broke a few streetlights; Charlie is too alien, too powerful to contain. In the end, Charlie is just too much for the Federation, much less the Enterprise, to effectively rehabilitate. It's sad, and Charlie is probably going to grow up and murder the Thasians before going on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge, but that's a story for another time (apparently Tim Russ thought it was one for his, but that's far beyond the horizon of this plain and simple blog for the time being.)

It's well earned to be honest.

Now that I've finished my novel on Charlie, I want to point out that this is the first example of how much of a raging badass Captain Kirk is. The man fearlessly confronted and stood up to Charlie even after being made aware of how dangerous the kid is. I used to wonder if Kirk being a badass was a meme, that it was 90% Shatner trying to hype up his character, but this alone puts him over Sisko in my opinion; Sisko punched Q, Kirk sent this reality warping kid to his room without supper.

He's just not great at being anyone's surrogate father. Riker could have probably shaped Charlie up pretty well, he's adept at telling aliens about sexual organs.

Pic related.

Of course, if anyone had the duty to shepherd Charlie through his hormonal reactions, it was McCoy. He's a doctor, damn it! And you get the feeling that he's Kirk's personal counselor (friendship notwithstanding), so why can't he sit Charlie down, give him a finger of whiskey (hey, it was the 60s, and if Mad Men taught me anything it's that lessons can be learned from a handsome professional with a bottle) and show him some diagrams accompanied with some colorful metaphors about birds and bees? 

I like Spock and Uhura a lot in this episode. As emotionally provocative as music is, I'm surprised it is practiced on Vulcan; perhaps this is a challenge for them, a meditative practice in keeping their emotions in check. Doesn't seem to be working very well for Spock, though...

The smile is a rare treat (Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Cage notwithstanding), even if it could probably be filed under early installment weirdness. On the other hand, Uhura's singing is something I hope that sticks around, though I don't recall it recurring much. It adds a bit of character to the space-telephone operator and already makes her more interesting than Hoshi "everything scares me and I'm going to cry" Sato. 

(I've basically seen all of Star Trek in some form up to this point, and I'm trying to keep future references to a minimum as I re-explore the canon and re-calibrate my understanding of events, plots, episodes, and characters.)

I guess that just leaves us with Yeoman Rand, who is present to be leered at and creeped on by Charlie. I get the sense that her and Uhura are friends, but not much else - she has good rapport with the bridge crew, and it's sad to know she'll unceremoniously disappear after a few episodes. If this were a TNG-era show she would have been an integral part; then again, she's already done more than most of the Discovery crew in 7 episodes (5 to be fair) so...quantity>quality? 

Personal Rating: 3/5, Don't Skip

It's not a great episode, but it's a watchable episode.

I don't recommend watching this before Where No Man Has Gone Before, since that second pilot has a different doctor in place of McCoy and it should be the first episode viewed. 

END.