Continuing our Star Trek TOS rewatch! Come on, who’s watching along with me and Cookie Monster?
Me: Hunh. I remember this being a seminal episode back when I was a kid but, unlike, say, The Enemy Within, it fared much, much worse on rewatch. Silliness aside, I wasn’t at all sure what the hell was going on. Did these women have special powers? What were they? Why was Kirk immune?
Cookie Monster: Mebbe he built up a tolerance over time from all dat Kirking.
Me: The episode starts off promisingly enough with The Enterprise harassing an unidentified spaceship that looks like a flying cronut.
Cookie Monster: Cronut get in trubble and it blow up – but not before survivors manage to beam aboard Enterprise: guy called Harry and tree sexy ladies.
Me: Who looked like they’d been beamed out of the evening gown portion of the Miss Universe competition.
Cookie Monster: Scotty, who apparently not been wit a woman since high school, reakt like dey be made of chocolate chip cookie dough. Also, McCoy wide-eye grinning like he about to get some. Hey, dey not nickname him “Bones” for nothing!
Me: Even Spock, initially, seems susceptible to their charms.
Cookie Monster: Yep, monster suspekt someting is up (Pun intended. Dis what me write dese reviews for after all)! Me also instantly suspishus of guy who talk like a leprecon.
Me: I found it interesting that after saving their lives – and being treated to a lingering triple butt shot of the ladies sashaying down the corridor – Kirk makes Harry submit to a lie detector test. Is this common practice for all passengers?
Cookie Monster: Of course! Monster sure dis not de last we’ll see of Enterprise lie detector. It do great job of catching Harry lying. Also, do bang-up job of finding copy of his old driver’s license.
Me: But Harry is of lesser concern in this scene because the women are definitely having an effect on the crew members – with the exception of Spock and (again, for some reason) Kirk. Physiological scans show: “Perspiration up! Blood pressure higher than normal!”
Cookie Monster: Set erektions to maximum!
Me: Anyway, instead of quarantining them – which would seem the wise thing to do – Kirk gives these strange women free run of the ship. One pays Dr. McCoy a visit. The second she shows up, he can’t wait to get rid of that cock-blocker, Connors (“Connors, are you finished?!” – throwing him that “Get lost, I’m about to get laid here” look_. Later, when she walks past his, uh, sensitive…er….equipment…he receives all sorts of strange readings, prompting him to ask her to walk past his medical instrument again.
Cookie Monster: For medikal purposes of course.
Me: She asks if he’d like to examine her but he turns her down on the basis that he “wouldn’t trust his judgement”. Dude!
Cookie Monster: Later, Kirk return to his quarters and find woman sprawled out on his bed. She be like: “You mind?” Kirk horrified, probably becuz lying on bed is one step away from borrowing your toothbrush. Gross.
Me: The women are able to exercise some sort of mind control over the male crew members.
Cookie Monster: Heh. Members.
Me: Then, suddenly, there’s a suggestion that there’s trickery afoot. Or a strange alien pill. Or magic.
Cookie Monster: One second, she be woman wit no make-up and, de next, she be woman WIT make-up!
Me: But is it mind over matter? It’s something one of the women hints at when she wonders whether self-confidence makes one beautiful: “Or is it that they act beautiful? No, strike that.”
Cookie Monster: Strike dat? What she be, in a court of law? Objektion sustained! Next witness!
Me: I feel as though something was left on the cutting room floor, something that would have given us a better understanding of these women and their powers – and why, exactly, they were so eager to go marry a bunch of doofus troglodytes and live out the rest of their lives on some barren mining planet.
Cookie Monster: It look to me like she really, REALLY love to cook. And den, when hubby-to-be insult her cooking, she run off into dust storm. He run after her and Kirk…
Me: For some reason, Kirk doesn’t even help look for her.
Cookie Monster: Mebbe he not want to get involved in marital spat.
Me: Fortunately, the husband-to-be rescues her –
Cookie Monster: But he complain becuz she homely.
Me: Even though she just looks like the same woman – without make-up.
Cookie Monster: But Harry give her speshul pill dat improve her looks.
Me: Yes, he says the pills make “men more muscular and aggressive, women more feminine and beautiful”…but doesn’t mention any weird chemical properties that allow the people who take them to have a supernatural effect on others.
Cookie Monster: On de bottle, it specifikally state: “Not effektive on vulcans and spaceship captains.”
Me: She takes it and, magically, her skin clears up and she’s wearing make-up again. BUT the twist is that the pill was a placebo. It wasn’t the pill after all that made her beautiful. It was her belief in herself! Wait! What?!!
Cookie Monster: Yes, ladies, you too can have de confidence to have make-up magikally appear on your face.
Me: Wait. This doesn’t make any sense. How could she have been transformed by her belief in herself when we clearly see she lacks confidence, which is why she takes the pill in the first place?
Cookie Monster: Don’t ruin happy ending wit your nitpicking. Miner decide to keep her becuz she hot after all. Awwwww. Dat true love!
Our Star Trek TOS re-watch continues…soon! Apologies. My schedule is suddenly crazy. Believe it or not, I’ve been reading the same book for four days now. FOUR DAYS!
Anyway, Cookie Monster asked me to draw your attention to blog regular Bethany’s gofundme drive for a therapy dog: http://www.gofundme.com/ServiceDog4BethanyDraves
P.S. Happy Birthday to Golden Boy Martin Gero!
The happy ending of the story falls flat when you overthink it. Just believe in yourself and you too can sell yourself into slavery! Ummm.. Yea.. Joe, I am surprised you didn’t pick up on the Treknobabble goof in this episode. The writing staff obviously didn’t have the bible written in stone yet with the Enterprise running on crystals made of the real element lithium, instead of the fictional dilithium. So if the Enterprise runs on six of them, how many lithium ion batteries would it take? The other thing this episode does is set up Star Trek Into Darkness in two ways. First Mudd boards using a fake name, just like Harrison. Also in the comics leading up to the Movie, Mudd’s ship is captured, not destroyed and is then used by Kirk and Co to go down to Kronos. Anyway I look forward to Mudd’s return and see how much continuity the two episodes have with each other.
Happy Birthday to Mr. Gero, I loved meeting him at Dragon a few years ago, and hope he can attend again soon!!!
They said Kirk was immune because like all captains he already had a love… His ship.
But if they were almost out of power… How did the transporters work?
Maybe the camera was just showing her delusion that the pill worked so that she chilled out and let the bald miner do his own cooking. I have to think that or else this is some kind of Star Trek/Bewitched cross-over.
I got a new computer so I am back in business. I didn’t like this episode. What was the point? I watched it tonight and the only thing that redeemed it was being interrupted half way through to watch Jason Momoa on the Jimmy Kimmell Live show. He is going to play a super hero…something about a green costume, aqua man, and having to wear green tights. I’m not sure. Then it was back to this Star Trek mess. What was their target age group for this show?
Happy July 4th America and Happy Birthday Marty G!!
As a woman this episode really hit home with me. As a not so confident woman the message to me is believe in yourself and you can be or do anything you want to. In Ruth’s case she just wanted out of her soul destroying situation and in the end she got that from a man who did think of her more than just a woman but a person as well.
You can watch this happening all the time in real life a very confident woman walks into a room and all of the men will look at her for a long time. An un-confident woman will walk in and they will be looked at but they will quickly look away. It is nature nothing wrong with it at all it is just how men react and is not a sexist comment at all. I have a degree in Social Sciences and doing Psychology at the moment. 😀
Kriss 🙂
ensredshirt: I agree with you “Believe in yourself”. Confidence from within and all that.
Plus, some men are pigs who are attracted to flash and not substance. 😉
Happy Birthday Mr. Gero!!!!
Harcourt Fenton Mudd,, this guy was the comic relief, and the mustache. These old episodes are mostly fun to watch, can’t get too bothered with the overacting or plot holes or none at all, just fun to watch, and seeing them over again, and catching things I did not see b4. Thanks for the rewatch!
Hope Marty G has a terrific birthday and many more! 🙂
I remember when I was kid watching this episode and not caring for it at all. Probably my least favourite of the whole series. And… my thoughts haven’t changed.
Never mind that Mudd is basically dealing in human trafficking, and that the women are presented as chattel to be bought and sold and only have value by being with a man (although it was the 60’s, after all) – I agree with you and Cookie that the whole premise just didn’t make sense. Was there actually a real physical change or not? (In the last scene with the placebo, even her dress seemed to change.) Was it completely perception? Depended on the moment, it seemed.
Also, was it just me or were the musical cues especially obnoxious in this episode?
Anyway, a big HB to MG!!
I agree with gforce. This is a whole lot of meh.
On the other hand, I’m watching the anime Knights Of Sidonia on Netflix. It’s not bad. Not great, but not bad. Dialogue is so so, animation is top notch, best I’ve seen in a while. Plot is a bit thin.If they had written better dialogue and secondary plot lines they could have had a real winner here.
My impression was that Kirk was affected by the ladies’ feminine wiles but that he was able to exert more self control than the rest of the crew. Plus, doesn’t he prefer green chicks?
I also felt that it was made clear that the women were selling themselves and that Mudd was just the middle man. The women certainly weren’t there against their will. So I think of them more as prostitutes and Mudd as their pimp. Hmmmmm, on second thoughts that’s probably not much better than the whole slavery angle.
Anyway, I agree, this episode has plot holes big enough to fly the Enterprise through. I don’t see why this would be regarded as a seminal episode (Cookie Monster: Heh. Seminal.) but TOS fans like some strange stuff.
Happy birthday Marty G!
This is one of the few eps where you get to see the seedy underbelly of the Federation. Trek captains boast about traveling from an Earth where poverty and hunger have been eliminated, allowing humans to wander the universe like gentlemen of leisure.