This is the worst episode of Star Trek I've seen yet. It is insulting to women, insulting to men, and insulting to the series. It's "comedy" is hammy and irritating, and the characterizations are off.
I rolled my eyes when I read the premise of the episode, but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad. Initially, I was intrigued by the appearance of the three women and their designation of "cargo", and the behavior of the Enterprise's men folk. I even liked their outfits. Surely these women were either weird aliens or drugged up victims of human trafficking. Turns out they were drugged and being trafficked, but they were only victims of their home planets who enslaved them. According to what the writer would have you believe, Mudd "rescued" them by convincing them the only way they could possibly be happy was to be beautiful (which they weren't) and get married to ugly desperate men who only care about their beauty (which they don't have).
And nobody, absolutely nobody on board the enterprise - despite working alongside women whose inherent value was in the labor they provided, not their looks - thought to try and disabuse these poor women of this notion? Maybe inform them there's a whole universe out there for them to find their happiness? But no, despite them clearly being manipulated by Mudd, despite their clearly abused and warped minds, despite the supposed dangerous effects of the drugs which, incidentally, we never learn about, AND despite the clearly lascivious and careless nature of the men, they supposedly get a good ending? And the MEN are the victims? And eve lives happily ever after with a man who's sole virtue is that he didn't beat or rape her???
I honestly expected that miner to see her "homely" and NOT CARE. I expected them to build a repertoire and fall in love and give out the rather cliché-by-now moral that looks don't matter! I would even accept the old fashion cooking and sewing role, which i'm pretty inured to in old TV shows like this. But no. He yells at her for being plain, tells her she should feel bad for tricking him into saving her life (because why would he bother saving a woman unless she beautiful), and only accepts her when she's magically pretty again! And after her disgust at his shallow attitude, she just sits on his lap and decides to stay because- she's pretty? What the f**k??!
What was the point of this episode???
This episode just disgusted me. And 'that's just the way things were back then' is no excuse. I mainly watch oldies on TV thanks to my elderly parents, and most of those shows are far more "feminist" than this utter pile of crap.
I rolled my eyes when I read the premise of the episode, but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad. Initially, I was intrigued by the appearance of the three women and their designation of "cargo", and the behavior of the Enterprise's men folk. I even liked their outfits. Surely these women were either weird aliens or drugged up victims of human trafficking. Turns out they were drugged and being trafficked, but they were only victims of their home planets who enslaved them. According to what the writer would have you believe, Mudd "rescued" them by convincing them the only way they could possibly be happy was to be beautiful (which they weren't) and get married to ugly desperate men who only care about their beauty (which they don't have).
And nobody, absolutely nobody on board the enterprise - despite working alongside women whose inherent value was in the labor they provided, not their looks - thought to try and disabuse these poor women of this notion? Maybe inform them there's a whole universe out there for them to find their happiness? But no, despite them clearly being manipulated by Mudd, despite their clearly abused and warped minds, despite the supposed dangerous effects of the drugs which, incidentally, we never learn about, AND despite the clearly lascivious and careless nature of the men, they supposedly get a good ending? And the MEN are the victims? And eve lives happily ever after with a man who's sole virtue is that he didn't beat or rape her???
I honestly expected that miner to see her "homely" and NOT CARE. I expected them to build a repertoire and fall in love and give out the rather cliché-by-now moral that looks don't matter! I would even accept the old fashion cooking and sewing role, which i'm pretty inured to in old TV shows like this. But no. He yells at her for being plain, tells her she should feel bad for tricking him into saving her life (because why would he bother saving a woman unless she beautiful), and only accepts her when she's magically pretty again! And after her disgust at his shallow attitude, she just sits on his lap and decides to stay because- she's pretty? What the f**k??!
What was the point of this episode???
This episode just disgusted me. And 'that's just the way things were back then' is no excuse. I mainly watch oldies on TV thanks to my elderly parents, and most of those shows are far more "feminist" than this utter pile of crap.