Mudd’s Women after 56 years: How well does it hold up?

Mudd’s Women is a more nuanced episode than it seems.

Writing recently in this space about the death of Maggie Thrett, who played Rose in the original Star Trek episode Mudd’s Women, I noted the irony that the episode is “centered around, if not the outright mistreatment of women, at least the overt objectification of women.”

After making this statement, I realized it had been several years since I’d watched Mudd’s Women in its entirety. I began to wonder how well or poorly this early Star Trek episode actually held up.

The late Herb Solow, the Desilu executive who sold Star Trek to NBC, seems to have remembered Mudd’s Women fondly, if inaccurately. In the behind-the-scenes book he co-wrote with Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (Pocket Books, 1996), Solow describes the network’s reaction to the script (by Stephen Kandel, from a story by Gene Roddenberry) when it was a candidate for the series’ second pilot episode:

"“Mudd’s Women,” the story of a[n] intergalactic trader-pimp, was just what NBC didn’t want for their new pilot. It was very well written, it was fun, and it featured three beautiful women-hookers selling their bodies throughout the galaxy (pp. 65-66)."

Whether Harry Mudd is a “pimp” is debatable. But Ruth, Eve, and Magda are definitely not “hookers.” While they have, at Harry’s instigation, gone to extreme and illegal means to make themselves sexually alluring, they don’t want customers. They want husbands.

Mudd’s Women objectifies women but also advocates for real relationships.

Not having seen Mudd’s Women when it first aired (October 13, 1966), I can’t pretend to know how it played originally. But I do know it shows its age 56 years later.

This is an episode filmed from and for the heterosexual male gaze. Almost every production choice in its first half—cinematographer Jerry Finnerman’s soft focus lens on the women and close-ups of their come-hither stares; composer Fred Steiner’s score that alternates between ethereal romance and bumping-and-grinding stripper music; costume designer William Ware Theiss’ broadcast-friendly yet provocatively skin-baring gowns—is intended to titillate and arouse.

The episode strives to have it both ways. As Eve (Karen Steele) complains to Kirk, “all your men were looking at me, following me with their eyes.” Kirk says, “I’ll have to talk to them about that. They don’t do that ordinarily.” Kirk’s comment suggests ogling women is neither standard nor acceptable behavior on a starship, yet the episode puts forth the three women as eye candy at turn after turn.

The edited version I watched in syndicated reruns as a teen in the late 1980s snipped the Act II scene in which a crewman starts up a ladder, then comes back down in order to stare at Eve, Magda (Susan Denberg), and Ruth as they saunter past. The camera even lingers for an uncomfortable second on the women’s sequined derrieres. Perhaps my syndicated market cut the scene for more than just time.

Yet even though the camera frequently objectifies the women, the script does make clear they aren’t sex workers. Harry Mudd says he is “wiving settlers,” and that Ruth, Magda, and Eve all came with him voluntarily. Eve does tell Spock that Mudd is “used to buying and selling people,” so it’s difficult to trust him on the women’s willingness. Yet however they came to be with Harry, the women do at this point want marriages.

Today’s viewers might find it hard to consider the fact that Magda, Ruth, and Eve seem to only want husbands a point in this episode’s favor. On the other hand—assuming the women did travel with Mudd of their own accord—the episode gives the women that agency. Were these character written today, they would have even more. But I don’t believe we are meant to think Eve, Ruth, and Magda are any kind of slave to Mudd—even though he has addicted them to the glamor-giving Venus drug (which, at any rate, the episode’s confusing final scene suggests may be more akin to Dumbo’s feather than anything else).

As the woman at the story’s heart, Eve speaks some of its most meaningful words. She says to Ben Childress:

"Is this the kind of wife you want, Ben? Not someone to help you, not a wife to cook and sew and cry and need, but this kind. Selfish, vain, useless. Is this what you really want?"

Eve’s talk of domestic chores and crying and needing might set off some 21st-century hackles, but I think we should stress her first description: “someone to help you.” I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest Eve wants a marriage of equals, a relationship in which both husband and wife turn to and cry with and rely on each other.

Mudd’s Women still isn’t a Star Trek episode I’ll choose to watch very often. I don’t think it represents the franchise’s ideals about sexual equality at their best. But neither do I think it’s devoid of any positive qualities. Yes, it spends a lot of time objectifying women—but in the end, it advocates real relationships in which people are the best, most authentic versions of themselves they can be.