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| Kirk and Spock, fueling slashfic for the next few decades. |
Harry Mudd (Roger C. Carmel) has escaped from his prison on the robot planet, and is once again swindling his way across the galaxy. Kirk and Spock catch up with him at a mining colony, where he is peddling "love crystals," guaranteed to make any member of the opposite sex fall in love with you at a single touch. When Spock exposes Mudd as a fraud, the colonists prepare to take justice into their own hands. This prompts Harry's immediate surrender to the gentler justice of the Federation.
But Harry Mudd has never been one to accept arrest, even from "old friends." He insists that his love crystals are the genuine article. Observing Nurse Chapel's unrequited crush on Spock, he tempts her with the prospect of testing a crystal on the Vulcan, to make Spock hers forever. Of course, it's all a ruse, a distraction to allow him to make his escape. But there's one thing Mudd hasn't counted on: The crystals actually work!
CHARACTERS
Nurse Chapel's big episode... which plays her both as a dupe and as a thoroughly unprofessional officer. Nice to see those '60's gender politics continuing into the '70's. Meanwhile, a lovesick Spock provokes more cringes than laughs. The moment at which Spock and Kirk, under the crystal's influence, throw their arms around each other's shoulders and talk about how nice it is "to have a friend like you... That's the way I feel," seems like the grist for 1,000 slashfics.
At least Harry Mudd is still entertaining. Slick, slimy, and charming in a repugnant sort of way, he feels absolutely authentic to the live action Mudd. The artwork for him is well-drawn, and the script makes him as much the nasty piece of work of his first appearance as the comedy creation of his second. Roger C. Carmel is the star of this show, and he at least manages to elevate this above the bottom rung inhabited by The Infinite Vulcan and The Lorelai Signal.
THOUGHTS
I've come to the conclusion that comedy episodes just don't work in this animated format. The animation is too crude to provide the subtlety of expression needed to sell a gag, and the voice editing is too slack to really raise the pace. As with More Tribbles, More Troubles, things need to get hectic in the closing Act. But voice tracks are edited so that one line follows another, even when comic energy demands that some of them overlap. As a result, there is no comic energy, just a series of leaden line readings.
I don't think Mudd's Passion would have been a very good live action episode, either. It's an Idiot Plot. The story only works if Nurse Chapel carefully removes her brain and falls for Mudd's sales pitch. I simply couldn't make myself buy into her stupidity. I certainly can't believe that she could compromise ship's security and use a piece of alien technology against a superior officer, with no consequences of any kind!
The planet set succeeds in looking as cheap and bare as the papier mache planets of the live action series' third season - Hardly the kind of authenticity to source material the makers should strive for. An attempt at an action climax involving two rock monsters is hobbled by bad animation, leaving the monsters just roaring impotently while mostly not even moving... which doesn't stop Kirk from doing one of his typically impractical somersaults in the midst of evading them (that last actually is a nice touch).
Mispaced, largely unfunny, and with a script relying on a major character behaving like a moron... Yes, it's fair to say I didn't much like this one.
Rating: 3/10.
Previous Episode: Once Upon a Planet
Next Episode: The Terratin Incident
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I was cringing during Spock's drug-induced "love" for Christine, and I can't imagine how poor Mr. Nimoy managed to endure reading these lines. A Spock in love as a result of an external influence CAN be done well -- see "The Side of Paradise" -- but this episode was downright painful.
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