Just How Bad *IS* Harry Mudd? (TOS & Discovery)

Harry's Venus drug glowed. Kirk's replacement "colored gelatin"(so scripted) didn't. It's a tell that what Eve takes at the end isn't the real deal. Harry even states that Kirk took the real one.

 

Nope. I'm right on this one.

All the relevant dialogue about the drug and its effects are here, I've used boldface for the lines about Kirk's substitution.

--Alex

 

I find some folks rationalization for giving women physically altering drugs and then selling them to wealthy men as not "human trafficking" fascinating. The women are doing it of their own free will, perhaps. But do they really know what waits for them? Will they be free to go if they don't like who they wind up with? Modern mail order brides are often trapped with abusive spouses with no way out. Some articles refer to the process as 'trafficking in women for sexual labor and exploitation". Whatever you call it, it's not an upright business and it does deal in the comoditization of women. But, oddly enough, many men fetishize orion slave girls even though "slave" is unambiguously right there in their names. Go figure.

 

I have a strong suspicion that if we could see Leo Walsh's Master's Licence. His photo would actually be of Harry Mudd in a bad wig and a perfect Van Dyke. Suitably modified for the handlebar mustache

 

Actually it was the other way around. The women were already traveling with Harry, looking for husbands, when circumstances forced the Enterprise to detour to a planet that had a lithium mining operation -- and three rich lithium miners. (Retconned to "dilithium," of course.)

To reiterate what Mr. Laser Beam said:

The victims in this case were clearly the miners. Mudd and the women were equally complicit in misrepresenting the goods, as it were.

 

More than just willing. They were in on the con. They were co-conspirators.

 

It's a very strange world view that calls wealthy men who see women as a purchasable items "victims" while referring to women who are in such extreme circumstances that they sell themselves as "perpetrators". But, hey, look who's president.

 

Which does not apply to Harry.

 

^^^ this is what I was responding to. The lithium miners are referred to as rich enough to purchase an entire planet.

 

The miners were not literally purchasing the women. That would imply that the women had no choice in the matter, which is obviously not the case.

The miners were paying Harry to essentially get them dates, yes. Beyond that, the marriages were entirely voluntary. If the couples didn't like each other, they could have gone their separate ways.

 

It's been a loooooong time since I've seen this episode, but I'm not so sure that's the case if memory serves.

I believe the miners thought they were purchasing the women.

As I said, it's been at least a decade, if not longer, since I've seen it, so I may be wrong.

 

No, there is no evidence of that.

 

As I said, I could be wrong.

 

Eve is not particularly happy about marrying a miner and seems very much forced until the end. The entire episode Mudd was pushing her to get with the program. Do you think he was going to just take her back home if she refused? Plus, the drug abuse was being held over all of their heads. The other two women were willing to take anything they got. Once the Enterprise left and any of those men turned out to be abusive or inhospitable it would be nearly impossible for the women to leave.

You also have an odd idea of a "date". Mudd is being paid by the men - miners or otherwise. The women are not paying for that service except in the drugs they need to put their makeup on for them. Harry is not a middleman between two equal parties. That's not a "date", that's a purchase. Just like you would "purchase" a prostitute.

But the women's upfront willingness is, again, besides the point. They were from terrible situations that they were desperate to make their way out of. Someone, possibly Harry, prayed upon that desperation in order to convince them this was their only escape. He then used the venus drug to keep them in line. This is exactly how mail order brides and, often, prostitution work. You buy a woman. There is an initial "consent", but she has very little choice in who she gets. She's dropped off in a strange land where she has no connections and no means of escape. The idea that any of this would be legal in the federation or that, within its borders, there would be environments like the one Eve came from where people could be exploited like this is nuts.

 

And your source for this is...what, exactly?

 

Eve: Mine was a farm planet with automated machines for company and two brothers to cook for, mend their clothes, canal mud a foot thick on their boots every time they walked in.

So, unless you think being trapped in a place forced to serve your male family members with no options of making a life for yourself is a good situation for a twenty or even thirty something year old woman (Karen Steele was 35 in 1966) – and I wouldn't put it past you at this point – then that's my source. To me, that sounds like slavery.

And to really put this all to bed, Eve states at the very beginning of the episode: "I apologise for what he said, sir. (Harry Mudd) is used to buying and selling people."

 

In 200 plus years from now you would think rehabilitaion methods would have improved somewhat, might be time to go back and give Dr Adams neural neutralizer another look. ha

 

The neutralizer is probably exactly what was used on Harry. And used again after this episode. And then again after "Mudd's Passion". After all, it's supposed to be standard treatment for the era, even if the exact model of hardware in "Dagger of the Mind" is new to Dr Noel. And it doesn't go out of fashion with "Dagger", as it's again seen in use in "Whom Gods Destroy".

The thing about the technique is, it supposedly just countermands a specific criminal tendency - it doesn't turn patients into meek zombies, which is why the Lethe character was such a shock to our heroes who were Adams fans all. For all we know, the treatment was 100% successful and Harry never could touch counterfeit currency again in his life.

To me, that sounds like somebody has lost all sense of proportion. If that's what drives Eve to what you claim to be prostitution, then she's clearly a sadistic nymphomaniac who really does it for sick fun and then invents excuses to stir trouble.

Timo Saloniemi

 

He's a pimp, a drug dealer,

Spoiler: Let's watch the Discovery spoilers, please!

arguably a traitor (feeding information about Lorca to the Klingons), and (if you take time-loops into account) a mass-murderer.

Plus a smuggler and a fraudster.

So, he's not exactly a good guy. "I, Mudd" makes him look like some hapless loser with a nightmare-ish wife. "Mudd's Women" and Discovery show it's a little worse than that.

 

Very bad. Cyrano Jones, lovable rogue; Mudd, bad, as played appropriately by Wilson.