Hey, I never noticed that before....

[Commishsleer]

Well, the guy we see in the office is the real Mendez. He's not replaced until he and Kirk are on the shuttlecraft.

So Kirk took off in the shuttle alone thinking that Mendez was with him. Was this a plot by Spock/Talosians to get another command rank official on the Enterprise because Spock seemed genuinely put out by having Kirk follow the ship? Unless he was worried that Kirk would commandeer a starship to get to them.
Is the Enterprise going deliberately slowly or is that some hotted up shuttle?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Your timeline is amazing!

Thanks very much! I'm having fun with it. It's a continuous work in progress.

So Kirk took off in the shuttle alone thinking that Mendez was with him.

Yes.

Was this a plot by Spock/Talosians to get another command rank official on the Enterprise because Spock seemed genuinely put out by having Kirk follow the ship?

IIRC, the fact that Mendez was never actually on the Enterprise with Kirk and Pike meant that Spock's entire court martial was invalid, as they didn't have the required three flag officers there. But since the real Mendez was watching the entire proceedings from Starbase 11, they forgave Spock's crimes as they realized that Talos IV was Pike's best chance at a happy life.

Is the Enterprise going deliberately slowly or is that some hotted up shuttle?

The episode is rather vague on this point, but I think that the shuttle had to be warp capable if it wasn't going to immediately be left in the dust. It does have warp nacelles, after all...

 

[johnnybear]

I always found the Mendez vanishing in the court room scene a bit creepy and also that Kirk was alone in the shuttlecraft at the time of the fuel crisis!
JB

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I always found the Mendez vanishing in the court room scene a bit creepy and also that Kirk was alone in the shuttlecraft at the time of the fuel crisis!

You know... Considering that it was only Kirk in the shuttlecraft, I wonder if he really had more oxygen left than he thought. After all, there'd be only one person breathing the air instead of two. And we know that it's within the ability of the Talosians to make a ship's instruments appear to read as something other than what they actually are.

 

[johnnybear]

Agreed! That situation also forced Spock to turn back from Talos IV and rescue Kirk rather than just drop the injured Captain Pike off first!
JB

 

[Commishsleer]

I was watching Mudd's Women on the weekend and usually get put off the whole episode by all the men drooling over 3 somewhat attractive women, It was just too much. However when you look past that there are some good moments in the episode, Scott/Spock working together. Sulu/Farell . I like the overshot of the planet with the 3 cabins.
Kirk was majorly off his command game here. I don't know why he let the women down to the planet and then had to wait to get the stones. I'd have sent down a team of security officers and then blasted the encampment to pieces at the dance. If the Enterprise was going down I'd have at least the miners with them.

 

[Timo]

Seems Starfleet was rather dependent on the goodwill of private players like that. Kirk surviving at the expense of Childress' bunch might be bad publicity and seriously cripple the Fleet...

Kirk having an off day is made pretty explicit: when the ship finally reaches Rigel XII, McCoy is vertically asleep, too, and admits to as much. Perhaps the two are connected, even, and McCoy forgot to provide the Captain with his usual uppers?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

I was watching Mudd's Women on the weekend and usually get put off the whole episode by all the men drooling over 3 somewhat attractive women, It was just too much. However when you look past that there are some good moments in the episode, Scott/Spock working together. Sulu/Farell . I like the overshot of the planet with the 3 cabins.
Kirk was majorly off his command game here. I don't know why he let the women down to the planet and then had to wait to get the stones. I'd have sent down a team of security officers and then blasted the encampment to pieces at the dance. If the Enterprise was going down I'd have at least the miners with them.

The implied power of the Venus drug is such that some 300 men drooling after three women is understandable. Even Spock is affected, though he'd deny it (See "The Trouble With Tribbles"). The Venus drug not only enhances the women's appearance (to a degree the show couldn't actually pull off), but makes them put off pheromones that cause the men to respond whether they want to or not. You mention Farrell. Remember his response on the bridge? And that's after being separated from them!

 

[PCz911]

I was watching Mudd's Women on the weekend and usually get put off the whole episode by all the men drooling over 3 somewhat attractive women, It was just too much. However when you look past that there are some good moments in the episode, Scott/Spock working together. Sulu/Farell . I like the overshot of the planet with the 3 cabins.
Kirk was majorly off his command game here. I don't know why he let the women down to the planet and then had to wait to get the stones. I'd have sent down a team of security officers and then blasted the encampment to pieces at the dance. If the Enterprise was going down I'd have at least the miners with them.

1960s appropriate tactic: Would have been easier to bring the miners to the enterprise and let them ride her down with the crew to their death ...unless they provide the dilithium, of course. But that would have ended the episode too early.

 

[Maurice]

[...]The Venus drug not only enhances the women's appearance (to a degree the show couldn't actually pull off), but makes them put off pheromones that cause the men to respond whether they want to or not.[...]

There's no mention of pheromones in the episode, is there?

 

[Mytran]

There's no mention of pheromones in the episode, is there?

Not explicitly no; I think that's a retcon from one of the novels.
However, something weird and invisible was certainly going on in order to make McCoy's scanner react the way it did!

 

[Timo]

One would think the scanner would recognize "pheromones", though. Or that McCoy would. If the women were just giving off fancy chemicals, the "giving off fancy chemicals" light on the sensor would be lit...

Perhaps the scanner would be sensitive to telepathy to a degree, too, but not quite as discerning, possibly because its makers would have a poor understanding of the phenomenon to begin with?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

McCoy wasn't exactly firing on all thrusters though, was he?

Also, however clever McCoy's scanner might be, it can only detect was it was designed to detect, can't it? The wild card is the Venus Drug itself, a bona fide unknown in Federation science.

 

[Commishsleer]

McCoy wasn't exactly firing on all thrusters though, was he?

Also, however clever McCoy's scanner might be, it can only detect was it was designed to detect, can't it? The wild card is the Venus Drug itself, a bona fide unknown in Federation science.

I thought Venus drug was a bit of a Mcguffin anyway.
Did it work anyway?
Eve didn't seem to need it.
The other ladies seemed well skanky to me. And I have a little chuckle to myself thinking the miners got the wives they deserved except for Childress.

 

[FormerLurker]

Maurice's formatting got the better of him, I think.

No, no explicit mention of pheromones, but back then pheromones were not so well understood as they are today, so not mentioning them is not an explicit "That's Not What's Going On". Mudd described the Venus drug as giving the taker 'more of what they already have'. It's known today that whether we realize it or not, we humans give off pheromones, and react to them. Maybe it is a retcon to acknowledge their role, but it seems acceptable to me to do so.

Eve, probably without ever thinking it was possible to do, figured out how to get her body to respond as if the drug were present, even when it wasn't. Instead of becoming dependent on it, she got her own body to do the same thing for itself, which is the central idea of inoculation. That makes Eve a one of a kind, I think.

It was the drug itself that made McCoy's scanner go 'Bleep', not its effect. That's my headcanon.

The other ladies seemed well skanky to me. And I have a little chuckle to myself thinking the miners got the wives they deserved except for Childress.

From what little we learned of Childress, he may well have gotten the wife he deserved, too. After all, he's the one that went after her when she ran off. He'd just been alone for so long he was unwilling to admit how much he appreciated her being there until he saw that she wanted him regardless. The other women were shallow, but so were the other men. Eve and Childress were a couple I could see going the distance relationshipwise.

 

[plynch]

Our bodies can be conditioned to react under certain prompts just like Pavlov's dogs' bodies reacted after the bell. The whole basis of the placebo effect is that the mind and body nonconsciously react to the stimulus of pill-shaped thing. Or in my case, over the counter nasal spray when I have to stop using. So merely putting the bottle in nose or spraying an empty bottle can trigger a similar - though alas, smaller - effect as really spraying the stuff. But it helps get me through the night. Oxygen is nice.

Were the venus drugs ever real, than he ran out? I can't remember and can't watch this one: the sexism and then the dullness.

EDIT Looked it up on MA. So venus drugs are effective. Hence why illegal. Eve gets jello cubes instead and is still transformed. Kirk chalks it up to self confidence, but she wasn't confident in herself. I'd say it is a classic case of classical conditioning. Her body produced the effects as it had been trained to: (real) thing that looks like venus drug triggers effects; later the thing that merely looks the part triggers same effects. I had forgotten this whole angle. I'll show this ep to my psych class in 2020. NOT

 

[Maurice]

[...]It's known today that whether we realize it or not, we humans give off pheromones, and react to them.[...]

Can you cite a properly peer reviewed study? The last time I looked into this there was no consensus that human pheromones were really a thing at all.

 

[Timo]

Also, however clever McCoy's scanner might be, it can only detect was it was designed to detect, can't it?

Perhaps. Then again, it's designed to detect an awfully broad spectrum of things. No doubt it could hit on something it was never designed to recognize, but then fail to deliver a diagnosis - the way radioactivity was spotted by observing blinks of light.

I wonder if McCoy ever scanned Mudd? Then we'd know whether it's the Venus drug cubes that give off the "ping!", or the users and their reactions to the drug. I mean, if McCoy was less than dog tired, he'd scan Mudd all right. But for some reason the heroes seem to be having an off week overall. Perhaps they are recovering from a previous demanding adventure, or a series thereof, which is also why they are all out of spare crystals?

The wild card is the Venus Drug itself, a bona fide unknown in Federation science.

And I agree it could work: in Trek, the human body and mind are capable of all sorts of weird stuff that can be triggered by suitable input. Who knows what sort of midichlorians lurk within us, to allow for telepathy or telekinesis or inducing lust wherever you go?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[plynch]

Was gonna chime in also re pheremones -- that is very much not-agreed-on in the sciences yet. Was just googling studies and found some that found no effect of "purported" pheremones and recommended they not be called such anymore.

 

[Maurice]

I thought Venus drug was a bit of a Mcguffin anyway.[...]

Not exactly a MacGuffin. More a plot device. The only ones who want the drug are the titular Women, and only when the previous doses' effects wear off. So not really a classic MacGuffin, like the Maltese Falcon or Rosebud, which are the things which motivate the characters even though the object itself is ultimately unimportant.