From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos   
   From Address: jphalt@gmail.com   
   Subject: Mudd's Passion (TAS): my review   
      
   MUDD'S PLANET: THE PLOT   
   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, prompting 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   
   one of those crystals 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 elevates this story   
   a fair bit above the bottom rung inhabited by The Infinite Vulcan and The   
   Lorelai Signal.   
   THOUGHTS   
   I've come to the conclusion that the comedy episodes just don't work in this   
   animated format. The animation is simply 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. The result: Farce of the most leaden   
   variety.   
   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 (that basically is what she does), with no consequences of   
   any kind!    
   The planet set succeeds in looking as cheap and bare as the papier mache   
   planets of the third season. An attempt at an action climax involving two rock   
   monsters is hobbled by bad animation, wherein the monsters just roar   
   impotently while mostly not even moving in the shots portraying them... which   
   doesn't stop Kirk from doing one of his typically impractical somersaults in   
   the midst of evading them (that last actually is a rather 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.    
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