From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos   
   From Address: sdlitvin@earthlink.net   
   Subject: Re: Mudd's Passion (TAS): my review   
      
   "alt.tv.star-trek.tos@googlegroups.com"    
    wrote in message    
   news:a025fe3f-5204-49ce-89c2-261f65879f1b@glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com:   
      
   > 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.   
      
      
   There's another problem.  Mudd's live-action episodes ("Mudd's Women,"    
   "I, Mudd") had a sexual subtext.   And if "Mudd's Passion" had been done    
   live-action (say in TOS season 4), it too would have had real "passion"    
   between Chapel and Spock, perhaps similar to Spock and the Romulan    
   commander in "Enterprise Incident."   
      
   But they couldn't show such stuff on a Saturday morning children's show    
   like TAS.   
      
   So the kind of "passion" portrayed in this ep was a kid's naive view of    
   what a love potion would do.   
      
   >   
   > Rating: 3/10.   
      
   I agree.   
      
      
      
      
   -- Steven L.   
      
      
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