Star Trek: 10 Episodes That Are UNWATCHABLE Now
7. Mudd's Passion
Strange New Worlds has done terrific work in fleshing out some of those characters introduced in The Original Series who didn’t, perhaps, get the best initial run. Jess Bush’s Christine Chapel is granted more agency, more room to grow, and her’s is a performance that is easily one of the best parts of the recent series. Majel Barrett was working under very different conditions, with very different restrictions. While Chapel is a largely likeable and capable character in The Original Series, she was often relegated to pining after Spock.
The Animated Series episode Mudd’s Passion takes things to a new level, though not in any kind of positive way. Harry Mudd, space pimp and trader in illicit goods, returns to Star Trek. This time, rather than transporting women or finding himself controlling android planets, he’s selling roofies to lonely miners. And that’s how the episode begins. Surely, when the crew of the Enterprise intervene and arrest him, he will face all sorts of justice and punishment? Well, if you believed that, you obviously thought a little too highly of Chapel - who takes one of these drugs from him, fully intending to use it on Spock.
While it’s described as a drug that causes infatuation in the victim, what it effectively is is a date rape drug, which Chapel knowingly poisons Spock with. The entire affair is kept light, as The Animated Series was largely targeted at children, and the result is that Spock develops feelings for Kirk instead (as if they weren’t already there, Spirk fan fiction having already been around for years.)
Chapel drugs her superior officer and faces no repercussions whatsoever. If we somehow managed to put the ethical implications of that aside, one must then consider the character assassination that this is. Chapel is now an attempted rapist at the very least, so one wonders how she kept her commission, let alone stayed out of prison. Mudd’s Passion is best left to the side when rewatching The Animated Series, which itself is sad, as Roger C. Carmichael returned to voice the character once more.