Mudd's Women

TOS Season 1 Episode 6
Air Date: October 13th, 1966

Mudd's Women is an episode that deals with the superficial way we view women in society, expecting features that are difficult if not impossible to naturally obtain and putting value on those features as the most important part of attraction.

The Enterprise chase down a smuggler named Harry Mudd who smuggles women to farming communities to become wives for frontier farmers. My first thought was "Is this human trafficking?" but it seems like the women are there by their own free will. What we do discover is that the women are taking a drug that makes them appear irresistible to any man (except maybe Spock) who lays their eyes on them. This is certainly true of the men on the Enterprise who spend half of the episode gawking at the women.

The tension in the episode comes from the Enterprise damaging their lithium crystals which regulates the power and they need to get to a mining outpost to get replacement crystals before the last crystal runs out. Mudd uses this opportunity to make a deal with the miners to trade crystals for the girls to be wives and his freedom who was arrested at the beginning of the episode. The miners agree and the Enterprise is forced to give in to Mudd's demands in order to survive.

I recently saw an article pass by my Google Now feed mentioning Harry Mudd. It appears he will or is going to be in Star Trek Discovery which takes place before TOS. I believe he makes another appearance in TOS too.