“I’ve saved just about everybody on this here ship. If the Enterprise had a heart, I’d save her, too.”
Stephen Kandel returns to write his beloved Harry Mudd character for a third time with “Mudd’s Passion,” which also brings back the inimitable Roger C. Carmel. The Enterprise arrives at the planet Motherlode to take Mudd into custody after escaping the planet of androids, but this time he has another trick up his sleeve.
This time it’s a love potion he tries to sell to the lonely miners of the planet. When Kirk and Spock expose his swindling, the miners try to kill him, so Harry surrenders himself. After they throw him in the brig, Mudd convinces Christine (Majel Barrett) to try the love potion on Spock, sensing her infatuation with him. She never gives up hoping, does she?
Even though she knows Mudd is a huckster, she goes along with it anyway. She is required to rub the potion on her skin and then touch her intended target with it. The potion makes her susceptible to Mudd’s suggestions. She releases him from the brig and he absconds with her identification card. Identification card? I guess it makes sense on a ship with a crew of over four-hundred, but we’ve never seen that before.
Mudd creates a forgery of the identification card with his own likeness. Later, she does manage to get close to Spock, but it takes a while for Spock to warm up to her. Mudd takes Christine hostage and steals a shuttle. Mudd’s potion gets loose in the ventilation system causing various crewmembers to fall in love with each other, including M’Ress and Scotty.
Spock volunteers to go after Mudd and rescue Christine. He’s obviously not himself. Why this does not cause Spock to have a complete emotional breakdown, as in “This Side of Paradise” is anybody’s guess. Kirk goes with Spock to keep an eye on him. Mudd takes Christine to an alien planet with hostile creatures.
This is a pretty funny episode, particularly with Kirk and Spock hugging each other and re-affirming their friendship as monsters attack. Kirk tries to contact transporter control, but the operators are too busy dancing together to care. The potion has a side effect as it begins to wear off. It causes enormous hostility between the effected parties. “Your potion is scarcely a bargain, Harry,” Spock tells Mudd. Love potions are never a good idea.
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