“Oh, the sound of male ego. You travel halfway across the galaxy and it’s still the same song.” Women of Star Trek Blog Entry #3 “Mudd’s Women”: Eve McHuron
Hi everyone! I’m back. I’ve been looking forward to writing about this episode. Eve McHuron is a great character, and I have a lot to say about her. With that in mind, I’ve broken this blog into 4 parts. It might end up being the longest entry I make so please bear with me.
Part One: Hologram Brides
Ever heard of Picture Brides?
If you haven’t, here’s a quick history lesson: back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, men from China, Korea and Japan immigrated to Hawaii and California in search of work opportunities. Most engaged in hard manual labor, and couldn’t make enough money to go back home. Many of them wanted to marry women from their home countries, so they would have their photograph taken and sent to a matchmaker there. Local families would, with the matchmaker’s help, choose a man they liked and send one of their female relatives over as that man’s bride. These future brides, like their to-be husbands, often made the long journey to seek opportunities they could not find at home.
I know what you’re thinking: okay, great history lesson, but what does this have to do with Star Trek? Well, I’ll tell you.
When Harry Mudd and his three female passengers are apprehended and taken aboard the Enterprise, Mudd explains they is bound for Ophiuchus III, and that he he “recruits wives for settlers.” Kirk is concerned the women did not come voluntarily, but Eve explains that they are personally motivated : “it’s the same story for all of us, Captain: no men! [My planet] was a farm planet with automated machines for company and two brothers to cook for, mend their clothes...we’ve got men willing to be our husbands waiting for us, and you’re taking us in the opposite direction!” Criminal background aside, Mudd granted these young women with an opportunity they could not turn up - the chance to have a husband, a home, a family of their own, to live a “Little House on the Planetoid” kind of life. Harry Mudd’s passengers, Eve, Ruth and Magda, are essentially like the picture brides of old, (albeit not ethnically.) Although, it might be more accurate to call them “hologram brides” instead.
Part 2: Magda, Ruth and Eve, the Daughters of Lear
English lesson time! Ever read/watched King Lear? Shakespeare’s classic play tells of a elderly mad King Lear and his 3 daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. The first two sisters are greedy, corrupt and power hungry, while Cordelia is kind, forgiving and loyal to her father. Her most notable trait is her honesty - she refuses to over exaggerate her love for her father, as her sisters do.
Now let’s look at Ruth, Magda and Eve. Ruth and Magda, while not necessarily bad people, are more willing to go along with Mudd’s schemes. At his instructions, they seduce various crew members to get information. They also take the Venus drug, which transforms them into beautiful women from their original “ugly” appearances. They are tempted by Mudd’s offers that he will marry them off to rich husbands: “Maggie, I’ll make you a countess. Ruth, I’ll make you a duchess.”
And then, there’s Eve. She immediately stands out for the audience because she is the first to speak. When Mudd and his passengers are escorted from the transporter room to Kirk by Spock, Mudd says some rude things to Spock in the turbolift. Spock, of course ignores it but Eve turns to him and says: “I apologize for what he said, sir. He’s so used to buying and selling people-“ but Mudd cuts her off before she can continue.
Later, during Mudd’s hearing, Eve explains where she came from (see quote from part one) and why she wanted to leave. Mudd tries to patronizingly calm her down, saying, “fine, Evie, fine” but she cuts him off: “No, it’s NOT fine!” These moments tell us she is not afraid to speak her mind, and she does not accept being pushed aside.
Even more notable is her later (seduction?) scene with Kirk. Mudd sent her to Kirk’s quarters to get information from him. She does a fair job of charming him, and the two share some interesting dialogue too, reflecting some similarities in their characters. But just as Eve tries to kiss him (with Kirk seemingly reluctant to do so) she pulls away and the whole mood changes. She sighs: “Oh, no! Oh, I just can't do it. I don't care what Harry Mudd says. I do like you, but I just can't go through with it. I hate this whole thing!” And with that, she runs from the room, leaving a very confused Kirk behind her.
There’s a lot going on in this scene. (You should go back and watch it, I’m not going to get into it for sake of brevity). But what it tells us is this: Eve has a very strong moral compass. Yes, she likes Kirk, but she won’t seduce him because Mudd told her to.
After leaving Kirk’s quarters she goes to Mudd’s. She finds him there plotting with the Ruth and Magda. She glares at him: “I don’t like you! And I’m not very happy with myself either.” She hates the situation, Mudd for trying to manipulate her, and the part of herself that complied. You have to feel for her - she’s a young woman alone on the frontier, traveling with corrupt strangers to marry another stranger. Like the Picture Brides of old, she’s lonely, desperate, and trying to hold onto her identity. And she has yet to reach her lowest point.
When Kirk is forced to hand the women over to the miners in exchange for dilithium, Eve is the one who can’t adapt. Magda and Ruth practically throw themselves to the men, and are amused when they brawl over their attentions. Eve however, breaks down. Having nothing left to lose, she runs outside into a magnetic storm, practically a death sentence: “why don’t you just run a raffle and the loser gets me?”
Fortunately, Ben Childress, the head miner, finds her passed out and brings her back to his quarters. He puts her on his bed and goes to sleep on a bench. When he wakes he finds her up and about, cooking on his stove. “I ate some of your food so I paid with some chores,” she explains. Childress doesn’t like her food, or her working around the house and complains, but she calmly brushes it off. “Oh the sound of male ego. You travel halfway across the galaxy and it’s still the same song.”
DAMN she didn’t just serve him food, she served him too!
And she proves to be the smarter of the two as well. When Childress says he can’t properly clean the cooking pans without a decent water source, she suggests hanging the pans in the wind to let the sand blast them.
All of these scene snippets tell us what kind of person Eve is: honest, loyal, kind, and clever. Despite her trials she perseveres and refuses to be defeated.
Part 3: Drugs or confidence? (Or...Aliens)
This episode is a bit unusual in that it gives us an ambiguous ending regarding Mudd’s hologram brides, particularly Eve. The Enterprise crew is confused by how intriguing Mudd’s women are. (Seriously, some crew members act like they’ve never seen a woman before - it’s really funny. Spock is super amused.) We get a partial answer through the Venus drug, as we see Magda and Ruth take it and transform from ugly to beautiful.
But with Eve it’s a different story. Mudd gives her the drug, telling her to take it: “it’s not a cheat. It’s a miracle!” But we never actually see her take it. Later, on the mining colony when she is confronted by Kirk, Childress and Mudd, we see her take the drug and transform, but Kirk reveals it wasn’t the drug at all. It was just colored gelatin! Eve is confused, and Kirk simply explains: “there is only one kind of woman. You either believe in yourself or you don’t.”
Okay, so two things:
1. Nice little motivational speech, Kirk
2. But seriously, what just happened?
Right before she takes the “drug” Eve yells at Childress, challenging his idealistic expectations of women: “You don’t want wives! You want this!” She shows him the drug. “I hope you remember it and dream about it, because you can't have it. It's not real!” Then she takes the pill and transforms.
It’s implied that her sudden boost of confidence causes her transformation. Otherwise, she took the colored gelatin pill and experienced the greatest placebo effect in the history of placebo effects...
...but I just can’t quite buy it. Since when has feeling more confident in yourself made you look fantastic in less than 5 seconds? Have you ever woken up, gone to the bathroom and looked at your gross morning face in the mirror saying, “I feel great about myself today,” and BAM you’re all made up for the day? No, of course not! Because that’s not how life works!
The only other explanation I can come up with to explain this phenomenon within the bounds of Star Trek logic is this: Eve is not a human. This is totally possible, considering how many aliens in Star Trek look exactly like humans. So consider this: what if Eve is a humanoid who can control her appearance, consciously or unconsciously? We never actually get a confirmation that she is human, and when McCoy attempts to give her a medical exam, she refuses. So the question of Eve’s transformation still seems open to me. Is it just magical realism or aliens? I really don’t know. Let’s just move on.
Part 4: Final Thoughts
Its implied at the episode’s end that Eve will stay with Childress, or that he wants her to stay, despite his earlier rudeness. I hope that’s not what happened to her. I’ve never cared for Ben Childress, and he certainly doesn’t deserve someone like Eve. I want to imagine that she somehow got off planet and found a husband elsewhere, but with Mudd arrested I think that would be more difficult.
Eve’s character stands out to me because, unlike most of the characters I’ll be writing about in this series, she’s actually rather ordinary. She’s not an officer, a doctor or diplomat. She’s just frontier settler looking for a husband. She’s not trying to explore the final frontier, she’s just trying to live in it. And as this episode demonstrates, that’s not as easy as it sounds.
Thank you for reading! It took several days for me to gather my thoughts and write this so please like and share if you enjoyed it. I hope it provided some new perspective on this old episode and I look forward to doing this again.
