When people talk about Star Trek’s hopeful vision of the future and a world without sexism, we generally don’t talk about the sixth episode of the series ever aired, “Mudd’s Women,” which hit TV screens on October 13, 1966. In “Mudd’s Women,” the Enterprise crew encounters a con man named Harry Mudd (Roger C. Carmel), who is ferrying three women —Eve ( Karen Steele), Ruth (Maggie Thrett), Magda (Susan Denberg) — destined to be the wives of miners on distant planets. The fact that the episode is basically about prostitution isn’t shocking in and of itself — the first Trek pilot episode, “The Cage,” introduced “Orion Slave Girls” — but what’s more surprising is that this episode, which has a decidedly mixed legacy, was also considered the second pilot of the entire series. Could Star Trek have survived had “Mudd’s Women” been the first episode ever filmed with Captain Kirk?
After NBC passed on the Desilu-produced Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” in 1964, three other scripts were offered as possibilities to be the second, reworked pilot of the show, to be filmed in 1965. This was the moment Gene Roddenberry transformed several aspects of the series, including the introduction of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in place of Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter), as well as a new take on the basic crew structure, which led to the creation of the characters of Scotty and Sulu and a total reboot of the character of Spock (Leonard Nimoy). But what story would launch this second take on Star Trek? Roddenberry offered three options: “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” written by Samuel A. Peeples, “The Omega Glory,” written by Roddenberry himself, and “Mudd’s Women,” written by Roddenberry and Stephen Kandel. NBC greenlit “Where No Man Has Gone Before” to be the script filmed as the second pilot, and the rest is history.
