Mudd’s Women (TOS)

Star Trek: The Original Series, Series 1, Episode 6. First broadcast on Thursday 13 October 1966. Stardate: 1329.8.

It’s 1966 on board Enterprise this week, with all the horrific male chauvinism that implies. So when three glamorous women beam aboard wearing fashionably asymmetrical sequinned dresses, it’s soon apparent that they have been promised rich husbands by the charmingly ridiculous Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a pantomime pirate with a gap-toothed smile, a beautifully waxed moustache and some alarmingly luxuriant chest hair. It’s kind of fun, but is the chauvinism too high a price to pay?