Mudd’s Angels marks the fourteenth and final installment in what began as James Blish’s Star Trek novelizations of the original series episodes. When Blish tragically died of cancer in 1975, his wife Judith Ann “J.A.” Lawrence was tasked with “giving a little polishing” to his then-unfinished scripts. In fact, she and her mother began writing these little novelizations on behalf of Blish while he was still alive, ailing and focused on other projects. When he died, there were only a couple episodes yet to be novelized: the Harry Mudd episodes. The first two stories in Lawrence’s Mudd’s Angels (the title is perhaps a nod to “Charlie’s Angels”) are short novelizations of the episodes “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd.” At the time, Lawrence was asked to combine the two stories into a single narrative, but she simply could not make it work since they are different narratives and not necessarily contiguous. Therefore, she proposed keeping the two stories separate while adding an original novella of her own to round out the series. And to fictionally account for her role as writer, Lawrence rather cleverly penned a prologue in which Captain Kirk instructs each crew member to write-out their own account of the saga of the hilariously inept space pirate Harry Mudd. That way the varying accounts can be handed over to “Integrator Lawrence” to be integrated and distributed to Starfleet Command’s Scientific Advisory Board on Alpha Aldiss (all of this occurs in Stardate 6107).
The first two stories are satisfactory enough adaptations of Stephen Kandel’s original series scripts (“Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd”). In “Mudd’s Women” (Stardate: 1329.1) the story follows much of the same plot as the episode, with little moments of added texture and inner monologue. For example, consider the description of the moment Mudd’s trio of women are first introduced to the crew: –“a blonde of golden dreams; a dark enchantress who might have launched the Greek armada toward Troy; a small silvery nymph who suggested ice lit by fire within.” Lawrence regularly describes Mudd’s garish garb and the fact that he is an “obscenely fat man.” In the story, Lawrence corrects the episode’s mistaken use of “Lithium Crystals” to “Dilithium Crystals” along with other minor details, like when Harry Mudd asks Spock if he is “part-Vulcan” (whereas in the episode he says “part-Vulcanian”). I also happened to catch that Lawrence refers to one of the miners as “Bention” whereas in the episode he is called “Benton.” I wonder if this was simply a typo? Anyway, these are all very minor details. “Mudd’s Women” is a satisfactory, serviceable Trek story and the same can be said of “I, Mudd” (Stardate: 4513.3) as Lawrence’s story reiterates the whole goofy plot of the episode with only minor deviations.
The third and final part of this collection contains an original story by J.A. Lawrence entitled “The Business, As Usual, During Altercations” (which takes place during Stardates: 6273.6-6063.5). In it, all starships on non-emergency missions are summoned to investigate a recent shortfall in deliveries of dilithium crystals. As such, the Enterprise cancels its expedition to the Aldebaran Sector and heads for the planet Muldoon, a Class-M planet where twenty miners were sent four years earlier. There they uncover a mysterious business arrangement involving a ship called the Interstella and a company called the Galactic Trading Corporation. With the introduction of a few new crewmen like Yeoman Weinberg (a young psychohistorian), the investigation leads the Enterprise to a string of planets where they encounter androids which leads them directly back to the coordinates of Mudd’s Planet! This planet is now called “Liticia.” Apparently, Harry Mudd –after being abandoned on Liticia with all the androids at the end of “I, Mudd”—has now somehow managed to retrofit all the androids in the Stella model (which were designed to be like his wife) into a spaceship called the “Interstella.” He leads the Enterprise crew on a tour around Liticia to display all the terraforming he has accomplished, as well as the construction of a lavish palace he calls the “Mudd Mahal” modeled after the Taj Mahal. But as it turns out, Mudd has been making android duplicates of himself and other members of the Enterprise crew, as well, particularly Uhura (her android model is called “Aruhu”).
As the Enterprise dodges an attempt by Mudd to use a soporific on them, they discover he has been selling female androids, and they encounter the real human Harry Mudd who has fled with a huge quantity of dilithium crystals he is trading. Things get even more complex as The Klingon-Romulan League gets involved to help solve the dilithium shortage problem. The Enterprise follows Mudd to a string of planets and even across the Barrier (is this the same barrier that was crossed in the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”?). This causes the Enterprise and the Interstella to be thrown entirely out of the galactic sphere, where they travel through time-space and wind up 466 years away from the Federation in the ragged triangular-shaped “Nubecula Minor” (here Chekov seems to be going mad suddenly thinks he is Tamurlane). But Mudd’s dilithium crystals cannot withstand the Barrier and they start expanding to form a planetoid-asteroid which soon creates a collision with the nearby large magellanic cloud. This causes a massive explosion. Just as the Enterprise rescues Mudd, the exploding cloud sends them all flying back into their own galaxy and timeframe, only now Starfleet has no record of Kirk’s claims about the missing dilithium crystals, nor of a temporary alliance with the Romulans and the Klingons to solve the crisis. All is essentially returned to normal.
The Enterprise crew then tries to deliver Harry Mudd back to his spiteful wife but she wants nothing to do with him, instead she wants to marry Dr. McCoy. So instead the crew quickly flees back to the planet Liticia where Mudd faces a very silly trial arranged by the androids. He is charged with “first-degree androlepsy, charlatanry, barratry, multiple civil rights violations, crossing planetary boundaries for immoral purposes, embezzling, pandering, malversation, privateering, tax evasion, piloting without a license, speculation, and solicitation.” But Mudd argues that the time loop they experienced when they crossed the Barrier actually prevented his crimes from occurring. This is followed by a somewhat interesting discussion of whether or not androids have souls (though of course it pales in comparison to the classic TNG trial episode “The Measure of a Man”), and there is a question as to whether or not the planet Liticia can join the United Federation of Planets. In the end, Mudd is found guilty only of piloting a ship with a license, but he cannot be convicted so instead he is just banished from all the planets that are located within the territories of the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulans. He is sent away through the Barrier again on a retrofitted version of his ship the Superstella which will be populated by non-conscious female androids who are designed to self-destruct if he ever tries to come back to this galaxy again. Is this the end of Harcourt Fenton Mudd?
Thus ends a very convoluted Star Trek novella that clumsily continues the ongoing saga of everyone’s favorite galactic con-man. I have always had a bit of a nostalgic sweet spot for the silly Harry Mudd adventures, even if they’re just not very good.
Lawrence, J.A. Mudd’s Angels. Bantam Books, New York, New York, May 1978 (2nd printing February 1985). Dedicated to the memory of James Blish. Bob Larkin completed the wonderful cover artwork for the original Bantam release.