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Mudd's Angels (Star Trek)

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This book is really three stories in one volume. The first two are novelizations of the two Original Series Star Trek episodes that featured Harry Mudd: "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd." The third is an original story by J.A. Lawrence entitled, "The Business as Usual, During Altercations," which picks up where "I, Mudd" left off. Mudd's "angels" are the women, both human and android, in the stories.

Classic Trekkers will recall how, at the end of "I, Mudd", con man Mudd was left marooned on a planet full of androids, including hundreds of replicas of his nagging wife, Stella. In "Business as Usual," Harry has managed to get off the planet and is selling the more attractive androids (but not the Stella series!) to lonely miners, in order to corner the market on dilithium crystals. This leaves the Federation stuck without a supply of this all-important fuel. It's the Enterprise to the rescue, of course, as Captain Kirk and crew outwit Harry Mudd once again.

The book is part of an out-of-print series that was published by Bantam back in 1978, before Pocket Books got a monopoly on Star Trek novels. Bantam re-issued its series in the early 1990s, then they went out of print again. There are plenty of used copies of both editions around, though, so check out ...

One of the most colorful characters in the original Star Trek series was Harcourt (Harry) Fenton Mudd. He appeared in two episodes, one as a wife provider and the other as the ruler of a planet populated by androids. A con man to the core, he provided some comic relief and was an affirmation that such people will exist wherever humans plant their feet.
This book contains three stories about the rogue Mudd, the first two retell the two episodes of the original series that Mudd appeared in. Therefore, there is nothing that is really new, although quite naturally some new dialog and descriptions not part of the episodes appear. The third story is a sequel to "I, Mudd" and has Harry leaving the planet of androids and moving out in a ship crewed by subservient and beautiful female androids.
As he travels, Harry goes to planets where dilithium crystals are mined and buys contracts to take delivery of all their production. This gives him a monopoly on the distribution of the product necessary for starship operation and the entire galaxy suffers from a shortage. It is up to the Enterprise to find Harry and convince him to release the dilithium crystals to the market at a fair price.
Given the content of the book, the quality of the third and original story is what will make it worthy of reading. It is a good but not great Star Trek tale for it is based on a flawed fundamental premise, that the Federation accountants are marginally incompetent. Organizations that bind together many star systems must have an effective oversight system and Mudd could not have done what he did if such a system existed. A high point is the trial of Harry Mudd, which puts forward many of the same arguments that were made about Data in the episode "The Measure of a Man" of the series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

This is one of those lighter type of episodes that shows throw at you now and again to change the pace.

In this book the appearances of Harry Mudd throw things into uproar, given he is an intergalactic con-artist, smoothing talking character, and charismatic dude.

A bit of playing around with the fuel supply causes some fun.