world: Scotty is fascinated by their engineering knowledge; Ensign Chekov likes the idea of living on a planet full of compliant female androids; and Uhura is tempted by the offer of immortality in an android body. Kirk will have none of this, however, and reminds them of their duty. After a final farewell to Stella, Mudd plans to depart aboard Enterprise, but the androids refuse his order to beam him aboard. They have their own agenda: to leave the planet and offer their "services" to humanity, with the goal of bringing the greedy and aggressive human race under their control. As the Enterprise crew discuss their predicament, Spock notes that all of the androids belong to various named series, except for the one named Norman. Kirk recalls that an android called on Norman to "coordinate" the analysis of an "illogical" statement. Spock concludes that Norman is the central locus of the composite android mind, and Kirk suggests that "wild, irrational illogic aimed right at Norman" could be a potent weapon against that mind. The crew then attempt to confuse the androids by means of contradictory statements and a series of bizarre theatrics, culminating with Mudd and Kirk posing the liar paradox to Norman: Kirk claims everything Mudd says is a lie; and Mudd says to Norman, "I am lying." Unable to resolve the contradiction, Norman's mind burns out, which immediately causes the other androids to shut down. Spock and Scotty reprogram the androids to return to their original tasks of making the planet productive. Kirk informs Mudd that he has been paroled to the android population as an example of a human failure, and that a special android has been programmed to see to his needs as an incentive to work with the androids and not exploit them. Mudd is grateful until he discovers that this android is Stella, and there are now at least 500 copies of her – none of whom responds to his command to "shut up". Production and reception The producers liked the script resulting from Gerrold's work on The Trouble with Tribbles so much that Gerrold was later tasked with re-writing the script for this episode. In 2009, the AV Club called it "goofy, but charmingly surreal", "infectiously silly" and "a treat," giving it an A− grade. In 2014, Charlie Jane Anders at io9 ranked "I, Mudd" as the 79th best episode of Star Trek