Kirk is forced to allow Mudd and the women to beam down to the planet. However, once there Childress reneges on the deal. At an impromptu party with the three miners, Eve becomes angry when they begin fighting over the other two women, and runs away into a magnetic dust storm, with Childress and Kirk in pursuit. Kirk beams back to the Enterprise to try to locate them from orbit. Childress finds Eve, brings her to his quarters, and falls asleep. On waking, he is confronted with a much plainer Eve. Kirk and Mudd beam back down to the planet to deal with Childress. The captain reveals that Mudd has been giving the women the Venus Drug, which creates a transient, illusory beauty, and that the other two miners have already been married to Ruth and Magda. As Childress confronts Mudd over the deception, Eve snatches a dose of what appears to be the Venus Drug, but is in fact a placebo. This restores her self-confidence to the point that Childress finds her as attractive as before. Pleased, he gives Kirk the replacement crystals. Kirk offers to take Eve away with him but she opts to stay with Childress. Eve tells Kirk, "You've got someone up there called the Enterprise." The ship continues on its way, with Mudd in custody. Production The story was one of three submitted for production as the second pilot of Star Trek, the others being "The Omega Glory" and the selected episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". It was filmed as the second episode of the first season, after "The Corbomite Maneuver". Gene Roddenberry told Stephen Kandel he wanted a swashbuckling character as the guest lead. Several weeks later Kandel presented his idea, "Mudd's Women", and started to write the script but disliked that Roddenberry repeatedly rewrote it. Roddenberry took credit for Kandel's story when screen credits were submitted to the Writers Guild for approval. Reception Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an 'A' rating, describing the character of Harry Mudd in particular as "a familiar character type, but an enjoyable one". In 2015, Wired suggested this episode was skippable in their binge-watching guide for the original series. In 2016, TVLine ranked Eve finding out Kirk had given her a placebo rather than the beauty pill as number 13 on the top twenty moments of Star Trek: The Original Series. Notes