Having spent the previous Short Treks spotlighting newer characters—the established Tilly in “Runaway” and Saru in “The Brightest Star,” the brand-new Craft in “Calypso“—the fourth and final one has as its spotlight a character who’s been around almost as long as Star Trek itself. Harcourt Fenton Mudd first appeared in 1966 played by the late Roger C. Carmel, and the role has been taken over in two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery by Rainn Wilson, who also directed this short.
Mudd debuted in “Mudd’s Women,” one of the first episodes Gene Roddenberry conceived during the show’s development, and also a terrible episode about “wiving” miners that has aged spectacularly badly. NBC refused to air it first, as they didn’t want to lead with an episode about a space pimp. NBC is, sometimes, smart.
He reappeared in the second season’s “I, Mudd,” making him the first and only non-Starfleet recurring character on the show, and it’s this hilarious farce of an episode that cemented Mudd as a fun character worth returning to. A third-season reappearance was planned, but scotched due to Carmel’s unavailability, but he did appear in the animated series (voiced by Carmel) in the mediocre episode “Mudd’s Passion.”
In addition, Mudd appeared in dozens of works of tie-in fiction, ranging from J.A. Lawrence’s novella “The Business, as Usual, During Altercations,” which appeared in Mudd’s Angels alongside Lawrence’s adaptations of the two Mudd episodes (the final bit of Lawrence completing the adaptation work started by her late husband James Blish), to the novel Mudd in Your Eye by Jerry Oltion, to several comic books from Gold Key and DC.
Since Discovery was taking place in the 23rd century, and since there was nothing in Mudd’s TOS appearances that precluded him encountering other starships, having him appear in the new show probably seemed like a good idea. And, as with his TOS guest shots, his second appearance was a delight after an uneven debut. “Choose Your Pain” was something of a mess (and what was good about the episode was the Discovery part of the plot, not the part Mudd was involved in), but “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” was tremendous fun.
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“The Escape Artist” starts out equally delightful. Mudd is sold by a bounty hunter to a Tellarite named Tevrin Krit, played with excellent bluster by Harry Judge. (Judge previously appeared as another Tellarite, Admiral Gorch, in three episodes of Discovery.) Krit has a personal animus against Mudd because he slept with Krit’s sister and stole a family heirloom, a cudgel.
Mudd tries to inveigle Krit to let him go, or to team up with him, or pretty much do anything but turn him over to the Federation, who have offered a substantial reward for Mudd for a lengthy list of charges. (One of them is penetration of a space whale, a reference to “Magic to Make…” which earns him a confused and vaguely disgusted look from Krit. Mudd’s sheepish response is, “You hadda be there.”) He tries at one point to convince Krit that he’s part of a resistance against the imperialism of the Federation—which results in gales of laughter from Krit. He also eventually cops to sleeping with his sister and taking the cudgel, after initially denying it.
Throughout all this, we’re treated to flashbacks of two other occasions where Mudd has been captured—once by a diminutive bounty hunter of unknown species, once by Orions—where he’s tried all the same tactics (or, in one case, reversals of the tactics, as he pleads poverty to Krit, while he pretends to be rich to the Orions).
Eventually, Krit turns Mudd over to the U.S.S. De Milo—which ends badly for the Tellarite, as it turns out that this is an android duplicate of Mudd, one of dozens the De Milo already has in its brig. And the bounty hunter who sold “Mudd” to Krit is actually Mudd himself, who has a whole ship full of Mudd duplicates—and also Krit’s cudgel.
This twist probably sounded good when pitched, but it falls totally apart and ruins the story.
At first, I had two problems with it, but I worked my way through the first one. Mudd acted in “I, Mudd” as if the notion of duplicate androids was new to him, which is incompatible with him having an army of Mudd duplicates during Discovery’s time period a decade prior. But then I thought about the episode, and realized there was only one specific timeline reference, to the space whale. Which means it can very easily take place after “I, Mudd.” In fact, it’s the perfect sequel to “I, Mudd” in many ways. Yes, that episode ended with Mudd trapped on a world with tons of androids, but if anyone could weasel his way out of it, it’s Mudd. He already knew how to make androids based on existing templates (he made a Stella duplicate, remember), so he could do ones of himself and send them out to get “captured” easily.
The second problem, though, is that it takes the wind out of the sails of the whole plot. Part of what made the early portion of the short funny was that Mudd kept using the same tactics to get himself out of each jam he’s in. But then we find out that it’s just a preprogrammed set of verbal tics the androids use each time, and they’re not even necessarily meant to work, as it doesn’t matter what happens to the androids after Mudd-as-bounty-hunter takes the money for them, and it’s just not really funny anymore.
Ultimately, this ending has an issue that’s been endemic to far too much popular fiction of the past twenty-five years or so: the need for a surprise twist without any thought as to what that twist actually means to the narrative. And in this case, it’s a cute little “aha!” moment, but the more you think about it, the less it makes sense. (Also, why do the Mudd androids all say the same thing over and over again when in each others’ presence?)
I do like the different outfits the various Mudd androids are wearing, including the two outfits from “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd,” a nice touch. And Jonathan Watton as the De Milo officer beautifully plays the restrained frustration of getting yet another Mudd on board. The music is also excellent, the soundtrack occasionally giving us a more 70s caper movie feel, which works perfectly.
This is a good vehicle for Wilson, at least, and it’s a diverting little short, but it screws up the landing completely.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written an extensive amount of Star Trek fiction, precisely none of which features Mudd. He’s looking forward to reviewing Discovery‘s second season for this site starting in two weeks.
BTW, of all the characters in this short, the one I’m most interested in seeing again is the bounty hunter played by Barbara Mamabolo. Both script and actor managed to invest an impressive amount of personality into her short screen time……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sounds a bit like Mudd is descending into Han Solo territory, e.g. trying to talk his way out and changing the story for the audience.
Ragnarredbeard: I don’t see it that way at all, honestly. But then, both Solo and Mudd are variants on the very old trope of the lovable rogue, which looooong predates both characters.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Unlike Keith, I loathe “Magic to Make…,” because it turns Harry into a really brutal, casual, sadistic mass murderer, which is completely out of character and makes it impossible to see him as a “lovable rogue.” I’ve seen it argued that he knew the deaths would be erased by the time loop, but his horrifically brutal murder of Tyler was committed at a point when he thought the time loop was already over, so he expected it to stick. That takes him out of “rogue” territory into pure evil, and it was a horrible misstep by the writers.
But then, hey, thanks to this short, maybe now we can fall back on the classic Marvel Comics method for reconciling out-of-character behavior — it was a DoomMuddbot all along!
I just figured the glitching at the end was a form of logic-induced cascade failure; Mudd-bot seemed as surprised at the duplicates as Krit, and we know that pre-Soong androids weren’t terribly stable (as Kirk practically made a career out of demonstrating).
I loved this one! But then, “Magic to Make…” was my favorite episode of Discovery. Full-on comedy is a mode that Star Trek can do, and Star Wars can’t.
I liked the tie-in with TOS-style androids. I loved how unstable and fragile they were. This story also gets bonus points for picking up on the under-utilized Tellarites, which look great.
And I didn’t even notice the Mudd costumes from his old episodes! KRAD, is there any way you could get a screenshot of that added to the article?
@@.-@ CLB, it seems like lovable rogues inevitably trend toward more lovable over time. I love that Mudd is trending away from lovable and more toward rogue. And that moral event horizon you refer to, when he murders somebody? For me, he passed that when he was engaging in human trafficking in his very first episode. He’s always had a thread of evil running through his schemes.
@6/Aerik: What Mudd did in “Mudd’s Women” was not “human trafficking.” People today misunderstand the episode because they’ve forgotten the historical practice it was based on, in which women from Eastern cities were encouraged to move to Western towns in order to fulfill traditionally female roles such as schoolteachers and to bring the trappings of polite civilization and social order that a female presence tended to ensure, but with the implicit understanding that they were also going out there to improve the gender balance so that the male settlers would have more prospective wives. All the women involved were voluntary participants, and if there’d been any whiff of prostitution to it, it never would’ve been allowed.
In the case of “Mudd’s Women,” Harry is engaged in a scam, yes, but the women are portrayed as willing partners — gold-digging con artists in their own right, hoping to prey on rich, lonely miners in order to gain their wealth for themselves. The gold-digger is a sexist ’60s stereotype, to be sure, but it’s completely different from a sex slave. In the stereotype, it’s the husband that’s the victim of a woman who pretends to love him while really only caring about his money. This is demonstrated in “Mudd’s Women” when Kirk says that the miners can “get out of” the marriages they were manipulated into by the women’s fraud.
Besides, there’s a huge difference between a criminal who’s willing to use and manipulate people and a criminal who’s able to gun down dozens of people without a twinge of hesitation or reluctance. Even aside from the moral difference, it’s wrong to assume that a person who’s capable of the former is automatically capable of the latter. Killing people is not an easy or casual thing to do, as I was just talking about over in the Iron Man 3 thread. Fiction tends to trivialize it, to depict it as some routine, easy thing for any person to do, but that’s grossly unrealistic. I just can’t buy that Harry Mudd is capable of being such a ruthless assassin, or any kind of man of action. Okay, he kidnapped Nurse Chapel at phaserpoint that one time, but a running gunfight with trained Starfleet officers? No way. He’d run and cower at the first sign of personal danger. If he needed violence done, he’d hire or trick someone else to do it for him. That guy Rainn Wilson played in “Magic” was not anything like the Harry Mudd I know. He was a totally different category of villain.
Christopher: I agree with Aerik — human trafficking doesn’t exactly make him lovable, either…………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8/krad: I think we cross-posted. See my above rebuttal of the “human trafficking” idea.
It is abundantly clear that Mudd’s Women are willing accomplices. They aid, abet and happily conspire with him. Don’t be to hard on them, all three are from hardscrabble frontier backgrounds with little opportunity or respect. The ethical questionability of the plot applies as much to them as to Harry.
@8 and @6: I kind of agree with @7/ChristopherLBennett on this one. I’m not entirely sure that what Mudd was up to doesn’t count as human trafficking — after all, while the women appeared willing within the TOS episode (which was written in a time where human trafficking was less on people’s minds, but “gold-digging women poaching miners ala yesterday’s Western TV shows” certainly was), that particular aspect wasn’t dug into that heavily within the episode itself, and the stated backgrounds of the women plus the manipulative nature of Mudd makes it very possible than they had a bit less choice than it appears at first glance.
However, TOS Mudd’s character traits were that of a cowardly, manipulative conman. Cold blooded killer (and for that matter, technical genius) are a bit out of character.
Give Magda, Ruth and Eve some credit, or discredit, granted they listened to Harry’s siren pitch but he did not and could not have forced them.
All three have obvious self image and self esteem issues but even a woman who isn’t trapped on a backwater planet as a household drudge would be tempted by beauty and desirability, to have any man she wants and showered with luxuries. Harry offers all that, and makes it sound like they’d be doing some lonely man a favor by fulfilling his dreams. ‘not a cheat’ he tells Eve, ‘a miracle’.
@@@@@#6 – Aerik – Here you go.
Apparently Mudd’s attempts at killing Lorca (and the DSC crew as collateral damage) was not his first time trying to kill someone as we find out that the Federation wants him for 20 counts of attempted homicide. It would seem that killing Lorca was the first time he succeeded, at least that anyone knows. Not quite so lovable now. And seeing as Sarek managed to walk away scott free after attempted planetary scale genocide, what do we get next season, Cyrano Jones is a pedophile? Amanda is a drug dealer? But not to worry, second season takes a lighter tone. Why, in the season teaser we see a crewman sneeze all over someone.
Sheesh.
The reveal at the end didn’t bother me at all in terms of continuity – I had too big a grin on my face. I’ll have to rewatch “I, Mudd” to see where it’s stated or implied that Mudd was previously unfamiliar with the idea of androids. But I love twist endings, and I didn’t see this one coming. I also loved the detail of having two of the androids in the original costumes, though I admit I didn’t notice the “Mudd’s Women” costume at first. The “I, Mudd” costume jumped out at me immediately, though – the epaulettes were quite distinctive.
I do, however, agree with the criticism that this Mudd’s predilection to deadly violence is out of character. I remember having a wall calendar back in the 80s which included a snippet from an interview with Roger C. Carmel, in which he said that he loved playing Mudd because while he was a villain, he wasn’t a violent villain. That Mudd is now quite willing to commit (or attempt to commit) homicide bothers me. My Harry Mudd uses his wits, not his fists. That being said, another thing I love is watching an actor knowingly chew every piece of scenery they can get their teeth into, and Rainn Wilson is certainly doing that.
If Harry is wearing his “I, Mudd” outfit here, then it’s probably set after “I, Mudd,” because I presume he had the androids make that ornate costume for him when he became “Mudd the First.”
I kinda like that Discovery’s portrayal of Madd paints a story about him losing it all and turning over time from a scary criminal mastermind (with access to strange tech) into a small-time crook. We even see points of that journey in this episode’s flashbacks, he failed in all of them. I like charismatic dangerous villains and I also like seeing them brought down into irrelevance.
Except if “The Escape Artist” really takes place after “I, Mudd” he might be getting his groove back.
On Keith’s criticism of the ending: while twists are over-used nowadays story about con-man and thief is an appropriate place for them, no?
The Harry Mudd I know and love is an opportunistic grifter with big ideas he can never quite make work. The closest he comes to cruelty is stranding the Enterprise crew on Planet Mudd with thousands of attentive androids. He is actually quite kind and caring towards his women, springing to their defense when things fall apart, ‘You can’t blame the women!’
16. OLeg89 – I don’t believe those are actually flashbacks. We’re supposed to think that they are but it’s likely that those are actually other bounty hunters with other Mudd androids.
@18 kkozoriz
Point-of-view “Mudd” comments on the second one in the present (“You’re a much better captor. She was far too emotional.”) which seems to indicate that those are real.
But some of the androids were already in custody, so the interrogations weren’t happening simultaneously. And as we see at the end, the con is still going on.
That’s actually another reason why the twist doesn’t entirely work. How does the Mudd android captured by Krit know about what happened with the Orions and the short bounty hunter? He explicitly references both those incidents while talking to Krit, so they’re not just flashbacks, he’s actually discussing them with Krit….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It would appear that all the androids share the same consciousness. What one of them knows, they all know.
#22
So they’re like a Borg of con artists? I dig it.
Except the Borg are controlled when they kill people. Mudd appears to do it for the fun of it.
Well, at least he takes joy in his work. Their work.
If this is set after “I, Mudd” and Harry’s used those androids’ technology to create his duplicates — which seems the most probable interpretation — then they certainly would share a single awareness, because in the episode, the androids were just drones controlled by a single central computer.
But in I, Mudd, the duplicate androids wore those numbers around their necks and had to check in with the master computer. These ones seem much more independent, similar to Norman. who was the central nexus.
I liked the episode, it was fun, and well directed/acted. Nothing out of the ordinary, but fun. I disagree with you krad, in that the robots being programmed to use the same tactics takes the fun out of it. Why couldn’t be seeing the actual Mudd in the flashbacks? That’s how I took it, even after the reveal.
Did anyone catch that the USS De Milo is a reference to the fact that the Mudd robots losing their arms?
My son mantains that the small bounty hunter was a Klingon. I’m not so sure, but given how diverse-looking DIS Klingons are…
@5 – Cybersnark: That works perfectly, it’s what I thought.
@21 – krad: If the androids are copies of Mudd, they might have his memories, and thus, can do flashbacks. They believe they’re Mudd. Or a least, they’ve been programmed to have some sort of Mudd memories, even if they’re not real.
@27 – kkozoriz: They’re not that independent, they just exist to be handed out by Mudd’s bounty hunter persona to anyone who’ll buy them, and plead and cajole long enough for that person to reach a Starfleet ship or base to resell them.
28. MaGnUs – But then they’re not planet Mudd androids. Norman was the only one that could leave the planet as the others required access to a central control unit, as seen by the flashing identification numbers around their necks. These ones seem to be independent yet somehow still connected, as seen by the memories they share between themselves. Not quite the same as we saw in I, Mudd.
Perhaps because they have some sort of hive mind they can be out and about. There are all sorts of accetpable retcons that can be inserted here.
30. MaGnUs – Up to and including retconning the entire way I’Mudd played out.
There’s still no proof one way or the other that these actually are planet Mudd androids. We’re not sure where this fits into Mudd’s timeline.
We can say many things about how various writers have handled Star Trek but one thing we can’t do is call them wrong. The powers that be approved this and many other episodes that rewrite Trek history to one degree or another. These are, after all, their toys and they can play with them any way that they like.
@@@@@ #13 … what do we get next season, Cyrano Jones is a pedophile? Amanda is a drug dealer?
“He’s got my Scotty dealing drugs on the bridge!!” :)
Just — finally — got around to watching this, and I find myself mostly untroubled by the twist ending.
As to Mudd’s overall character profile, I’ve commented previously that I’m in the camp that views Harry as always having had a darker, nastier edge than TOS’s other lovable rogue, Cyrano Jones. Jones is merely careless and (sometimes criminally) negligent; Mudd is and always has been someone you never, ever trust farther than you can throw a mature Horta.
As to Mudd and the tie-in fiction, I’m surprised that KRAD neglects to mention Jeffrey Lang’s The Light Fantastic in the context of this episode, as that excellent novel not only features good bad old Harry in a key guest role, but also further explores the connections between Mudd and the full range of android technologies seen over the life of the franchise.
In that light, though, I tend to disagree that “The Escape Artist” necessarily post-dates “I, Mudd” in overall Trek chronology. The chief point of similarity between the two episodes — the presence of a whole bunch of androids with the same appearance — is not in itself strong enough to prove a connection, and setting the episode after “I, Mudd” also puts it quite some distance in Mudd’s future with respect to the rest of Discovery continuity (which would tend to complicate the logistics of making further use of Mudd in DSC’s own internal timeline). It’s wholly possible that Mudd has happened across some other android-manufacturing tech in his travels — just as he lucked into the time-travel tech we’ve seen already.
John: I wasn’t aware that Mudd was in The Light Fantastic. My knowledge of Trek fiction over the past decade is scattershot, as I haven’t been writing any Trek fiction (aside from The Klingon Art of War, that is, and that is not by my choice) and so have been out of the loop.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@33/John C. Bunnell: Of course Harry Mudd is a worse scoundrel than Cyrano Jones, but only in the sense that Harry is an actual con artist and thief, while Cyrano is just a trader who lacks judgment or responsibility. That’s a far cry from making Harry a psychopath or a murderer.
@krad, I’m glad you pointed out that this probably takes place after “I, Mudd,” since that was the main sticking point for me. This solution makes perfect sense, especially given that “Calypso” takes place hundreds of years after Discovery (and any other Trek series).
Having finally seen this, I’m more convinced than ever that it has to take place after “I, Mudd,” despite the DSC-era ship and uniforms. The androids pretty much have to be Planet Mudd androids — there are countless duplicates of the same person, there’s a single central node controlling them (that disembodied Mudd head with the wires coming out of it at the end), they repeat the same phrases over and over, and they shut down exactly like Robo-Stella.
Although I’m reluctant to count it as “real” at all, because it’s got other issues that clash with established continuity. I’m skeptical that the Federation would put out a bounty on someone in the first place; this isn’t Star Wars. There’s no mention in prior canon of the UFP ever doing anything of the sort. It seems more the sort of thing that would be done by the Klingons (as in ENT: “Bounty”) or the Cardassians (as implied in TNG: “Lower Decks”). Also, Tellar is one of the founding members of the Federation, so it’s odd that Krit is treated like an outsider to it — though I suppose it’s possible that Krit is from some independent Tellarite colony. And adding all those attempted homicides to Mudd’s criminal record is not only irritating for the reasons I discussed before, it conflicts with the recitations of Mudd’s criminal record in his TOS and TAS appearances. Oh, and there’s an anachronistic mention of latinum too.
All in all, this just wasn’t very good. It had a couple of mildly amusing moments, but as comedy, this fell flat for me, and the whole exercise seemed rather pointless.
@37 – There’s no mention in prior canon of Starfleet having a ship powered by magic mushrooms either but we’ve got one now.
And they can’t charge Mudd with multiple homicides without spilling the beans to the public about time travel. So he gets away with it and they charge him with whatever else they can come up with.
Bounties, and prisoners working in mines… The Discovery Federation looks more and more like something out of the 19th century.
Klingons – “You put your prisoners to work in the mines? Us too! I guess we’re more alike than we thought. Let me tell you about this place called Rura Penthe!
@39/Jana: Well, “Dagger of the Mind” did say that Tristan Adams had brought a lot of humanitarian reforms to the prison system (before he turned supervillainous), which implies that it was in need of reform before him.
@41/Christopher: True, but I’ve always assumed that it was similar to our current prison system before. This seems like a big step backwards.
@42/Jana: I guess you’re referring to the German prison system. Unfortunately, our current prison system in the United States is one of the most abusive and inhumane in the world, disproportionately incarcerating minorities and exploiting prisoner labor in a way that’s barely different from slavery. Star Trek is an American series reflecting American assumptions and worldviews, and the American view of penology is probably the most backward one in the free world. So there are certain practices that we unconsciously treat as normal, that we fail to question even if we don’t endorse them, that people in more enlightened countries would rightfully be horrified by.
@43/Christopher: You’ve got me there. I must admit that I know next to nothing about the US prison system, except of course the death penalty.
“Star Trek is an American series reflecting American assumptions and worldviews […].”
I’ve asked myself if they have changed in the last fifty years (I mean in regard to prisons). Because I find the difference between “Context Is For Kings” and “Dagger of the Mind” striking. In “Dagger of the Mind”, everybody implicitly agrees that prisoners should be treated decently; in “Context Is For Kings” nobody seems to think so, including the writers. I guess the assumptions and worldviews were different back then. This probably explains why the TOS future is so much more to my liking than the DSC future.
@44/Jana: Yes, unfortunately things have gotten worse since then.
Anyone know when the next Short Trek will be released ?
jmsnyc: They haven’t announced a date for the next batch of Short Treks yet.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The titles and dates of the next batch of Short Treks have been announced.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
fwiw, I’m a pretty critical viewer and no fan of Discovery, and I thought this was quite delightful. I have no problem with the twist – the reason the bots continue arguing with their captors is to get the captors far away from the point of sale, and with a maximum number of hours or days elapsed, so Mudd can get away and clean up his tracks!
Also it’s sadistic fun, to think of his bots toying with their captors for so long – long enough to get collected by an increasingly frustrated Starfleet – which seems totally in character.
I like the idea that all the flashbacks might be different muddbots; that’s cool enough to be worth a little suspension of disbelief.
The 70s music sounds just like the Star Wars Disco, even to the point of semi quoting the Star Wars theme, and the Han Solo/bounty hunterish themes here, timed as it is with the Solo movie, made me think that they were having a romp in that vein on purpose.
Even if you know the Meco hit, this is worth listening to, and the comments section is gold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ3kV3Icm28