The Escape Artist

DVD, Short Treks (The Escape Artist)

I find myself once again in a strange position, not unlike Harry Mudd in his many escapades. Another little 'Short Trek' isn't going to change my mind on the style of modern Trek, the complete cartoonisation and juvenilisation, if those are words, and I never liked their version of Mudd who was so far off from the original as to be hard to see the character in there. At the same time this is possibly the best of a bad selection, of the first four in the spinoff sub-series released between Season 1 and 2 of 'DSC.' It doesn't have the background detail that promised to be useful for 'DSC' Season 2 as Saru's 'The Brightest Star' did, but then that proved to be unnecessary after all when the episode it set up was much better. They do throw in a lot of fun Trek references, but as with the series itself, this is as much meat on the bone as Trekkers are getting these days, much like the film series: it's small comfort to see the occasional Orion or Tellarite, hear of latinum and see another Federation starship we'd not seen before, if the whole tone of the production is so far from the serious, adult (in the true 'grown up' and grounded sense, not the nasty content variety), and… I don't know, 'noble' style of Trek past.

Just like 'DSC' it's all about snappy dialogue and cliched, contemporary speech full of jokey quips, even the aliens speaking in this loose, modern way. It's one of many things they chose to pursue in order to make Trek popular with non-Trekkers, and it's not good. Much like the age-old complaint I have with the visual style being not even close to 'TOS' in any way! As par for the series we barely get a single space shot, instead it relies on interior views, with even the Tellarite's small ship having a viewport at the front of his Bridge instead of a viewscreen. These things are unimportant to casual viewers, but it's a constant irritation to me. They seem to hate space, they barely show it - there's none of the standard establishing shots of ships hanging on that dark backdrop bejewelled with stars, and in this we get only one measly exterior shot of a ship (Mudd's). We don't ever see the Tellarite ship so they didn't have to design that, and the one, beautiful view of the USS Di Milo we're afforded is through a window. It looks gorgeous, even if it has more in common with the 24th Century than the vessels of 'TOS.' It's all so tragic to me that they were set in this time period that they clearly care nothing for and refused to bend to the established laws and lore of canon and established aesthetics. It's not something I'll ever get over, I'm afraid, messing up Trek continuity after forty years of solid growth of the universe.

I did like the Federation starship, despite my concerns, I just wish we could have seen it better, a gripe with both seasons of 'DSC.' It was a shame they just reused existing USS Discovery sets for its Transporter Room (or should that be Transporter Hall, it's so ridiculously oversized!), and the corridors, but at least seeing a different crew gave us a sense of a wider Starfleet beyond Discovery, something that appeared to be promised in the build-up to the series' debut, but which never came to fruition, sadly. I imagined we'd have multiple ships and crews that would pop in and out of stories and we'd get a better sense of an operational force, especially as they were at war in Season 1, which this followed, but no.

Rainn Wilson, the modern Mudd, starred but also directed this episode, perhaps a consolation for not being brought back in Season 2 (a relief for me). As I said, I didn't like his version and once again we hear that he's wanted for murders that were never a part of Mudd's character or we couldn't find him charming and likeable when he went up against Kirk. While it's possible someone could reform from such degraded behaviour, this Mudd's general demeanour was so unrepentant (which he did share with the original), that it's impossible to enjoy him as this bumbling, quick-talking con artist. Except the way he's written, we are supposed to find him incorrigible, but not the less likeable! It's a trait with the 'DSC' writers that murder just isn't a big deal for them, what with Mudd being treated as he was and the much worse Mirror Georgiou, a mass murderer lest we forget, even more accepted and played up in the series with hardly any sanction on her character! It's bizarre and so unrealistic that murderers could be seen as mere comic foils, but that's only one of many flaws in the writing and choice of direction. I noted this episode was written by Mike McMahan who has gone on to spearhead the animated spinoff 'Lower Decks,' so I imagine this is the kind of quality of writing we can expect from that series.

I don't know what it is about modern Trek that makes it so off from the way Trek should be. I suppose it can only be put down to the iron control Rick Berman held over the franchise that he made sure it was written in the Roddenberry style with a grounded, realistic approach to the future, and this has been sloughed off like an unwanted skin so modern writers can be as slack and loose and contemporary as they wish. It's why it never feels like Trek, but some other sci-fi, or worse, comic book adventure. And it's also the general lowering of standards in TV as a whole that means this conforms to the emphasis on crudity for 'laughs.' It is low brow and lowest common denominator stuff, and yet again it makes me sad to see the once proud legacy of Trek brought so low.

Even so, for what it was this short wasn't as bad as some of them. While I'm not keen on the re-imagining of existing races, I haven't hated the Tellarite look. I baulked at the baldness again, as if this is yet another race, like the Klingons that must lose its hair and look all so similar, but at the same time I liked the snout and the eyes, even if they weren't deep-set enough (I wanted to know what race the short female bounty hunter was as she looked familiar). The Orions were a darker shade of green, truer to the other versions we'd seen, and it wasn't a terrible story - it does at least fit with Harry's later penchant for producing lifelike androids. If it were me though, that would be one of the 'TOS' conventions I'd be trying to avoid, because we know from Data how hard it is to produce artificial life and how special he was (even if Mudd's are relatively shoddy - the arm coming off so easily in Tevrin Krit's hands). I know it was a big part of 'TOS' that there were all these androids so realistic as to be undetectable to human eyes, but it's a problematic part of canon. They chose to embrace it when maybe they could have found a way to explain it away or retcon such developments somehow, the way 'Enterprise' was able to do with bits and pieces here and there. But of course they're not going to make Trek more realistic with the current generation of creators which we've seen turn it far more comic book than even 'TOS.'

A Tellarite bounty hunter wasn't a new idea, Captain Archer had been caught by one and held for ransom in 'Enterprise' ('Bounty'), so they are at least tying into some of the culture a little better than the series has done sometimes. The only bit of alien culture we discover is that they have special cudgels that have meaning for them (even if they do look like stone age caveman clubs!). It's not much to hold onto (apart from physically!), but it's something. I suppose it could be argued that Mudd actually was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was framed for all these murders, the Federation misjudging him, but at the same time we'd seen him act in such a harsh and cavalier way when it came to life in his 'DSC' appearances. Again we can argue that he was using a time crystal (ugh!), and so he knew he could reset things in that, but still it remains hard to ever see Mudd as merely the roguish conman he was in 'TOS.' I did like the reveal that he was the female bounty hunter selling off android replicas of himself to unwary members of the fraternity, and the Breen-like translation of his language was fun. It was a good ruse, the kind of trick that, yes, I would expect from Harry, so in some ways, apart from the murder charges, he was closer to the original concept, even if he fails to have much in the way of the character's mannerisms and voice - necessary if you want me to believe this is the same guy.

Unfortunately, 'DSC,' and probably all the other spinoffs I've yet to see, care little about canon, continuity and the hard labour of keeping it all together, which is why I really have to see it all as just a spinoff universe, not the original 'Prime' variety which featured all of Trek from 'TOS' to 'Enterprise' across almost forty years. Until they change their tune and get back to the genuine article I can't look on any of these productions as anything other than filler designed for those that don't care about Trek or only care if it fits with their Marvel Universe-esque notions of modern sci-fi and character writing. Would they even have a Federation 'tax man' which Mudd claims took all his wealth? With Mudd you can always say he's lying or exaggerating so even things like that which don't have much resonance except in a contemporary sense, can be waived. But for sure these series' will date far more than 'TOS' and its ilk have done because they were made as period pieces and clearly none of this stuff is.

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