I, Mudd (2)

DVD, Star Trek S2 (I, Mudd) (2)

Of all the characters they could have brought back from Season 1 you might have expected Balok, maybe Klingon adversary Kor, perhaps even Khan (nah, they'd never bring him back!), but they chose Harcourt Fenton Mudd, Mudd The First as he calls himself here. 'Here' being planet Mudd, a domain in which he is installed as Lord and ruler of all, his every wish and whim satisfied by an army of servants, except for the one that matters: freedom. This, loosely, must be the theme of the episode, because unlike his first episode, 'Mudd's Women,' which has the reputation of not being quite so good, I think, at least had a strong message at its heart whereas this second helping of Mudd appears on the surface to be a play for comedy, sometimes of the most surreal kind. But to go back to the theme, having everything you want isn't necessarily enough. It's not that Mudd really wants fellow humans to interact with, it's just that he likes the work he's given himself, that of conman and rogue, an incorrigible trickster that enjoys testing his powers of invention, delighting in fooling people as carries out his schemes. And what for? On Mudd, Mudd has everything, yet he'd rather risk a theoretically perfect life as lord of the planet-sized manor, full of androids that will do whatever he wishes, to escape to a chancy life among the stars. He had a model built of his wife, Stella, a lady he also felt constrained by, just so he could tell her to shut up, so there's a pattern emerging about old Mudd: he doesn't like responsibility.

Kirk is like his mirror image: responsible, honed in body and mind, willing to take on being 'chained' to an honest living, and all this makes him the ideal person to replace Mudd as Kirk The First, the second king of Mudd, so that Mudd can go off and have fun again like he always did. Except Kirk has more resources than Mudd, both mental and starship-ful, a crew of loyal men and women ready to serve, and working together they can defeat even the powerful androids that have taken it upon themselves to control our galaxy so that we will be happy… and controlled. Again this idea of freedom comes up, and to curb it would make things better for everyone, yet we need that choice in order to make the right one. That seems to be about the size of it. No android army taking over to 'serve' us can really work, no ordered computer mind can set things to rights because really the androids want us to be like them: clean, tidy, logical. There's a good gag right off the bat when the episode starts and McCoy complains to Spock that Mr. Norman, a new crewmember, never smiles, never varies what he says and won't talk about his background, obvious parallels with Spock himself - it's another reminder that the Vulcan First Officer has much more beneath the surface in his life than we know. We'd be finding out about his parents this season, specifically the rift with his Father (even though that doesn't make a lot of sense if taken with the knowledge of 'Discovery' that Sarek had a human daughter who also served in Starfleet!), but here we get a general mention of his Mother when Mudd brings her up in conversation (in the same episode in which Kirk says they'll take the Alices, one of the android models, on a trip through Wonderland, a story associated with Spock's early life!).

At one point the androids sound like the Borg in one respect, that they're each one component of a mass brain (even if they don't always work fully in tandem - there was a line two of the Alices said in unison, but one word was different to the other! Saying that, Scotty speaks about nano-technology and says 'nayno,' but it's fun to hear conventions of later Trek in 'TOS' all the same), and they are connected through the beeping necklace which also acts as identification of the number of each unit, a nice, simple design that sells the concept beautifully. The androids are a fascinating group (cleverly using actor twins and split screen to achieve an effect of multiple versions of the same model), both from their excessive strength and weak cognitive abilities - it's all too easy for Kirk to pull what is fast becoming his usual trick of dealing with computerised brains, and sending them into a feedback loop with illogic, only this time he makes it a company affair and takes the opportunity to be the playwright he never was, directing the Enterprise crew in a performance of surreal weirdness to confuse and confound. Maybe he should have taken the show on the road - if Anton Karidian could travel around performing Shakespeare, then why not Kirk's Travelling Troupe? You'd think the 'Makers,' as Norman calls his creators (perhaps the Andromeda Galaxy is that galaxy far, far away of 'Star Wars,' since C-3PO likes to 'thank the Maker'!), would have done a better job on the mental side if they could be so successful with imitating the humanoid form.

That's about the only flaw I saw with the episode, that this entirely alien race from an entirely alien galaxy, would create androids that look human! It makes Andromeda seem a lot less strange, something that would be done right later in the season in 'By Any Other Name' when we learned the Kelvans, too, were from that galaxy, but they had a huge squid-like appearance and had only taken humanoid form to fit in with the Milky Way, er, way. Still, it was good to hear the backstory of these creations, though again it's a little patchy: a star went nova and destroyed the Makers, so I guess they were limited to one star system in that galaxy? But they had outposts in our galaxy, which is how Norman survived? If that is the case I suppose that does answer the earlier question, because if they knew about our galaxy then obviously they'd make androids to fit in with our humanoid design. Though that wouldn't explain how all the Makers died. Were they related to the Old Ones who also created a race of androids that we saw in 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' Something else that got later play in Trek was the idea, which captivates Uhura, of immortality in an artificial body of eternal beauty, the transfer of consciousness into said container. It was the big story of 'The Schizoid Man' in 'TNG' and was recently revisited at the end of 'Picard' Season 1, and while it's one of those sci-fi tropes it is interesting to spot it in connection with Trek's androids on a recurring basis (even B4 was potentially downloading Data into himself, though we also found out in 'Picard' that didn't work out).

I didn't quite buy that Uhura would turn traitor and spill Kirk's plan to the androids just because she has the chance of a lifetime locked up in artificiality, but I will say this, she really sold it, as did the others, so that a crumb of doubt creeps into your mind until Kirk hugs her, even though you know they've been working on a plan. It's all about the gilded cage, and as much as Chekov is fond of the idea of all these ladies at his beck and call, and Scotty is fascinated by the advanced technology, and McCoy feels that he could spend a lifetime studying here with the equipment they have, and there's an extensive library for Spock, it's not what they do, they need the daily grind, the struggle, the challenge. Not to mention some shore leave on verdant natural environments, which this K-type planet doesn't have. Perhaps if they were good, over the years the androids might have let them have supervised day trips to other worlds, but just the thought of having to remain in pressure domes for most of their lives, must be a negative, even to people who spend much of their life on a starship. But this artificial environment goes with the artificial life forms that inhabit it, they don't understand the need for the natural as a natural part of natural life. They believe our species is self-destructive and we need their help to create order, so against Mudd's plans they intend to take the Enterprise (which we learn is as fast as any ship in Starfleet), to go and sort out humanity, and by extension, all the other races, too!

A starship being hijacked by a 'zealot,' summoned to a specific planet where a being of 'power' resides so that he can use the starship to escape his prison… Why, isn't that the plot of 'Star Trek V'? Seriously, if you looked at that film you wouldn't have made the connection with 'I, Mudd,' but seeing it from the other way round Norman is Sybok and Mudd is the false god! And much like the way Sybok would take over the Enterprise, Norman's approach is similarly entertaining and exciting - again, there are parallels with later Trek as Data did the same thing with the Enterprise-D in 'Brothers,' taking on the entire crew, locking them out of the controls and setting the ship on course for a specific planet. We get to see Auxiliary Control again (though it looks a bit different unless we're seeing another view or angle), and that cool little room above Engineering, as Norman goes about his dastardly business. It was also great how he shuts himself down on the Bridge near the Turbolift entrance and stands there for four days until they arrive. He's there so long that the crew start to forget his presence and almost walk into him! It's a mercy he didn't choose to stand immediately in front of the Turbolift doors as I'm not sure there's another way onto the Bridge, and I can't imagine the crew crawling up through Jefferies Tubes every day for their duty shift - I don't think they'd be able to make the android budge!

The question of androids having a mind, and what a mind meld means, comes up again. We saw Spock meld with Nomad, a mechanical entity, so I suppose it shouldn't be any different with another computerised creature, but he does 'link up' as it were, and finds that Norman has shut down. Later, he tries out the Nerve Pinch on one of the Alice models and it has no effect. Though they know enough about the inhabitants of our universe, perhaps through studying us from their outposts, they don't know everything as Alice wouldn't have asked the significance of such a gesture otherwise. Since they probably don't have nerves, at least not in the conventional biological sense, it would be appropriate for the Pinch to have no effect, though it seemed to be merely a test of scientific curiosity on Spock's part since he already had his orders to confuse the pair, thus didn't need to incapacitate them physically (though it would have been interesting to see the strength of a Vulcan take on one of the androids - we see the bulbous Harry pushed across the room with one flick from the slender wrist of an Alice). Usually it's Kirk who makes the magnificent jumps of speculation, but Spock here assumes that this many androids would need a control centre to function. Not sure where he got that idea from, though it turned out to be correct in this case.

We have another large Landing Party (eventually the whole crew is beamed down and Kirk shows distress at this since I suppose the starship can't operate on automatic and would most likely begin to degrade its orbit), with only Sulu and Scotty not beaming down initially, though Mr. Scott shows up later for his starring role as Man Killed By Whistling Phaser Fingers in one of the most dramatically bizarre scenes in all Trek. I don't know what happened to Sulu, it's a shame he wasn't in on the action as he has such a manic, wide-eyed grin when he wants to, that alone would probably have sent steam out of the androids' circuits! We get an idea of when Chekov may have been aboard the Enterprise last season - from 'Star Trek II' we'd find out that he was there when Khan took over in 'Space Seed' since the ex-dictator recognised him, but here we learn he wasn't around when the ship had its first encounter with serial conman Harry Mudd. Conveniently it allows Kirk to recall the incident so that less devoted members of the audience can catch up if they hadn't seen or remembered the original episode. It's possible Chekov could have been on leave, but I prefer to think he joined after that episode, giving us a little more data to narrow down his chronology. And it was fun to hear about the Rigel mining planet escapade, though I don't think we ever heard how Mudd escaped custody in that case.

Escaping custody seems to be his forte going by this and 'DSC,' and I'm pretty sure they'd have brought the character back for Season 3 of 'TOS' if Roger C. Carmel had been available, or perhaps it would have been Season 4, had it happened. Either way, he did come back one last time for 'The Animated Series' to voice Mudd ('Mudd's Passion'), up to his old tricks again, though it wasn't one of the best of that series and I think they glossed over how he escaped the android planet. The only other references to Mudd would come with the current generation with the little ship they use in 'Into Darkness' coming from the 'Mudd incident,' as they call it, until they actually brought the character back in 'DSC' for three episodes (if you count the 'Short Treks' as part of that series). 'DSC' changed so many things about that era of Trek, and not for the better, with Mudd being one of those. Instead of being this big, blustery but loveable rogue, he turned out to be a violent murderer, a much grimmer portrayal that was far from the spirit of 'TOS' and Mudd himself, to the detriment of 'DSC.' They still largely tried to make him a comedic character, but he was so much nastier and you never feel pleasure at his antics, not to mention he was responsible for introducing the stupidest technology of all Trek with the Time Crystal which would go on to even greater awfulness in 'DSC' Season 2. For what it's worth, his 'Short Treks' was probably the most entertaining of the original four, though that's not saying a great deal.

The reminder that money is still very much in operation in the 23rd Century is once again brought to the fore as Harry talks of patents and how he sold the Denebians a Vulcan patent and didn't pay royalties or something. This is one reason why it doesn't make sense in 'DSC' that they have fully-fledged Replicators, because once they came along that's what would change economies and the whole financial system, something Trek has wisely never tried to explain. But more important than the freedom of money is the freedom without it - all Mudd really wants in this episode is to escape the study of the androids who need humans to give them things to do. For all their advanced programming they still find it hard to comprehend imagination and spontaneity, these things can't be taught, they are part of a natural process, something Mudd's full of which is why he was a suitable specimen to examine, even if he did give them bad examples to follow. Kirk leaves him to his fate, an army of five hundred Stellas to nag him, which could well be worse than death, or perhaps it'll just make him appreciate the one real Stella (who looked considerably older compared with the young version we saw only a decade before in 'DSC'), just as it made Spock appreciate his illogical human companions (though couched in their 'greater need for him'!). I wonder if Kirk eventually went back, perhaps a year later to see what had grown from the space seed he'd planted that day… It would only be fair to take him into Federation custody rather than leave him for whoever knows how long at the mercy of the Stellas, even if he did almost get the galaxy crushed under the might of the Makers.

***