Story: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
I will never be a fan of Harry Mudd, and I genuinely didn't understand why the folks behind Discovery thought it wise to resurrect this awful and dated character. And the truth is...they really haven't. Rainn Wilson's character is nothing like his TOS counterpart...and in this episode that is even more apparent. He is sort of a trickster villain, akin more to Q or something (minus the godlike powers), and I think the entire idea of the Wilson character would've been better served if he just wasn't called Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Because that guy sucks, and WIlson's character doesn't suck nearly as much.
This episode had a neat Trek premise, a villain has overtaken the ship via a time-loop device, and he keeps replaying the same 30 minutes over and over again in order to figure out how the Discovery's unique drive system works, and take that info to sell to the Klingons for money. I like the premise, like the character developments that occur within the time-loop (and the fact that they must start anew once the problem is solved), and I thought the development for Stamets in this one was great...I rather liked how the Spore Drive is changing his personality, and allowing him to see things (like time loops) that he may not have otherwise seen.
The issue with this episode comes at the end. In order to tie up the Mudd storyline (hopefully for the rest of this series run), they manage to foil his plot, and then instead of imprisoning him for killing them all over and over again with a dangerous weapon with the hopes of stealing their top secret technology to sell to the enemy...they just call his former fiance and family, and send him off to get married. While in some ways I like the idea that it ends not with someone going to jail or being killed...it just seems like they made him too mad and criminal to allow that. I can kind of see the idea of it being a Trek ending where they find some understanding in the foe...it just doesn't mesh with what he did in the story. If he hadn't been Mudd, they maybe would've been able to more properly send him to the authorities, and maybe he could've returned in some new interesting way down the line. But being Mudd...they need him to go marry Stella and become the creep from TOS (who was a sex trafficker by the way). The ending just falls short for me, particularly when I rather enjoyed the episode leading up to that conclusion (with the exception that I hate that he IS Mudd).
Neat concept, muddled ending, bad returning character. It was a bad idea to bring Mudd back into the Trek fold, and this episode would have been far more interesting if they had just created someone new, and fixed the conclusion.
NEXT TIME: Pahvo
Written By: Aron Eli Coleite & Jesse Alexander
Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Year: 2017I will never be a fan of Harry Mudd, and I genuinely didn't understand why the folks behind Discovery thought it wise to resurrect this awful and dated character. And the truth is...they really haven't. Rainn Wilson's character is nothing like his TOS counterpart...and in this episode that is even more apparent. He is sort of a trickster villain, akin more to Q or something (minus the godlike powers), and I think the entire idea of the Wilson character would've been better served if he just wasn't called Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Because that guy sucks, and WIlson's character doesn't suck nearly as much.
The issue with this episode comes at the end. In order to tie up the Mudd storyline (hopefully for the rest of this series run), they manage to foil his plot, and then instead of imprisoning him for killing them all over and over again with a dangerous weapon with the hopes of stealing their top secret technology to sell to the enemy...they just call his former fiance and family, and send him off to get married. While in some ways I like the idea that it ends not with someone going to jail or being killed...it just seems like they made him too mad and criminal to allow that. I can kind of see the idea of it being a Trek ending where they find some understanding in the foe...it just doesn't mesh with what he did in the story. If he hadn't been Mudd, they maybe would've been able to more properly send him to the authorities, and maybe he could've returned in some new interesting way down the line. But being Mudd...they need him to go marry Stella and become the creep from TOS (who was a sex trafficker by the way). The ending just falls short for me, particularly when I rather enjoyed the episode leading up to that conclusion (with the exception that I hate that he IS Mudd).
Neat concept, muddled ending, bad returning character. It was a bad idea to bring Mudd back into the Trek fold, and this episode would have been far more interesting if they had just created someone new, and fixed the conclusion.
NEXT TIME: Pahvo