WHY WE LIKE IT: It's fun. Good twists.
WHY WE DON'T: Doesn't quite fit the Original Series' canon.
REVIEW: Rainn Wilson directs himself as Harry Mudd in this short but dense tale that shows how Mudd got his reputation as the galaxy's biggest rascal. I love a good grift story, and The Escape Artist certainly delivers. It's not just that Mudd has left a string of victims across the quadrant, nor that he puts one over on the Tellarite bounty hunter in this story, but he cons the audience as well. We spend much of the episode laughing at him, at how often he's been captured and punished by various powers, at how the Tellarite doesn't fall for his lies, and then, bam, the joke's on us. A reveal of just how clever and shameless Mudd really is.
That reveal has a big question mark floating above it for older fans, as obviously, it harks back to (or prefigures, chronologically) the events of I, Mudd, but according to that TOS episode, Harry only finds the planet of androids later, and accidentally at that. Well, what if he was lying about those circumstances? What if the androids originally did let him go, but eventually grew tired of his leaving them behind and only on a later visit did they make him a captive kind? Doesn't fix every problem unless Mudd found a way to expunge his record before Mudd's Women. Or could these be completely different androids? That's even more difficult to explain given what TOS told us, and there's a further clue. One of the androids in the De Milo's brig wears King Mudd's trademark blue jacket with the gold epaulets. Of course, a third explanation is that all of this is after I, Mudd, several years in Discovery's future. I wouldn't mind. Still, don't the Trek creators know the old fans already spend too much time wringing their fingers about stuff like this?
Regardless, it's a very fun episode, with some occasional directorial flair from Wilson. The screenshot above shows he knows where to put the camera, and it's certainly edited for comedy. I did question the choice of a funky '70s version of the Discovery theme at the start - is it a DISCO pun? - but I can't say I disliked it. Overall a fun little tour of this era's Trek universe that works well as a 15-minute short.
LESSON: If you get caught, make sure you don't get caught.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: I didn't love Harry Mudd's Discovery appearances, but I can get behind him in The Escape Artist.
Comments
Haha! Canon's such a funny thing. I love it AND rue it at times.
I guess it really matters now in the days of the "story arc".
I say bring back the 50's and 60's where the universe resets at the start of every episode and "anything could happen in the following half hour."
Some of my favourite FAVOURITE stories "never happened" when canon was decided at the Star Trek and Star Wars council of Nicea in A.D. 325.