STD: Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I get that this one is a quote from Homer, but I just don't like most of Discovery's episode titles. They're a weird combination of pretentious and dorky and it feels like they're trying way too hard.

Count me among those who don't like Mudd becoming a would-be mass murderer. That really ignores everything TOS told us about the character.

[CharlesPhipps]

Mudd was going to turn over the group to the Klingons, which would undoubtedly get the entire crew executed and tortured. However, Mudd also was willing to maroon the Enterprise crew on a planet where they'd eventually die, so I think that fits his morality. He's a terrible-terrible person.

The only person he was sadistic and brutal to was Lorca, who left him to be tortured and die in a Klingon prison.

Mind you, I'm not defending this episode too much because it DOES have a major continuity fact. I think it would be on Mudd's permanent record, "Oh, by the way, Captain Kirk, this guy is a known TERRORIST and Klingon collaborator."

So I don't object to Mudd being ruthless to the man who abandoned him and killing people when he can reverse time as well as turning them over to the Klingons. I do object to the fact that you can't have Mudd do this kind of thing and get treated as a harmless nobody later.

Other random thoughts:

* Was this a 21st century themed party?
* In the spirit of Trekkie nerdom, how did this song get created when there was a nuclear war in the 90s. Was this song brought over from a alternate universe like the Voyager episode one?
* Why is Tilly a huge withdrawn nerd here and suddenly party girl? Is that Romulan ale working that fast?
* I *LOVED* The Andorian Space Suit. That was the best part of the episode (sadly)

[Mindworm]

I said that it was common for mass murderers and psychopaths to pass off as nicer than they really are.

Name one. Because I'm racking my brains here and I cannot come up with a single murderer (in terms of a premeditated murderer) who could plausibly pass off as nice. Smooth, manipulative and good at deception, yes, but nice, I cannot see it.

[CharlesPhipps]

Name one. Because I'm racking my brains here and I cannot come up with a single murderer (in terms of a premeditated murderer) who could plausibly pass off as nice. Smooth, manipulative and good at deception, yes, but nice, I cannot see it.

Well the point is they pretend to be nice.

[Jonathan101]

I said that it was common for mass murderers and psychopaths to pass off as nicer than they really are.

Name one. Because I'm racking my brains here and I cannot come up with a single murderer (in terms of a premeditated murderer) who could plausibly pass off as nice. Smooth, manipulative and good at deception, yes, but nice, I cannot see it.

Well, the point is, they pretend to be nice.

[Zoinksberg]

I'm going to potentially compliment the writers here.

The line Chuck played of Lorca commenting on the space whale being hunted to extinction might,might be a clever line that takes on a different meaning when you watch it again. Upon first viewing it's just a "we hunt whales to extinction" line. Maybe a small ST:IV reference, maybe just a clunky way to bring up the next clunky line.

Once you know where he is from though the line seems more likely to be him slipping up and accidentally commenting on what happened to them where he was from. I have to say, if that was intentionally done then it was a great way to slip in something on the sly.

[Madner Kami]

Are we talking about Ensign Kim or about the mass murderer Mudd, who killed more then his fair share during this monstrosity of an episode?

No he didn't. They're all alive at the end.

Last time I checked a thesaurus, murder is defined as the unlawfull killing of a person. Plus, just because a victim can be resurrected by the murderer, doesn't make the murderer not a murderer. In fact, that makes him an even worser person, because it's agruelsome kind of torture and it also shows what a ridiculously sociopathic personality this version of Harry Mudd is. He's not just willing to kill a person, he's willing to kill the same person repeatedly.

[CharlesPhipps]

Last time I checked a thesaurus, murder is defined as the unlawfull killing of a person. Plus, just because a victim can be resurrected by the murderer, doesn't make the murderer not a murderer. In fact, that makes him an even worser person, because it's agruelsome kind of torture and it also shows what a ridiculously sociopathic personality this version of Harry Mudd is. He's not just willing to kill a person, he's willing to kill the same person repeatedly.

I'm just saying that Mudd, an objectively horrible person, might not consider it murder when he has the power to reset reality.

[SFDebris]

Since it has to do with a topic of discussion, I'll clarify if it wasn't clear from the review: Mudd didn't reset time to undo the deaths until he learned how valuable the now dead Michael was. Tricking Mudd into undoing the deaths was their plan, because as they rightly suspected, he would otherwise have allowed time to go forward and allow those he killed to remain killed.

[Durandal_1707]

I said that it was common for mass murderers and psychopaths to pass off as nicer than they really are.

Name one. Because I'm racking my brains here and I cannot come up with a single murderer (in terms of a premeditated murderer) who could plausibly pass off as nice. Smooth, manipulative and good at deception, yes, but nice, I cannot see it.

Does it have to be a murderer, or can we include psychopaths who've committed other crimes? Because, y'know, Bill Cosby.

"WTF? We saw this character two whole times in the old series, and he was just this lovable TV personality starring in family sitcoms and selling Jell-O pudding pops! Now in the prequel they're making him a crazy rapist? These writers clearly don't know what they're doing!"