Fixer wrote:If I were to nitpick, Mudd in his previous incarnations including the 25th Anniversary game appearance as a man that dealt in illegal goods and shady deals. He was a lot less murder-y and high treason-y. In addition his punishment at the end should have been far more severe as a result.
In "I, Mudd", he tried to imprison the entire crew on that planet for the rest of their lives, while simultaneously unleashing an uber-powerful race of androids that wanted to dominate the entire galaxy. That's some solid supervillain stuff right there, no matter how charming he came across.
Heck, even in 25th Anniversary, Mudd had that bit where he tried to take away the one tool the crew needed to fix the air recycler thing just as the air recycler started malfunctioning, which implies he was hoping they would end up asphyxiating themselves. Dude wasn't nice.
I think perhaps the difference is his intent. In those instances, it was always a sort of opportunistic greed mixed with an apathy towards the well-being of others. In Discovery, he's out for bloody revenge and killed an entire ship of people... multiple times... often in-person and directly...
And this incident is before those, so there isn't a natural progression.
Yeah, but Kirk never did anything as bad to him as leaving him to die in a Klingon prison camp. Who knows what he might have done if he had? Also, Mudd hasn't had that psychiatric treatment to mellow him out yet...
edit: and in "Mudd's Women", the original captain of Mudd's ship "passed away... suddenly," implying that Mudd bumped him off. (And to find that out, I had to suffer through "Mudd's Women", so I hope you're happy )
The problem with people arguing for Mudd being a killer is nobody is saying Mudd was ever a nice guy.
One can be a criminal, a rogue and even a traitor without being a remorseless killer. Saying that Mudd is a bad guy and capable of some bad things, therefore he's capable of all the bad things is a silly no limits fallacy.
I mean you do realise there are detestable people out there who have ordered murders and assassinations, but would never be capable of personally doing the deed themselves right?
I can believe Harry Mudd would commit treason and sell a top secret ship to the highest bidder. Sure. I don't believe he could callously gun people down and murder people in the most painful of ways over and over.
And don't give me the time reset business. You could give me 10,000 resets and I would never be capable of murdering innocent people let alone take joy from it. It takes a certain kind of person to do that, and that person is not the character from TOS.
Morgaine wrote:The problem with people arguing for Mudd being a killer is nobody is saying Mudd was ever a nice guy.
One can be a criminal, a rogue and even a traitor without being a remorseless killer. Saying that Mudd is a bad guy and capable of some bad things, therefore he's capable of all the bad things is a silly no limits fallacy.
I mean you do realise there are detestable people out there who have ordered murders and assassinations, but would never be capable of personally doing the deed themselves right?
I can believe Harry Mudd would commit treason and sell a top secret ship to the highest bidder. Sure. I don't believe he could callously gun people down and murder people in the most painful of ways over and over.
And don't give me the time reset business. You could give me 10,000 resets and I would never be capable of murdering innocent people let alone take joy from it. It takes a certain kind of person to do that, and that person is not the character from TOS.
Completely agree. The Harry Mudd from TOS would never kill anyone; he was an asshole...but a lovable asshole who could never do anything cold and brutal like that. In my mind...that is not the same Harry Mudd. Its someone completely different with the exact same name.
in universe, I think Harvey was 100% tonally completely wrong. But to give the writer/showrunners the benefit of the doubt....here's harvey's TOS police record. Harvey did eventually get sent to a penal colony and presumably Harvey's Hannibal Lector impulses got drugged away.
My bigger nitpick is that apparently everyone in-universe is deus ex machina close to everyone else. Stella had no problem meeting up w/Starfleet's most covert science ship.
And apparently Harvey being the rogue that he was didn't have any outstanding space warrants, nor did Lorca want to charge Mudd with treason or attempted larceny or even trespass. Lorca is a wannabe anarchist as apparently he shrugs off the Endangered Space Species Act and criminal law.
Oh ya, and Stammets doesn't have PTSD from watching his crew mates die in the most graphic manners possible for dozens of loops? One hell of a magic reset button.
technobabbler wrote:Oh ya, and Stammets doesn't have PTSD from watching his crew mates die in the most graphic manners possible for dozens of loops? One hell of a magic reset button.
In fairness, in the storyline, Stamets had been stoned off his head for weeks by the time the events of the episode rolled around thanks to the spores.
Yes I suppose you could explain it with some sort of psychiatric treatment or something... though with the level of psychopathy displayed in DSC I'd wonder why Mudd wasn't in a cell right next to Garth of Izar.
But ultimately my view is that while you can explain why Mudd isn't the same character, the fact remains he isn't the same character.
GandALF wrote:Aren't we forgetting the reset thingy? It would be in-character for him to only kill people directly if he could do so without any consequences.
I'm not. Like I said reset or no it takes a certain type of person who is capable of killing a living, breathing person, watching the life evaporate from their eyes, watching the blood pool from their bodies... and this isn't going into the numerous horrific ways Mudd kills people here.
Even if I was guaranteed that a person would come back to life with no consequences after I killed them, I wouldn't do it let alone revel in it like Mudd does, and I dont believe the Harry Mudd of TOS would either.
This is by the way on top of the fact that he intended to leave Tyler dead after killing him in a manner he described as extremely slow and painful. He is a killer by action and a killer by intent.
Another episode that felt closer to the trek formula
I'm not a big fan of Michael/Tyler romance, mostly cause Michael come across as a teenage girl with a crush, not that it's out of character, but the disapointement is too telegraph
Redem wrote:Another episode that felt closer to the trek formula
I'm not a big fan of Michael/Tyler romance, mostly cause Michael come across as a teenage girl with a crush, not that it's out of character, but the disapointement is too telegraph
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