Is the level of 23d century tech advanced enough to produce those replicas,which can also Evade Scans?
Why not? Mudd's bots fooled Starfleet in "I, Mudd" easily enough. And he never said when he discovered those bots. He just implied they were the reason he was able to escape custody so easily after Rigel XII. And, apparently, back in 2257 as well, it now seems... Timo Saloniemi
The androids in I,Mudd were found by him when he landed on that planet. These are different. How does he manufacture them, much less program in enough of his personality to fool most everyone?
He asks them for something and they generally do it for him. Though Discovery era Mudd is shown to be rather clever and able to figure out quite a bit of technology to farther his criminal activities.
For the benefit of those who haven't seen the episode and perhaps never will (e.g. moi), how are they different? Those from Planet Mudd were capable of being built to anatomical perfection and programmed with chosen personalities. By complete newcomers like Kirk, even, not just by Mudd. I'd think they would fit the specs here just fine, barring further information. Timo Saloniemi
The "I, Mudd" robot, Norman, might have failed a medical exam since he avoided Dr McCoy's scheduled exams. By TOS/TFS standards, I don't think robots can hide their internals if scanned because even V'ger's replica of Ilia was detectable by equipment on the Enterprise. I haven't seen the episode. Did the Discovery Mudd bots pass as human even when scanned?
Only basic Tricorder scans. Detailed scans revealed their medical internals. Good enough to fool a Bounty Hunter with only a tricorder. Not Good enough to fool StarFleet with full on Science / Medical labs. Harry Mudd is a Con Man, he worked just hard enough to Con the Bounty Hunter
That's it - "I, Mudd" gives no date or timeline on when Mudd actually finds the robot factory planet. Except it very much looks (even on the basis of "I, Mudd" itself) that this must happen long before he first meets Kirk, because he would be in the hands of authorities after meeting with Kirk, and not at liberty to stumble onto any planets. Indeed, he would need a clever trick to evade yet another round of psychiatric treatment. And now we see one of his cleverest escape acts is the use of androids... So yes, retcon. That is, very good continuity, only the retroactive sort. Timo Saloniemi
I thought that once he landed, Mudd was not allowed to leave. He never said how long he was there, but might be irrelevant. Could the Mudd running the ship be better programmed than the surface Androids or a complete mental transfer?
There's room for speculation there, certainly. - Mudd would be inclined to program his Alices and Barbaras more simplistically than androids he'd use in criminal schemes. The machines could well have a capacity for more, or (more probably) the planet could produce machines with a capacity for more if Mudd asked it to. - Mudd never said anything as clear-cut as "once I landed, I was stuck". Instead, he concluded a masterfully evasive tirade with fragments such as "So here I am" and "They won't let me go". He was hiding much more than he was telling. - Mudd indeed never said how long he had been there, or when he had first arrived. Might be completely different things. It would seem that if Mudd had a good thing going with the androids, he'd exploit that till he no longer could. Only when he no longer could would he tell Kirk even as much as he did - and he'd certainly leave out any self-incriminating bits such as references to previous successful capers done with the help of the androids. Timo Saloniemi
In the "I, Mudd" episode the dialogue was that after he bought his way out of custody on Rigel he ended up being chased in space and wandered around until he found the Mudd planet. However, since Mudd is an unreliable narrator it is very possible he could have found the planet much earlier. According to dialogue, the Mudd robots can use a human brain but that would imply that the brain is taken from the original body. This could also imply that a human brain-robot body can operate independently of Norman's control because all the other Mudd bots required a working central control unit like Norman to function. ALICE 263: Our medi-robots are able to place a human brain within a structurally compatible android body.
Disregarding Timo's theory that these were I, Mudd androids - as I don't think that was the intention of the writer (I know that doesn't matter) - I think that it provides some insight into the state of AI and (black market?) android technology in the mid-23rd century. We see androids in TOS multiple times, always as near-perfect simulacra of human(oid) beings created by long dead super civilizations or an immortal human being with unlikely technological prowess. Including the I, Mudd androids. In TNG, androids are still an oddity, with Data being a rare one with "sentience". I'm assuming, until told otherwise, that Airiam is an alien cyborg and 0718 is from an alternate timeline only. The Mudd replica androids display some cunning, enough to talk around their bounty hunters in an attempt to "join forces" or be set free, although none apparently accomplish this goal. By the time of the arrival on the de Milo, they are all off-kilter, repeating lines and visibly malfunctioning. It's implied that they have a script ("jippers on a beach somewhere"), but it must allow for improvisation given the environment they're dropped into. The malfunctioning appears to start the moment the replica realizes its an android. It's only programmed to last long enough for Mudd to collect his bounty and safely abscond away, afterall. Starfleet doesn't seem too amazed by these androids, but that's a hard barometer to judge by, since they've been dealing with them for weeks or so. I wonder if de Milo is some sort of "Federation rescue ship"/bounty collection hub that trades latinum for Federation citizens with large galactic bounties (Federation paying larger bounties to protect its own citizenry and stop them from running amok)? Mudd could be using the I, Mudd androids, or some other super-powerful androids he ran across, or even just some over-the-counter android duplication service available to anyone on some rando planet. My bet is on the latter. The tricorder jamming/re-recognition, similar to Juliana Tainer about eighty years later is a different issue. Maybe that is the only super-technology that Mudd has run across to play this con. Or maybe that is a regular tool of the era utilized by most spies and we just haven't seen it much. The Mudd replica appears to be only superficially human, not bleeding or anything when its arm is easily ripped off and showing a mass of cabling in its innards. Similar in many ways to Tainer. But Tainer was positronic-powered, built to last and fool others and herself. Maybe the Mudd replicas are a precursor to Soong's work afterall, and just not powered by positrons and only meant to last weeks at most (maybe even less than a day between resets).
...But then Dr. Mulhall feels her folks ought to be building androids for Sargon. One doesn't rule out the other: the UFP could be quite proficient in androidry as such, even if lacking in the compact that is, (braincase-sized) AI field. Certainly whenever our heroes encounter these alien androids, they fail to establish they would be impressed by the technological specs of their existence. They are instead taken by surprise when the android nature of a person is revealed, and then deal with the matter in the inimitable TOS way where nothing is too absurd to be deadpanned. I'd dispute "still", considering the TOS precedent. Rather, androids could be a dying fad by the late 24th century, especially considering the improvements in holotech... The latter at least appears only partially machinelike. And DSC is full of explicit and implicit war invalids with prosthetic cyborg bits, while Georgiou's original crew didn't have those. One of 'em wore a clumsy VR helmet, though, nicely highlighting how advanced technology (TOS) may be much less gee-whiz than outdated technology (pre-DSC). Airiam remains a mystery till further dialogue, however. Alien or not, android or not? And tats a fun reminder of how easy it is to pass the Turing test. Sentience not required. Then again, Kirk was able to embark on "quests" at times in TOS - the mystery of the broken-up planets, say. The skipper of de Milo (or DeMille? Did we get that in writing?) might have been on one, after having stumbled on the first of the Muddroids. We got three distinct android-making planets in TOS already: "Little Girls", "I, Mudd", "Shore Leave". The tech in the three probably wasn't related, so Mudd ought to have plenty of options to choose from. Then again, one Mudd combined with one android provider sounds like the simplest assumption. Did the first of the three planets introduce an all-new phenomenon to our Starfleet heroes or their bosses? Perhaps telling is that all three planets receive much the same treatment, with the same level of surprise or lack thereof. The previous encounters are not referred to in "I, Mudd" or "Shore Leave", either. Pretty much every show features civilians possessing cooler gear than Starfleet. "Devil's Due" shows a villain performing superb stage magic that would have its tactical advantages, but Picard merely commandeers or jams the tech rather than adopting it for his own ship. The DSC trailers show S31 giving Georgiou holocamouflage, while Starfleet a century later still bothers with surgical alterations. I wouldn't choose to credit Mudd with supertech - just tech the conservative military opts not to adopt. And to both the "I, Mudd androids" (that is, both of the "I, Mudd" android types) and the "Little Girls" and "Shore Leave" androids. There probably exists a different word for biological simulacra. "Whispers" uses the word replicant, FWIW, echoing Mudd's usage here; the fake O'Brien just was more than skin deep... I doubt Soong was much of a name in androids (as he was never considered one in dialogue). Instead, he was the loon with the fixation about positronics, which as we later hear has many uses. He just chose to showcase his positronic knowhow with androids, possibly a quaint, forgotten technology with no other uses besides advertising. Timo Saloniemi
Mudd's robots are pretty basic by TOS standards - they're programmed with enough basic logic to fool a bounty hunter and offer common responses. We could pretty much do that now. When they reach a conflict, their heads basically explode in classic TOS style.