Rewatching TOS After SNW

[Christopher]

Mudd puts on an act to disarm people. His "Leo Walsh" is just that. As is the "Harry Mudd" he presents to Kirk and others. The real Harry comes out when he's alone with his "cargo".

You're still not even in the ballpark. Harry doesn't gun down the women ruthlessly. You're trying to lump every single form of bad behavior into a single category, but my whole point is that there are very different kinds of bad behavior, and the kind of extreme, casual violence "Mudd" was shown performing in "Magic" was vastly different from anything he did in TOS. It's like the difference between Cesar Romero's Joker and the Dark Knight Returns Joker.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm pretty sure he killed Leo Walsh. "Passed away suddenly". Riiiight.

 

[Mudd]

I'm pretty sure he killed Leo Walsh. "Passed away suddenly". Riiiight.

Well, he's certainly hiding something there.

Yeah, Carmel pours on the oily charm there,but Mudd's a nast piece of work.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

To be fair, there are (certainly) people who wouldn't harm a fly in real life, but who will (for various reasons) play violent video games (yes, I know there are people who would do both). There are also people who, given certain incentives, will do things they couldn't imagine doing otherwise.

 

[Grizzlor]

TOS: produced in the 60s.

SNW: produced in the 2020s.

The shit you say that they are different shows?

They can't not be. Even TNG gave us very different views on the TOS era and characters. Voyager treated it like the wild west, and Kirk became some kind of rule breaking thrill seeker.

It's almost like views on shows viewed through history are regarded differently.

Now, how to handle the differences?

I wasn't born yesterday, and you've made my point for me. I'm not here to chastise the writers for turning the women on board into actual characters. My point is that TOS and SNW really cannot be connected outside of some potential plot points. These are not the same "characters."

Individuals in the real world diverge from themselves, often, too: the public persona from the private, in front of co-workers/colleagues vs superiors, friends vs family. We have layers, and dichotomies, and hypocrisies.

This is not the real world, it's fiction. The writers have chosen to construct "new" characters who are "related" to their original portrayals but they have time and time again chosen not to be hampered by TOS portrayals. Honestly, it's the only way to go.

Of course they are. Keep in mind that these characters are some 6-7 years younger than the ones in TOS. It makes no sense to expect them to be identical. (The same goes for Kelvin, of course.)

They're actually doing an intriguing job threading the needle with Spock, Chapel, and Uhura. And Kirk here feels much more true to the original than Kelvin Kirk. M'Benga is more drastically reimagined, but we barely knew him in TOS anyway.

And none of the legacy characters here have been handled as badly as Harry Mudd, who was a lovable, harmless rogue in TOS but was retconned by DSC into a ruthless mass murderer.

Again, I have commended the writers! My point is you cannot sit here and wonder, oh, if Kirk or Spock or Uhura do this or that on SNW, what does that mean for TOS??? It's insanity. The writers on this series know that, which is why they don't concern themselves with it.

I have friends who grumble at this canon nonsense, and if I cared about that anymore, I would HATE this show.

 

[Christopher]

I wasn't born yesterday, and you've made my point for me. I'm not here to chastise the writers for turning the women on board into actual characters. My point is that TOS and SNW really cannot be connected outside of some potential plot points. These are not the same "characters."

I don't agree. They're approached differently, of course, but in ways that do show throughlines to the people they will be in 6-8 years. Are you really so convinced that people's behavior can't evolve over that span of time? Look how different, say, Wesley Crusher was between season 1 and season 7 of TNG. Or how different Rom was between seasons 1 & 7 of DS9.

Again, I have commended the writers! My point is you cannot sit here and wonder, oh, if Kirk or Spock or Uhura do this or that on SNW, what does that mean for TOS??? It's insanity. The writers on this series know that, which is why they don't concern themselves with it.

Please do not tell us what we can and can't think. A lot of us have done exactly that and have not found it difficult; indeed, we've found it rather fun. Sometimes it's harder to reconcile than others, but that's what makes it interesting to examine. Certainly it can be taken too far, as with Harry Mudd, but a lot of the time it just takes some creativity to reconcile it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well, he's certainly hiding something there.

Yeah, Carmel pours on the oily charm there,but Mudd's a nast piece of work.

His performance here is a lot more nuanced than in I,Mudd. But Mudd's Women is for the most part a serious episode. Mudd's playing Kirk and the miners to varying degrees of success. In I, Mudd Kirk and the Androids are usually a step ahead of poor Harry.

 

[fireproof78]

My point is that TOS and SNW really cannot be connected outside of some potential plot points. These are not the same "characters."

They are in the way that counts.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

And in "Mudd's Passion", he's a hapless con artist peddling love potions.

 

[Odo]

Connecting SNW and TOS is just a bit of fun. And sometimes SNW connections recontextualizes things we saw in TOS, like Chapel/Spock. They’re the same characters in the way the Bronze Age Batman and the Batman of the 90s are the same. Threading them together can cause contradictions, but real people have contradictions - it makes them more real. At the end of the day, though, it’s just silly fun

 

[Christopher]

Threading them together can cause contradictions, but real people have contradictions - it makes them more real.

And TOS had a ton of contradictions, since they were making it up as they went.

 

[Mudd]

My point is you cannot sit here and wonder, oh, if Kirk or Spock or Uhura do this or that on SNW, what does that mean for TOS??? It's insanity. The writers on this series know that, which is why they don't concern themselves with it.

You're absolutely correct. Seeing people try to reconcile all of this in detail is tiresome. These people fit with the old versions in terms of broad strokes.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

And none of the legacy characters here have been handled as badly as Harry Mudd, who was a lovable, harmless rogue in TOS but was retconned by DSC into a ruthless mass murderer.

I think maybe they just applied our modern understanding of "lovable rogue" into the sociopath most con artists actually are.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

His police record reads that he was sentenced to "Psychiatric treatment...Effectiveness disputed".

 

[Christopher]

I think maybe they just applied our modern understanding of "lovable rogue" into the sociopath most con artists actually are.

My point is, there's a huge difference between "sociopathic con artist" and "casual mass murderer." Most people in the former category are not so extreme as to fall into the latter. And it was incongruous to turn him into the latter while still presenting him as a charming scoundrel. It was just a category mismatch, conflating two very different character types.

I think some writers just get so used to writing consequence-less violence in fiction that they overlook what a big thing it is to kill someone. It's not something that a person can casually do and be unaffected by it, not unless they've already done it a great deal and become numb to it, or were psychopathic to begin with. But too many writers just treat it as a casual, incidental thing -- they write it with no weight to it, even though it should have weight to the characters.

 

[Mudd]

Some folks are way too concerned with sorting into categories.

I wrote of Carmel's "oily charm," but I never, ever found Mudd charming in the least - not when I was thirteen and watching the series for the first time, not ever. Mudd was a creep.

 

[fireproof78]

His police record reads that he was sentenced to "Psychiatric treatment...Effectiveness disputed".

Which was sufficient for me to reconcile DSC and TOS.

 

[gvn2fly]

I just watched Whom Gods Destroy and Garth is spoken of as a military commander, as is Kirk. Kirk says he was a military person but is an explorer now. In the context of Disco/SNW it made me think that they fought in the Klingon war.

 

[Noname Given]

I just watched Whom Gods Destroy and Garth is spoken of as a military commander, as is Kirk. Kirk says he was a military person but is an explorer now. In the context of Disco/SNW it made me think that they fought in the Klingon war.

And in TOS S1 Arena, while down onCestus III being attacked by the Gorn land leaving Sulu in command of the ship; when Kirk laments that they can't return to the ship, Spock says: "Sulu is an experienced combat officer."
^^^
So it seems that many of the bridge crew officers in TOS arr veterans of the Federation/Klingon War shown in Star Trek: Dscovery.

 

[Captain Jollydark]

Some folks are way too concerned with sorting into categories.

I wrote of Carmel's "oily charm," but I never, ever found Mudd charming in the least - not when I was thirteen and watching the series for the first time, not ever. Mudd was a creep.

Have to agree.