I don't know about less appealing. I have watched "Arena" with some non-trekkies before and they all laughed at the Gorn, thought it was too silly looking.
Rewatching TOS After SNW
- Thread starter Odo
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I don't know about less appealing. I have watched "Arena" with some non-trekkies before and they all laughed at the Gorn, thought it was too silly looking.
Regarding Harry Mudd, this can be true of him, as well. I get why some people call Mudd a psychopath in "Magic To Make the Sanest Man Go Mad", but he had just escaped a Klingon prison where he was already tortured for quite a while, even before Loca appeared. And Lorca and Tyler left him there at the end of "Choose Your Pain". He's pissed, and he's perfectly fine with some vengeance. About 10 years later, "MUDD'S WOMEN" occurs. Obviously, he's not as pissed as he was in DISCO. Time could have changed him. He evolved from being a hardened killer to a conman. I would call that an evolution. (Though admittedly, it can be difficult to call it an evolution. Some people just can't fully turn around their behavior, but maybe some of the worst parts can be.)
He's still a criminal, but he's not as gung ho to kill anymore.
This is one of the few times that DISCO did something that didn't really bother me.
Yeah, I never liked Mudd on TOS.
I believe that Harry's motivation for his killing spree in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" had a lot to do with the fact that he knew it wouldn't stick because of his time crystal device.
The reason he enjoyed it so much was he felt he was getting revenge on Lorca and Tyler for leaving him behind in the Klingon prison.
He was also pissed off because the Discovery crew screwed up his very profitable arrangement with Stella.
That is completely within the character's persona set up on TOS.
The reason he enjoyed it so much was he felt he was getting revenge on Lorca and Tyler for leaving him behind in the Klingon prison.
He was also pissed off because the Discovery crew screwed up his very profitable arrangement with Stella.
That is completely within the character's persona set up on TOS.
I think it would be nice if SNW left something of TOS that hasn't been "shown in a new light"
For example, it's fun that Spock and Chapel got together in SNW, but at no point was it the intent of the TOS producers that they'd had a prior affair.
I just see it as a different show, loosely associated. Gotham vs. Adam West Batman.
For example, it's fun that Spock and Chapel got together in SNW, but at no point was it the intent of the TOS producers that they'd had a prior affair.
I just see it as a different show, loosely associated. Gotham vs. Adam West Batman.
I rather doubt that the producers of TOS even had that thought occur to them.
So "no intent" is a deceiving way to describe it.
One has to go out of one's way to think like that.
It's not a cognitive thought process.
I doubt they even thought about creating a backstory that involved the two characters a decade or more before their appearance in the show.
That's just their appearance. I'm talking about the writing, the concept. I'm talking about whether there's enough substance in the portrayal of the species to sustain them as ongoing villains. If they can never be more than one-note monsters without nuance or ambiguity, that's creatively limiting.
Again, I'm not talking about whether it can be reconciled in-universe. That's the most superficial, least important level of analysis. I'm talking about fictional characters as fictional characters, as artistic creations shaped by the choices of the artists. I'm talking about how Strange New Worlds has approached the portrayal of its legacy characters, and I'm using DSC's bizarrely violent reinvention of Harry Mudd as a contrasting example to show how SNW's legacy characters (M'Benga aside) are much truer to the spirit and substance of their TOS versions.
Everyone always says that, ignoring the fact I've already pointed out: that when Mudd killed Tyler in the most gratuitously sadistic, slow, agonizing way possible, he believed the time loops were already over. He inflicted an unnecessarily horrific and cruel death on Tyler in the belief that it would be permanent. So no, giving him (or rather, the writers who made that grotesque plotting choice) an out because of the time loops just doesn't work.
Harry's extended relationship with Tyler in the Klingon prison explains that perfectly.
Harry feels that Tyler completely abandoned him in favor of Lorca and is out for revenge against the two of them for leaving him behind at the mercy of the Klingons.
(especially since Harry had a lot to do with the two of them escaping)
Again, the revenge aspect is not something that is out of what we previously knew about Mudd's character.
I think one has to also take into account that by the time we meet Mudd in TOS he has gone though a few years of being in the Federation Penal System.
That experience most likely evolved his outlook on life in general.
Harry feels that Tyler completely abandoned him in favor of Lorca and is out for revenge against the two of them for leaving him behind at the mercy of the Klingons.
(especially since Harry had a lot to do with the two of them escaping)
Again, the revenge aspect is not something that is out of what we previously knew about Mudd's character.
I think one has to also take into account that by the time we meet Mudd in TOS he has gone though a few years of being in the Federation Penal System.
That experience most likely evolved his outlook on life in general.
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Whatever gets you to sleep at night but that's rather like saying the writers writing about Kirk's relationship with Areel Shaw didn't have his relationship with Janice Lester in mind.
Some people seem reluctant to re-appraise Spock and Chapel's relationship because they thought they had it sussed in their brainpan. Personally, I have loved the way they have subverted my expectations while keeping it close to canon, or at least closer than Kirk in STII saying he'd never had to face death or in STV saying he lost a brother once but got him back (hold your breath for SNW Mirror Sam joining our universe guys).
But when it totally subverts the intents of the original creators it becomes less clever and more disrespectful.
I agree that SNW has done a great job of keeping the spirit of the legacy characters pretty close to TOS... I am going to include M'Benga, too, because other than the fact he's a doctor and interned on Vulcan, we knew nothing about the man before SNW. He was basically a blank slate... I think he had fewer scenes in the two episodes he appeared in combined than Number One had in "THE CAGE". Hard to capture the spirit of a character when there's so little to capture on screen.
And while I was talking about how DISCO Mudd could fit in TOS, it wasn't my reason behind saying it. My point was showing his motivations and views can change and evolve over 10 years, which was what I was quoting you about when you used Wesley and Rom as examples. People change.
Harry Mudd... I get why you say the spirit of his character was changed by DISCO, but he was a scumbag and a criminal in TOS. The only difference between TOS and DISCO is the level of his actions. I don't think it's that big a change of his spirit to add killing for revenge after Lorca and Tyler left him to the Klingons.
True, but again, what I'm talking about is not the inconsequential surface level of whether the in-story facts can be reconciled, but the more substantial critical question of whether it was a good idea for the storytellers to choose to portray the characters in that way in the first place. Deciding to portray either Harry Mudd or Dr. M'Benga as a violent killer is probably not what TOS's writers had remotely in mind, and it's not a revision I find appealing in either case.
Of course, TV today is much freer to depict graphic violence than it was in the 1960s, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I think modern TV writers have become too used to embracing extreme violence as a story device merely because they have the freedom to do so, and it's something of a lazy crutch to generate a reaction with shock value rather than going for something more nuanced. I mean, exploring M'Benga's post-war trauma is certainly worth doing, but there are more nuanced ways of doing that than turning him into Rambo.
"Scumbag?" No. He was a charming con artist, a lovable rogue. He was Jack Sparrow, not Hannibal Lecter. He was Falstaff, not Iago.
That is exactly the point. There are different categories of criminality, and different categories of fictional antagonist. A charming rogue and a sadistic killer are very different characters, one far easier to like than the other. I can like a version of Harry Mudd who's a scheming con artist and habitual liar. I can't like a version of Harry Mudd who's capable of casual killing sprees. It crosses a line.
Saying whether what DISCO with Mudd was good or bad choice is really up to the viewer. Personally, I don't find a criminal who peddles women and is a conman to be loveable or charming. Rogue? Sure. Loveable? No.
Regarding M'Benga... exactly how is he a 'violent killer'? During the events of J'Gal, he first declined to go after Dak'Rah. After seeing all those people killed because he didn't go for the mission before, clearly guilt took over. Had he gotten rid of Dak'Rah at the time he was asked, not only would those people have likely lived, but all those civilians and children would have lived, too. That was a war... people do things in war to protect others or for their own survival. Doesn't make him a 'violent killer'.
A violent killer is someone who murders with no remorse... Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. M'Benga very clearly is traumatized by what happened during the war. He most certainly does not fit the description of a violent killer.
What, like they swap places for a while, mirror Sam picks up where prime Sam left off, he dies, then real Sam returns later?
No.
He was an awful fellow played by a lovable actor.
Because TV treated certain sociopathic behaviors as amusing ticks at that time doesn't mean that they have to be viewed that way forever.
What kind of a man creates an army of automated sex slaves to gratify himself, and then has one fashioned in the image of his own wife upon which he can heap abuse?
They say Epstein could be charming, too.
Indeed. I remember feeling a odd disquiet over the heroic portrayal of Jack Sparrow, someone who talks about pillaging and causing chaos and destruction in his wake.
Never mind the historic aspects of piracy.
He didn't "peddle women." Viewers today misunderstand "Mudd's Women" as sex trafficking because they don't remember the historical practice of wiving settlers that it was based on. The program to recruit women to move out to male-dominated Western frontier settlements was the exact opposite of sex trafficking; the goal was to make the communities more wholesome and civilized by encouraging reputable women from Eastern cities to voluntarily migrate to the West, take community-building roles like schoolteachers and seamstresses and the like, and hopefully allow the formation of lasting marital bonds so men wouldn't have to turn to brothels as much.
Certainly Harry's con game was corrupting the intent of a settler-wiving program, but the episode made it clear that Eve, Ruth, and Magda were willing partners in the con. They (or at least Ruth and Magda) were portrayed as golddiggers, women using their sexual wiles to win rich husbands. In that paradigm, it's the husbands who are presumed to be the victims, manipulated by women who pretend to love them but just want their wealth. Perhaps that's another aspect that's hard to recognize given cultural shifts since the 1960s.
And you really can't find con artists charming? I guess there must be a whole genre of fiction you don't like -- The Sting, Ocean's Eleven, the Mission: Impossible TV series, The A-Team, Remington Steele, White Collar, Leverage, etc. Heck, Han Solo and Lando Calrissian are con artists. The Wizard of Oz was a con artist. Angel Martin from The Rockford Files, Booster Gold and John Constantine from DC Comics, Lupin the Third, Quark from DS9, Beckett Mariner from Lower Decks, Vala from Stargate SG-1, Captain Jack from Doctor Who. Heck, the Doctor is a con artist a lot of the time -- psychic paper, false identities, etc.
How are you defining those words? Violence is doing harm. Killing is causing the cessation of life. The definitions are not conditional on the state of mind behind the actions. You're not any less hurt or dead if the person who did it to you felt bad about it.
Substitute "evil" for "violent". An evil killer could just as easily bloodlessly smother or sedate someone, while soldiers in wars can die in all sorts of violent ways at the hands of enemy soldiers who aren't evil (not doing it for thrills).
Or rather, the reverse -- I'm using "violent" to mean "violent," literally, irrespective of one's moral opinion of the character. Punching someone in the face is violent. Stabbing or shooting someone is violent. Throwing someone off a cliff is violent. The word refers to forceful or injurious physical action. It can be used to refer to a person's state of mind, e.g. violent passion, but that's far from its only definition. Indeed, referring to someone as having a violent state of mind generally implies or explicitly denotes their potential to commit physical violence.
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