Spoilers Star Trek: Short Treks 1x04 - "The Escape Artist"

This was fun. Reminded me a lot of Ba'al and his clones in latter-day Stargate SG-1.

 

Nobody said Norman or Ruk or R. Capek didn't exist, tho. Data just happened to be the only one of that sort known to exist as of the mid-2370s and VOY "Prototype". (Which wasn't Gene's doing - none of "his" TNG ever suggested Data would be unique. Merely quaint.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Kirk had the same effect on Nomad, and I think (ie: really hope) love had nothing to do with that. Yeah, maybe some level of sentience, I don't know. It wouldn't be the first Trek thing DSC rewrote.

 

What has DSC rewritten now? Did this minisode say something contradictory? I thought this was about TNG rewriting TOS (and as I pointed out, it was actually VOY, and not particularly damagingly at that).

Timo Saloniemi

 

Reyna was not Nomad. Kirk wasn't trying to kill or disable her.

 

Who knows, perhaps he was? He was trying to thwart Flint, and Flint's Achilles heel was Ms. Capek, an expendable bit of machinery.

In any case, Rayna was an example of poor sapience ill matching any sentience - she blew a gasket due to not coping with the task at hand. Norman was less sapient than needed for survival, too. Ruk never had such shortcomings. Korby's other androids are something of a grey area there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I don't think so.

 

Norman was not sentient, with those logic programming flaws. Ruk was not either, IMO. Rayna was the closest, but not programmed well enough.

 

Or too well.

 

Ruk was not built by Kroby.
Ruk was on the planet when Korby got there, he stated that he had been built by "The Old Ones".
Korby's big plan was using the Ancient Alien Tech he found to transfer living beings into Android Bodies.

 

I would have loved to have seen the story where Mudd got all those counts removed from his record so that they would not be known to the Enterprise crew later.

I have my feelings about what happened to Rayna, Lal, and others who advanced too far and got punished for it. However, that is a subject for another day.

 

Does this episode work or make sense unless you have seen "I, Mudd"?

 

Indeed. Which is why implied a distinction between Ruk and Korby's other androids. But Ruk was Korby's, in the sense of being slave to him; existing only to be slave to him; and being integral in his plans. Although of course he was person enough on his own to question his slavery and doubt his inner motivations, reevaluate his doctrines and choose on a personal agenda which he then began to pursue until gunned down. Both sapient, in the coldly calculating sense, and sentient, in the valuating and self-reflecting sense.

...Without (necessarily) killing the original, meaning this tech could have been useful to Mudd as well. Or, indeed, might have been the very tech also found on Planet Mudd.

I doubt any of it would work much unless the audience knew Harry Mudd from the TOS context already, and not just from the more sinister S1 one. The android stuff is basic scifi, though; hard to tell (without having seen the piece, that is!).

Timo Saloniemi

 

Now that I've made clear how much I liked this short, here are some things that didn't add up for me:

1. It was a bit too long and kind of redundant. Seeing Mudd go through ALL the motions to escape his predicament was funny. Seeing it multiple times and repeated was a bit too much. Having this short be 5 minutes shorteer (10 instead of 15) would have benefitted it
2. Mudd's entire scheme doesn't really add up: None of the Bounty Hunters scanned the "Mudd's" they were given? If you receive a prisoner, scanning for dangerous technology and life signs should be he first thing to do. Also, these various Mudd-robots seem way mor valuable than any "reward" he would be getting for his bounty
3. The TOS-connection was kinda' fuzzy. I don't remember "I, Mudd" that precisely, but didn't Mudd in that episode just find these (alien) robots, and then immediately got trapped by them? Having him encounter incredible human robots twice (only because that's what he's known for) seems kind of forced
4. The alien make-up is noticeably worse than on ENT, VOY or DS9. And these shows are 20 years old! It's probably the "Trump-effect": Trump had a tv-show where he was pretending to be a genuis, self-made business man. People bought that image. The make-up designers of DIS have their own make-up competition show ("face-off"). Maybe that's why peple think they're actually doing good make-up. It's not.

Does that change my opinion on the short? NO! I still really like it! Mostly because of three things:

1. It get's the character of evil-but-lovable Harry Mudd so, so right
2. It get's the universe (realistic, but not grimdark) very right, and
3. It's the perfect use of the format - The Saru-short sould have been it's own episode. THIS is what a "Short" should be like!

So yeah. It's not perfect. Not by any means. But it's really, really good, and if the writers of DIS from now on manage to keep this level of quality, I would really love this entire show overall, despite my distaste for the first season!

 

I assume that is why the line about skinning them with Replicant tech is about.

I personally don't see the problem. Maybe look at it as irony instead? You could even pretend that this is why he refers to himself as Mudd the first in I, Mudd.

 

It's not a big problem. None of them are, really, I wouldn't like this short as much as I do otherwise.

It's just the same small-universe syndrome, in which familiar characters always do the stuff they are known for best when showing up: Sarek is known as a complicated father figure? Have him be a complicated father for this new character as well! Mudd is known for interacting with human-like robots? Here he has human-like robots as well! These were (famous) one-time events, it's weird they apparently happened multiple times to the same characters. Like having Batmans foster parents being shot in an alley as well.
Contrast that to Sarek doing ambassador-stuff, which makes sense because that's his job.
Again: Kind of forced. But not a big problem IMO.

What does that sentence even mean?
Probably you're right? Techno-babble at it's finest! No matter what, "robots-pretending-as-humans" is a SF-genre staple, and also a WAY better gimmick than "magic time balls". So no serious complains from me anyway!

 

The exact dialogue from "I, Mudd" has Mudd seemingly entirely dodging two things: the actual answer to Kirk's direct question of how he escaped custory after "Mudd's Women", and the timeline of his encounter with Planet Mudd. So we're at liberty to assume he found the planet first, and used this in order to facilitate his escape. Because, as we see here, androids are good for escape schemes. Although, as is good for drama, the exact scheme shown here would not be what he'd have used after "Mudd's Women".

It would seem logical that Mudd would abuse the android resource until something gave, in this case the androids deciding to put him under house arrest. Eventually, after assorted hijinks. This seems to be a trademark of his: he always takes a step too far.

...A nitpicker really needs transcripts to work from. Aargh, the itch one can't scratch!

Timo Saloniemi

 

That was a lot of fun.
Rainn Wilson is great as Mudd, and this whole thing was a lot of fun. I loved the way his story and scheme evolved as his different attempts didn't work.
The android reveal towards the end was a lot fun.

 

Surely Mudd knows someone who could hack his records, or make a computer virus to erase or alter those records.

 

This fourth short stuck with me, this is a good one. It's more densely populated too, which helps.
Question: For the many fans outside of US/Canada without a legit way to access these stories, isn't this one going to rip a plot hole in the episodes going former? You might argue that point for all of the Short Treks - but the next time we see Mudd, isn't the story from The Escape Artist going to be relevant?

They should just stitch all the Short Treks together and release them as a single episode, S02E00.