Well... Harry Mudd is back. I'm not actually as opposed to this episode as those four words would have originally led me to expect.
As I said: Harry Mudd is back and intent upon exacting revenge on Captain Lorca for stranding him in Klingon prison by selling the Discovery to the Klingon military. He nearly achieves this using "time crystal" technology, a particularly wibbly-wobbly device which allows him to reset time every thirty minutes. He connives his way aboard the ship, learns everything he can in thirty minutes, then hits the reset button, starting the scheme over again with an advantage that increases with each iteration since he is supposed to be the only one who remembers what happened in the previous thirty minute iteration. It actually appears to be a very effective plan. By the time we, the viewers, join the adventure, Mudd has figured out how to program Discovery's computer to only listen to him. That last sentence seems crazy until you remember that a) Harry Mudd could, conceivably, have boarded Discovery literally thousands of times before we started watching, effectively earning a PhD in Discovery's computer system and b) Starfleet is terrible at being a military. In the Original Series episode "Space Seed," Khan convinces Captain Kirk to show him all of the design specs of the Enterprise by claiming that he used to be an engineer and that he would be bored without anything to read while in sickbay. So, yes, I will grant them that Harry Mudd could eventually learn how to hack into Discovery's computer and grant himself sudo privileges. Unfortunately for Mudd, one of the side-benefits of being part multi-dimensional space hippopotamus is that Lieutenant Stamets also remembers what happens in each of the thirty minute time loops. He enlists the help of Specialist Burnham and Lieutenant definitely-not-a-Klingon Tyler (who, incidentally, have the hots for each other), and they eventually thwart Mudd's plan.
Those of you who have been paying attention will notice that this is exactly the same plot gimmick (infinitely repeating time loops) used in the Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect." That being said, this episode spends almost no time on the characters trying to figure out why they are all experiencing deja vu (the principal conflict in "Cause and Effect"). In the second iteration, Stamets covinces Burnham to tell him a secret which he then uses to prove his bona fides in future iterations. Instead, the episode uses the time loop as an excuse to force Burnham and Stamets to talk about why she is terrible at relationships (she can't seem to get Lieutenant no-batleths-here Tyler to help her, even though, as already mentioned, he has the hots for her) and devotes most of its action to actually trying to figure out what Mudd wants (he can't give the ship to the Klingons until he understands what makes the mushroom drive work, namely: Lieutenant Stamets) and stopping him. My only complaint with the plot on a granular level is that, in the penultimate iteration of the time loop, Stamets caves-in to Mudd's demands after Mudd brutally murders Lieutenant I'm-not-a-spy Tyler with (and this might be my favorite part) weaponized Dark Matter that Lorca keeps, presumably, in a candy bowl on his desk. Why Stamets, who better than anyone else knows that time is just going to reset and everyone is going to be fine (modulo the whole "Mudd is going to hijack the ship again" thing), would ever cave to Mudd makes no sense to me, but, I get it, humans are irrational. I see this episode as an acceptable use of our familiarity with "Cause and Effect," taking something we Trekkies know intimately and love well and using it to do something else. This may actually mean that Discovery has surpassed the Next Generation in at least one regard. Early in the first season of the Next Generation, we were treated to "The Naked Now," a thin reskinning of the Original Series episode "The Naked Time", in which gravitational phenomena cause water to become like alcohol and drunkenness to become a contagion passed on through sweat. That was a much less elegant reuse of Trek lore. Riker literally says "I feel like I read about this somewhere.... look up the history of ships named Enterprise." "The Naked Time" was fun. "The Naked Now" was poorly conceived, poorly executed, and completely devoid of George Takei charging down the corridors with a rapier. If not for "Code of Honor," "The Naked Now" would have a decent shot at being the worst part of a very bad season of Star Trek writ large. That Discovery was able to take something so blatantly copied from Treks past and turn it into something that is its own is commendable, and I actually support it in moderation.
There is one objection I would like to raise, though. Harry Mudd wants to sell Discovery to the Klingons because, thanks to the mushroom drive, Discovery has become the Federation's most powerful weapon and is actually turning the tide of the war. This ignores a very important point. Harry Mudd has a device that can reset time as often as he wants, allowing him (or, let's say, a well-trained team of Klingon commandos) to take command of the most advanced starship in Starfleet. If he wants to sell them a weapon, why doesn't he just sell them that? Or, perhaps more to the point: why does Harry Mudd, a two-bit con-man described on Memory Alpha by the man who conceived of him as "a song-and-dance version of a pimp" (I know... I know...) have a device that can reset time as often as he wants? Several such devices, actually, as we are told that he used a similar scheme to rob a Betazoid bank at some time in the past. And while we're at it: why was there no mention of this incident (which everyone aboard the Discovery believes in, by the end of the episode) in the criminal record Captain Kirk digs up upon first encountering Mudd in "Mudd's Women?" Why is Harry Mudd allowed to go "free" at the end of the episode, remanded into the custody of the wife he has been trying to avoid, after having used a very powerful alien device capable of altering the flow of time to commandeer a Federation starship? I'm not convinced the writers thought through all of the consequences of this particular plot gimmick before presenting it to us. That is certainly not a new problem for Star Trek. The Next Generation spent seven seasons holding forth on how what Doctor Noonian Soongh did in building Data was wholly unprecedented and impossible to recreate, except for that one time when Geordi asked the holodeck to create an adversary capable of defeating Data and it materialized a fully conscious and self-aware incarnation of James Moriarty (that happened in season two). As a sucker for arcs, story consistency, and fictional universes that make sense, this apparent lack of foresight (or hindsight?) offends me, especially because there are ways to tell this story without giving Harry Mudd the most powerful piece of technology yet evidenced in this incarnation of Star Trek. Replace Harry Mudd with the spoiled scion of a trans-dimensional time tycoon who is using mommy and daddy's power to cause some trouble for the mortals, or a refugee from an extratemporal race who needs the mushroom drive to get home and has no respect for the sanctity of lifeforms who experience time linearly. The Original Series was rife with Q-like beings; one more wouldn't be noticed. You could even keep Harry Mudd around as long as you explicitly tell us that he swindled or murdered this time crystal out of the hands of its rightful owner and this is the only one he has and there's no way he's ever getting another. As the episode stands, I am left with the distinct impression that Mudd "knows a guy" and can get another time crystal any time he wants and the only thing standing between us and Supreme Time Emperor Mudd is his inability to get away from his in-laws. I am being cantankerous, but I am waiting for this show to demonstrate that it knew what it was doing when it declared itself a prequel and that, as a prequel, it can excel without calling into question the universe of the Star Treks I already know and love. So far, I am not convinced.
*But I did enjoy this episode.
As I said: Harry Mudd is back and intent upon exacting revenge on Captain Lorca for stranding him in Klingon prison by selling the Discovery to the Klingon military. He nearly achieves this using "time crystal" technology, a particularly wibbly-wobbly device which allows him to reset time every thirty minutes. He connives his way aboard the ship, learns everything he can in thirty minutes, then hits the reset button, starting the scheme over again with an advantage that increases with each iteration since he is supposed to be the only one who remembers what happened in the previous thirty minute iteration. It actually appears to be a very effective plan. By the time we, the viewers, join the adventure, Mudd has figured out how to program Discovery's computer to only listen to him. That last sentence seems crazy until you remember that a) Harry Mudd could, conceivably, have boarded Discovery literally thousands of times before we started watching, effectively earning a PhD in Discovery's computer system and b) Starfleet is terrible at being a military. In the Original Series episode "Space Seed," Khan convinces Captain Kirk to show him all of the design specs of the Enterprise by claiming that he used to be an engineer and that he would be bored without anything to read while in sickbay. So, yes, I will grant them that Harry Mudd could eventually learn how to hack into Discovery's computer and grant himself sudo privileges. Unfortunately for Mudd, one of the side-benefits of being part multi-dimensional space hippopotamus is that Lieutenant Stamets also remembers what happens in each of the thirty minute time loops. He enlists the help of Specialist Burnham and Lieutenant definitely-not-a-Klingon Tyler (who, incidentally, have the hots for each other), and they eventually thwart Mudd's plan.
Those of you who have been paying attention will notice that this is exactly the same plot gimmick (infinitely repeating time loops) used in the Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect." That being said, this episode spends almost no time on the characters trying to figure out why they are all experiencing deja vu (the principal conflict in "Cause and Effect"). In the second iteration, Stamets covinces Burnham to tell him a secret which he then uses to prove his bona fides in future iterations. Instead, the episode uses the time loop as an excuse to force Burnham and Stamets to talk about why she is terrible at relationships (she can't seem to get Lieutenant no-batleths-here Tyler to help her, even though, as already mentioned, he has the hots for her) and devotes most of its action to actually trying to figure out what Mudd wants (he can't give the ship to the Klingons until he understands what makes the mushroom drive work, namely: Lieutenant Stamets) and stopping him. My only complaint with the plot on a granular level is that, in the penultimate iteration of the time loop, Stamets caves-in to Mudd's demands after Mudd brutally murders Lieutenant I'm-not-a-spy Tyler with (and this might be my favorite part) weaponized Dark Matter that Lorca keeps, presumably, in a candy bowl on his desk. Why Stamets, who better than anyone else knows that time is just going to reset and everyone is going to be fine (modulo the whole "Mudd is going to hijack the ship again" thing), would ever cave to Mudd makes no sense to me, but, I get it, humans are irrational. I see this episode as an acceptable use of our familiarity with "Cause and Effect," taking something we Trekkies know intimately and love well and using it to do something else. This may actually mean that Discovery has surpassed the Next Generation in at least one regard. Early in the first season of the Next Generation, we were treated to "The Naked Now," a thin reskinning of the Original Series episode "The Naked Time", in which gravitational phenomena cause water to become like alcohol and drunkenness to become a contagion passed on through sweat. That was a much less elegant reuse of Trek lore. Riker literally says "I feel like I read about this somewhere.... look up the history of ships named Enterprise." "The Naked Time" was fun. "The Naked Now" was poorly conceived, poorly executed, and completely devoid of George Takei charging down the corridors with a rapier. If not for "Code of Honor," "The Naked Now" would have a decent shot at being the worst part of a very bad season of Star Trek writ large. That Discovery was able to take something so blatantly copied from Treks past and turn it into something that is its own is commendable, and I actually support it in moderation.
There is one objection I would like to raise, though. Harry Mudd wants to sell Discovery to the Klingons because, thanks to the mushroom drive, Discovery has become the Federation's most powerful weapon and is actually turning the tide of the war. This ignores a very important point. Harry Mudd has a device that can reset time as often as he wants, allowing him (or, let's say, a well-trained team of Klingon commandos) to take command of the most advanced starship in Starfleet. If he wants to sell them a weapon, why doesn't he just sell them that? Or, perhaps more to the point: why does Harry Mudd, a two-bit con-man described on Memory Alpha by the man who conceived of him as "a song-and-dance version of a pimp" (I know... I know...) have a device that can reset time as often as he wants? Several such devices, actually, as we are told that he used a similar scheme to rob a Betazoid bank at some time in the past. And while we're at it: why was there no mention of this incident (which everyone aboard the Discovery believes in, by the end of the episode) in the criminal record Captain Kirk digs up upon first encountering Mudd in "Mudd's Women?" Why is Harry Mudd allowed to go "free" at the end of the episode, remanded into the custody of the wife he has been trying to avoid, after having used a very powerful alien device capable of altering the flow of time to commandeer a Federation starship? I'm not convinced the writers thought through all of the consequences of this particular plot gimmick before presenting it to us. That is certainly not a new problem for Star Trek. The Next Generation spent seven seasons holding forth on how what Doctor Noonian Soongh did in building Data was wholly unprecedented and impossible to recreate, except for that one time when Geordi asked the holodeck to create an adversary capable of defeating Data and it materialized a fully conscious and self-aware incarnation of James Moriarty (that happened in season two). As a sucker for arcs, story consistency, and fictional universes that make sense, this apparent lack of foresight (or hindsight?) offends me, especially because there are ways to tell this story without giving Harry Mudd the most powerful piece of technology yet evidenced in this incarnation of Star Trek. Replace Harry Mudd with the spoiled scion of a trans-dimensional time tycoon who is using mommy and daddy's power to cause some trouble for the mortals, or a refugee from an extratemporal race who needs the mushroom drive to get home and has no respect for the sanctity of lifeforms who experience time linearly. The Original Series was rife with Q-like beings; one more wouldn't be noticed. You could even keep Harry Mudd around as long as you explicitly tell us that he swindled or murdered this time crystal out of the hands of its rightful owner and this is the only one he has and there's no way he's ever getting another. As the episode stands, I am left with the distinct impression that Mudd "knows a guy" and can get another time crystal any time he wants and the only thing standing between us and Supreme Time Emperor Mudd is his inability to get away from his in-laws. I am being cantankerous, but I am waiting for this show to demonstrate that it knew what it was doing when it declared itself a prequel and that, as a prequel, it can excel without calling into question the universe of the Star Treks I already know and love. So far, I am not convinced.
*But I did enjoy this episode.
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