2x08 I, Mudd

[9.2/10] One of the problems I often have with The Original Series is tone. It’s the sort of show that will play some confrontation for high drama, only to immediately jump to something campy. Or, as in “The Changeling,” it’ll present a tense, lethal standoff with a seemingly unbeatable foe, only to have Kirk close the episode by making some lame joke that everybody laughs at right before he presumably has to go notified the families of his dead crewmen. There’s nothing wrong with blending tones in principle, but it can be tricky, and the sort of whiplash it creates has hurt many a Star Trek episode.

But “I, Mudd”, by contrast, knows exactly what tone it wants to have -- absurd delight -- and it makes the most of that animating spirit. While I’m not always on the same wavelength of this show when it comes to comedy, the humorous bent of this episode worked on me like gangbusters. I have seen cleverer Star Trek episodes; I have seen deeper Star Trek episodes; I have seen more affecting Star Trek episodes. But I don't think I've ever seen a Star Trek episode made out of more pure, broadly comic delight than "I, Mudd."

That begins with the title character. I had mixed feelings about Ol’ Harcourt in “Mudd’s Women,” but I loved him here. Roger C. Carmel digs into the role with relish, playing Mudd as an oily, outsized, living cartoon character. The way he preens, boasts, takes theatrical offense to Kirk’s insults, just makes him this broad but ebullient presence throughout the proceedings. There’s little doubt that Star Trek is going for big comedy here, but Mudd is a character who can withstand it, even channel it, to wonderful comic ends. It’s a shame that (I think) we won’t see him again until The Animated Series.

But as much fun as Mudd is in and of himself, his best material comes from his interactions with the rest of the crew, Kirk in particular. When Mudd relays how he escaped from his predicament after Rigel 12, his increasing, flabbergasted annoyance at Kirk calling him out on his self-aggrandizing euphemism is superb. The dynamic between the captain and the huckster is particularly well-written here, and it livens each moment the two men share the screen. Beyond that, his exchange with Spock over “selling fake patents to your mother” nicely blends Mudd’s over-the-top expressivism and the consistently great dry comedy of the Vulcan officer.

In the midst of all these great laughs and the superb character-based comedy, “I, Mudd” manages to include a pretty great little sci-fi story to boot. It’s not an especially novel one for Star Trek. We’ve done ancient robots before; we’ve done not being able to leave a planet before; and we’ve done defeat via logical paradox before. Still, there’s enough wrinkles to this one, Mudd included, to make the adventure down on the planet interesting.

Part of that comes from the androids’ “kill ‘em with kindness approach.” Star Trek goes full Asimov here, with the robots realizing that if their duty is to serve man, then the logical endpoint of that duty is to make sure that their guests can never leave so that the androids can make them as happy as possible. What makes that tack interesting is that in contrast to some of the other threats the crew of The Enterprise has faced, these robots are trying to tempt our heroes rather than cow them.
Uhura is offered indelible beauty and immortality (a prospect they raise against nicely as part of the later feint). Unexpected lothario Chekov (seriously, as much as Kirk’s reputation with alien ladies proceeds him, it’s Chekov who always seems to be macking on someone) is waited on by a pair of beautiful ladies with oblique hints that he can do with them what he will. Bone is amazed at the medical lab the robots have, and Scotty feels the same about their engineering shop. It’s not quite the same as “The Menagerie” or, god help me, “The Apple,” but Trek explores the conflict between paradise and freedom with commitment.

Still, it’s just as committed to making the loony most of the predicament presented. While the interconnected artificial beings (paging The Borg) feels like an excuse for a typical “we have to destroy the controlling hub!” solution, it’s the shape that solution takes that really elevates the episode. While the “short circuit the android with contradictions” is a cliché at this point, the way the crew does it -- by acting weird -- is utterly delightful.

To be frank, it feels like a Futurama solution (which is, I fully admit, putting the horse before the cart). It is easy to imagine the Planet Express crew facing a group of logic-bound androids and deciding the best way to make them explode is to be goofy and crazy, just as the Enterprise crew did here. And the way Kirk and company pull it off is delightful.

The manic joy in the eyes of the gang as Chekov and Uhura dance while Bones and Scotty play imaginary instruments and Kirk conducts is just perfect. Chekov being told to stay still and instead doing a little pirouette is amazing. Spock telling identical androids that he hates one and loves the other because of their similarities, or offering beatnik poetry about logic being a tweeting bird or a wreath of awful-smelling flowers has particular comic force coming from him. And the group’s pantomime of the explosives and other imagination game that prove to be too much for the robots show a comedic verve and commitment to silliness that really paid dividends.

In the midst of all this silliness, “I, Mudd” offers a trite but still well-observed take on humanity -- that as much as these artificial creatures may want to study us, there is an inherent, illogical contradiction baked into the human condition, whether in the form of enjoying captivity while wanting to be free, or loving and hating at once, or being able to be enmeshed in real danger while embracing the irreverence of the imagination, that is too much for any purely logical creature to understand.

Part of that contradiction is being able to take a television show committed to drama and danger, albeit a fairly campy one, and spend an episode that blends that sort of adventure with broadly comic goofball antics. Mudd being surrounded by a trio of copies of his scolding wife (who, in a nod to the casting director and costumers, looks like an appropriately severe woman) is the right ridiculous note to go out on. Star Trek doesn’t always get this silly or this comedically exaggerated, but when it does, it’s an absolute joy.