One Lower Decks Easter Egg Tells Us What Happened To An Old School Star Trek Villain
This post may contain spoilers for "Star Trek: Lower Decks" season 4.
The character of Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd, as played by actor Roger C. Carmel, appeared in two episodes of the original "Star Trek" and one episode of "Star Trek: The Animated Series." In 1966's "Mudd's Women," he served as a seller and transporter of mail-order brides. The women he transports (they all hitch a ride on the Enterprise) happen to be the most attractive women imaginable and are decked out on the finest diaphanous parkas that 1960s sci-fi fashion had to offer. It's later revealed that Mudd is a notorious swindler and smuggler and is wanted for various criminal endeavors throughout the quadrant. It's also revealed that the women he is transporting are made artificially more attractive through the regular ingestion of a miracle pill that temporarily transforms them into models. In an additional, even stupider twist, the pills are revealed to be placebos. The beauty was inside of you all along. Roll eyes. Roll credits.
Mudd returned in 1967's "I, Mudd," now seen in charge of a planet populated by androids. He used an android-replicating machine to surround himself with hot babes and to recreate his nagging ex-wife just so he had the pleasure of shutting her off. At the end of that episode, he's abandoned on the same planet with 500 clones of his ex-wife, all nagging at once. Mudd's episodes are the most sexist in a show that often orbited sexism a little too closely.
By the events of the "Star Trek: Lower Decks" episode "The Inner Fight," set a century later, Mudd's name seems to have lived on. At some point in the future, he will have opened a series of bars where seedy criminals hang out. Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) visits a Mudd's Bar.
An attempt to go straight
Carmel reprised the role of Mudd in the "Animated Series" episode "Mudd's Passion." In that episode, Mudd happened upon some pheromonal crystals that forced people to fall in love, and Spock becomes emotional and passionate with Nurse Chapel. However, when the love potion wears off, the users are afflicted by several hours of intense hatred. Mudd is eventually apprehended and forced to go through rehabilitation therapy. In terms of a straightforward "Trek" timeline, this was the last we saw of Mudd.
Of course, Mudd was also a villain in "Star Trek: Discovery" several decades later. "Discovery," however, takes place about 10 years before the original "Star Trek," and the younger version of Mudd was played by Rainn Wilson. This version of Mudd was far more insidious and murderous, rather than just being a comedic criminal buffoon. This is a character who discovered he had a time-travel widget and used it to go back in time and murder people before the timeline resets, allowing him to kill the same people over and over. This was hardly the sexist goofball who dreamed of an ex-wife robot. The young Mudd appeared in two episodes of "Discovery" and one episode of "Star Trek: Short Treks."
It seems that Mudd's Bar was once, long ago, Mudd's attempt to go straight. Presumably, he underwent the therapy suggested to him in "Mudd's Passion," and he exited determined to be a successful business owner. As far as we know, at least one of Mudd's bars survived ... as a seedy hangout for criminals. The character's illicit background caught up with him, even after death.
The Mudd Incident
Mudd was also mentioned in the 2012 film "Star Trek Into Darkness," which, of course, exists in its own continuity. Mudd was not seen on camera, but it seems that the Kelvin version of the USS Enterprise did meet Mudd in perhaps a parallel rendition of the "Mudd's Women" or "I, Mudd" events. In that film, Kirk (Chris Pine) requires a non-Federation ship in order to go on a rogue-like mission to the Klingon homeworld in order to pose as an arms trader. The film's screenwriters, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, however, couldn't think of an organic way for Kirk to get a non-Federation ship in a pinch. The writers revealed in a Buzzfeed interview that they thought up "the Mudd Incident" as a way of explaining the presence of a random vessel on the Enterprise.
It seems, then, that Mudd exists in the Kelvin-verse, and is also a criminal there. At least, he's the kind of person who would have his starship confiscated by Starfleet. Sadly, there was no fun casting revealed for a young Mudd in 2012.
Roger C. Carmel was only in his mid-thirties when he appeared on "Star Trek: The Animated Series." If we are to assume Mudd is the same age, then he had many years ahead of him following his arrest. Indeed, given the quality of medicine in "Star Trek," there's no reason to assume that Mudd didn't live into his 120s or 130s. If he truly was rehabilitated — as most diplomacy-minded Trekkies might assume — then he had a long time to become an honest businessman.
Until "Lower Decks" gives us more information, we won't know if the Mudd's Bar on screen is the very first branch, or the very last.