TOS-0212 I, Mudd

Image Credits: IMDB 🖖 The Original Series-1966 Season:02 Episode:12

Overall Score:       33.60 / 100
Star Trek Values:    3.00 / 5
Inspiring:           3.50 / 5
Story Development:   4.00 / 5

View Episode (Imbd)

I totally enjoy McCoy’s senses and amusing persona.

The episode starts with McCoy’s feeling about Norman, he was behaving strange and was not visiting the Doctor’s office for checks. Spock replies; “He’s probably terrified of your beads and rattles.” This is certainly an amusing and human reply!

Story Development

A Humanoid species in the Andromeda Galaxy has created Android helpers for themselves. Androids call these species as Makers. Makers has some outposts in some of the planets rather than their own.

A supernova of their sun has caused the species to extinct. And some of the Androids survived, placed in other planets. One of the Androids (Norman) has transformed a planet into a planet of Androids. And he created Androidic life. Norman is the coordinator of other Androids.

Androids wear a necklace functioning as an error-correcting unit, like Watchdog Timers. And Norman controls the central unit of coordination.

Harry Mudd, has escaped from one of the Federation’s jail and developed a plan to catch a starship with the help of Androids. Norman executes a plan to bring the Enterprise crew to the planet Mudd. Enterprise crew analyses the androids weak and strong spots and develop a plan to malfunction their error-correcting units from central place.

The enterprise crew plays a theatrical scene to illustrate illogical moments and break the causality loop and put the central unit into infinite loop.

Some Points

• The play at the end was interesting. The act was between theatrical and cinematic. During the 60s, it’s natural to apply these techniques in series and movies. In today’s CGI-rich environment, we cannot expect these examples. So, it’s a pleasure to witness these transitional examples. (Today is another day to appreciate TOS series.🖖)
• Robots say; you’re self-destructive species. We should control you for your own safety, and we should serve you for your wellbeing; It makes sense.
• Robots say that Harry Mudd have them a purpose, they lacked for a long time. In fact, it’s the opportunity he gave. Norman is the chief strategist and executioner.
• It seems like TOS didn’t envision about security cameras. The enterprise crew couldn’t find the intruder at the beginning. A security camera system might make things difficult for the intruder. This all related with the zeitgeist of the era. Roddenberry foresee technological breakthroughs but didn’t foresee a security camera system, why; zeitgeist.

Some Thoughts

• Android’s central unit approach and their willingness to protect the species seems like a preliminary version of #Borgs. They’re appreciative of their Makers’ wisdom. They might focus on bringing the wisdom or perfection more and evolve into a Borg-ic way. Even they might be the origin of Borg. The origin of the Borg is unknown, but who knows?
• Kirk mentions royalty fee for patents. In the year of 2268, did patent term still exist in Federation? Or did Kirk mention other planet’s status. Because Star Trek’s Federation was a money-less civilization. Also, I don’t believe, patents will exist in near future (My Blog Post).