'Star Trek: Discovery' Brings an Original Series Character's Story Full Circle
This week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery took a classic character’s story from Star Trek: [...]
"Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"
However, the story is not true. As revealed in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," the truth was that Stella and her wealthy father, Barron Grimes, were Mudd's targets.
Grimes was an arms dealer who had become wealthy after war broke out between the Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire and offered a sizable dowry for his daughter, a dowry that Mudd took and ran away with.
"Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" is the first time that Stella has appeared on Star Trek as herself rather than in android form. While Stella certainly seems to have a stern side, she actually comes off as quite sweet and dotes on Mudd.
Stella claims she's always known what kind of a man Mudd is, and that she's still in love and wants to marry him despite the fact that he's been avoiding her for a year, and Grimes, described by Mudd as a "scary, scary man," so dotes on his daughter that he agrees to the marriage and to keeping Mudd near Stella and out of Starfleet's hair.
prevnext"I, Mudd"
The episode both helps to illuminate the character of Harry Mudd and change our perception of the android Stella seen in "I, Mudd."
The android Stella was an embarrassingly dated sexist stereotype. However, now knowing how different the real Stella is – or at least how different she was – it's reasonable to assume that this version of Stella was a reflection of Mudd's own feeling towards her after being trapped in a marriage he was clearly checked out of before the vows were even said, rather than an accurate representation of the character.
In truth, Mudd was never fleeing a nagging wife, as the nagging wife was likely never a reality. Instead, he was fleeing what he perceived as a kind of house arrest on Earth under the thumb of Grimes, where he was forced to feign affection for Stella.
Mudd is every bit the scoundrel that he ever was, but Star Trek: Discovery has provided fans with much more context for understanding him.
New Star Trek: Discovery episodes become available to stream Sundays at 8:30 pm ET on CBS All Access.
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