Omnipotent beings and cold-blooded tyrants lord over Star Trek’s Prime Universe, but there’s one rogue who went overlooked for far too long. On this day in 1966, Star Trek: The Original Series introduced one of its most fun antagonists, a human man out for good old-fashioned profit. While later villains like Khan Noonien Singh and the Klingon Empire became quintessential adversaries of TOS, this character’s potential remained dormant for nearly six decades.
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Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd first appeared in Season 1, Episode 6 of The Original Series, which aired on October 13th. Roger C. Carmel played the hilarious and insufferable Mudd with an unforgettable bombast that fans absolutely loved. Though it’s been 59 years since his debut, the spacefaring con man remained one of Trek’s most underutilized creations, at least until Rainn Wilson’s appearance in Discovery.
The Unsung Star Trek Villain: Harry Mudd
It was clear after Harry Mudd’s debut in “Mudd’s Women” that he was not your average Star Trek bad guy. While most antagonists of the era wielded alien powers or a desire to build an empire, Mudd was a sleazy, self-serving trader smuggling women enhanced by “Venus Drug” pills. Mudd returned again in Season 2’s “I, Mudd,” where he trapped the Enterprise crew on a planet of androids built to serve him. While the Mudd episodes leaned into humor and absurdity, Mudd gained a loyal following among Trekkies. Sadly, the character was treated as a two-off con man left floating in Federation space while bigger villains took the spotlight; he never returned to TOS.
The next few decades were decidedly Mudd-less aside from the character’s brief reappearance in The Animated Series in 1973. The episode “Mudd’s Passion” was a fun romp, and it was great to hear Carmel (and see the handlebar moustache) again; however, the appearance was overshadowed by a much-disliked unrequited love plotline featuring Nurse Chapel. Many fans found the episode as a whole underwhelming. This animated comeback kept the concept of the space swindler from flatlining completely, but Mudd’s massive potential was still untapped.
Rainn Wilson Revives Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery
It wasn’t until more than four decades later that Star Trek: Discovery finally gave the character a proper dusting-off. Played by Rainn Wilson, of The Office fame, this version of Mudd appeared in two Season 1 episodes, as well as a Star Trek: Short Treks episode, which Wilson also directed. The most notable of the three episodes was perhaps “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” in which Mudd traps the crew in a time loop, blowing up the ship over and over so he can uncover the secret of the spore drive and sell the Discovery for profit. This new and improved Mudd, written by Mike McMahan, was a brilliant reinvention that brought a genuine cruelty to Wilson’s humor. While his mustache was a little less curly, the over-the-top antagonist made for some of Discovery’s most entertaining episodes.
Many fans were delighted by the comeback and felt the character finally received the more dangerous and serious revenge arc he was due. Wilson actually relished the role so much that he even admitted to emailing the Strange New Worlds team to pitch Mudd’s return, arguing that the character “would fit right in” with that show’s tone and era. Fans have echoed the sentiment. 59 years later, Harry Mudd still represents a distinctly human enterprising within the Star Trek mythos; a scheming, fast-talker who never stops grifting, even in a supposedly utopian future.
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