**** (4 out of 5)
The wacky, unscrupulous but loquacious Harcourt Mudd somehow keeps himself alive and out of the vengeful hands of cops and crooks alike, at least partly by playing on their greed, arrogance, and foolishness, but mostly by using android simulacrums as his catspaws. Starfleet now has a whole closetful of androids, and will not make use of them or remember the technology exists unless convenient.
I am partial to this Canadian cast of Criminals, everyone's doing a great job hamming it up, and the Orions even look like Orions! The less said about the vile new cheek-piercing tusks on the Tellarite bounty hunter the better. Everyone in the make-up department is doing their job, I know, and they're doing a damn sight better than I could do, but as a humble maniac I really, REALLY needed them to save their design innovations for their own new creatures and keep the old creature designs consistent with history. But out of context I loved and still love the line "I apologize for this disgusting space homonculus."
There's a lot of talk of cudgels and penetration and a loveless marriage is not really sufficient punishment for this version of Mudd, whose list of crimes clearly does not match TOS Mudd's list of crimes but on the other hand, maybe that's the joke. I can excuse almost anything if it's in the service of jokes again... at last!
To this day I cannot tell what a director does just from watching a thing, but Rainn Wilson as Mudd and as the director did a very fine job indeed. He almost makes me want to buy the Eaglemoss model of the Baron's Yacht. Almost.
No comments:
Post a Comment