The Escape Artist

**** (4 out of 5)

It can't be a secret that I love Star Trek like crazy and also that I had a real rough time adapting to Star Trek Discovery's aesthetic choices... like crazy.  Short Treks "The Escape Artist" finally won me back to some extent, or at least kept me treading water for awhile longer.

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. 

Bounty

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Because Archer is an innocent man who doesn't get imprisoned enough, here's Archer imprisoned yet again! Today's captor is Skalaar, and he is a welcome sight to this original series fan! Somehow, even though Archer's escape was rather easily achieved with bribes, Skalaar claims the human is the only one who's ever escaped from Rura Penthe. That's probably just the sort of sweeping, highly unlikely statement you make all the time if you're from a species that loves arguing. Arguing and wallowing in mud and your own crapulence.

Skalaar used to be a simple merchant. He's disGRUNTled because the Klingons impounded his spaceship. So Gruntle Piggle turned to the only sensible growth industry: Bounty Hunting. Pig the Bounty Hunter! Rooting out scum from dawn to tusk. Nobody knows the truffles he's seen!

Speaking of hams, T'Pol gets a virus that mimics pon farr. Symptoms include rubbing up on embarrassed Dr. Phlox and racing about in her underpants screaming in Vulcan and begging for a bacon double cheeseburger. I know, I know, I'm the guy who loves nudity, but A) there isn't any and B) this is pretty stupid. And just when I was getting into the A story, they have Captain Archer escape a Klingon ship in an escape pod, which we were just told (in 'Sleeping Dogs') Klingon ships of this era DON'T HAVE. Discontinuity makes me itchy- pass me the oinkment.

"Bounty": the quicker pigger upper! I hadn't realized how much I was looking forward to seeing the Tellarites again, or ANYTHING from the familiar Star Trek canon. The novels had always made effective use of the 'Journey To Babel' race of Hog-Men with the big chip on their hooves. I'm just a little baffled by the five digits on his hands instead of three, and that none of them have the stunning red nail polish so in vogue in the 2260's. And, no, I don't find him a BOAR.