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Rainn Wilson’s Harry Mudd To Appear In More Than One Episode Of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’

Two months ago CBS announced that Rainn Wilson would be taking on the role of Harry Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery. And last week we reported he was already in Toronto filming. But it turns out that there will be more than just one appearance; according to the July issue of the official Star Trek Magazine, Wilson will be in “multiple” episodes of the first season.

As noted in our recent editorial, the new trailer for Star Trek: Discovery presented the show as very serious, focusing on the drama. Casting Rainn Wilson (best known as Dwight Schrute on the comedy The Office) to play Mudd indicates that we can expect some lighter moments as well.

Bringing Harry Mudd in for a prequel show presents no conflict with Star Trek canon. While it was clear that Mudd met Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise for the first time in “Mudd’s Women,” it was also established that he already had a reputation and a record of multiple misdeeds, according to the Federation. Perhaps on Star Trek: Discovery we will get some of the specifics on his smuggling charges and other offenses.

Graham Kennedy wrote:Posted stuff by these guys before...

The highlight for me? They asked Michael Dorn to come back as an ancestor of Worf... and offered him less than 1% of what he was paid in his last outing in the character. Classy.

I knew this would be depressing but, I watched it anyway. Thank God for that ending with The Orville. I was really sad, then The Orville came up, and I wasn't so sad anymore.


I hope STD is engaging. I turned away from Voyager and Enterprise. I always will give Star Trek a chance. I just feel like Star Trek is dead. Star Trek Beyond is such a good movie, and it bombed. STD might be the last hurrah. It's not like if STD fails, the suits will point fingers at each other and promise to do better next time. They'll conclude that the Star Trek IP is unprofitable and that's it for Star Trek, for maybe at least a decade.

They're also apparently not happy at all with The Orville, since the reaction to that amongst Trek fans was largely "this looks way better than Discovery!"

Allegedly they showed a group of fans - mixed fans of the prime shows and the JJ movies - 7 minutes of Discovery footage. Reaction from both groups was quite negative, with only 20% saying they'd be interested in watching it. So at this point they're basically panicking.

It's funny, watching those little clips of Axanar in the above video... if you want to do a prequel series, THAT is how you do it. It's not identical to TOS by any means, the look is somewhat updated, etc. But damn if it didn't get the spirit exactly spot on right. Give those guys a few million per episode and let them make a series about the pre-TOS Federation-Klingon war!

The Orville had a lot more to show in it's trailer regarding the setting, tone, and characters. I get the feeling that The Orville is episodic in nature, while the STD trailer gave an idea of an overarching story going on. The Orville looks more like a show that will "explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, go where no man has gone before," but we'll have a laugh while doing it. STD feels like we're doing Klingons again. That's great for a new audience, but a bit of a retread for old hat fans.

So I only just noticed this...



Why does she have a delta shield logo on her uniform? In this era each ship had their own logo.

Because the people on Discovery don't know and don't care, that's why.

Graham Kennedy wrote:So I only just noticed this...



Why does she have a delta shield logo on her uniform? In this era each ship had their own logo.

Because the people on Discovery don't know and don't care, that's why.

I'm on mobile so I can't easily track it down and link it, but apparently there is a production memo from Bob Justman floating around that all starship crews were supposed to have the delta emblem and the use of a different patch was a production error


Will find it when I'm back on a Pc.

Intention =/= canon; actuality does. That said, I could MUCH more easily overlook that small discrepancy if the uniforms fit the milieu; the Klingons did; the ship did; etc., etc.

Sonic Glitch wrote: I'm on mobile so I can't easily track it down and link it, but apparently there is a production memo from Bob Justman floating around that all starship crews were supposed to have the delta emblem and the use of a different patch was a production error

A production error that they made over and over and over again? I find that hard to believe.

I've seen the script note thing, but don't have it to hand. I believe the gist of it was that the first time a different insignia was used it was meant to distinguish different branches of the service. The enterprise delta was the explorer arm whilst another was supposed to be a merchant navy arm or some such. But since the script note is calling out a supposed error in the episode in which we see the second non-enterprise assignment patch it’s a production error that was rolled with (if the script note is even genuine.)

I find it hard to believe that Constitution class starships are used for the merchant navy.

And you know... well, this isn't directed at you or people in this thread, even. It's just a general comment.

One of the things I despise about prequels - Enterprise did a lot of it - is that whenever they do something wrong, the effect is to re-write the other series.

For example, TNG gave us an introduction to the Ferengi, and an introduction to the Borg. Then along comes Enterprise and no, those TNG episodes are wrong because we've known about the Ferengi and the Borg for 200 years already. And you have to come up with some excuse as to why this wasn't known in the TNG episode, which is always going to be dumb - "oh well they never mentioned the species name so people just forgot about it..." "oh well section 31 made it all secret..." or whatever.

Now Discovery is coming along and rewriting TOS. The ship symbol is a small thing, but I find it cool to think that every ship had their own little logo, and it's nice to imagine what logo you'd like to see on a ship. And it's even a little marketing opportunity, because if Discovery had the kind of merchandise anybody cared about, they could have had the Discovery logo on stuff, the Shenzhou logo on stuff, etc.

But because they don't know or don't care about this stuff, an admittedly tiny but interesting little aspect of the original series is now being thrown into the dustbin of history and silly excuses have to be made for it.

Oh I agree entirely, I was just trying to explain the whole note/production error thing. Incidentally, I've found the alleged note:

That is an awesome memo.

Oh man, that was freakin' sweet!

Graham Kennedy wrote:...but I find it cool to think that every ship had their own little logo...

I agree with this completely. One of those nice little details with Enterprise was that there was still a mission patch from the NASA-era.

I can appreciate keeping the Delta. They're very much banking on the draw of the franchise, and the delta is it's recognizable symbol. They've been throwing variations of it in very prominently since they started showing promo materials.

Beyond that, I'm finding myself wishing they'd just make their series a straight up reboot. Trek even makes it easy! Just describe your universe/dimension as being one you reach by starting at prime, making a left at the mirror universe, go hurriedly past the one where the Borg conquered everything and the prime Enterprise blew up their Enterprise, make a right at the universe where Voyager grabbed a replacement for Tom, and then you arrive at Discovery.

You wouldn't even have to give up on potential cameo appearances by old actors. In fact this would let you bring in ones that are dead in prime like some verison of Jadzia after she (or the Discovery crew) ran into some chronoanomoly.

Not only would their writers be free of worrying much about continuity, but we as viewers could shift from making nits about Klingons to just enjoying it the way we enjoyed Health Ledger's Joker without having to stress that he wasn't copying Nicholson.