Star Trek: Ranking The Short Treks From Worst To Best
6. The Escape Artist
Rainn Wilson's take on TOS' Harcourt Fenton Mudd in his two appearances on Star Trek: Discovery were a highlight of a pretty dismal freshman season. He's back here as Mudd and in the director's chair for "The Escape Artist", which mostly works.
Wilson's flamboyant performance carries this Short Trek, but the intercutting between locations from across the Star Trek Universe keep the momentum up and keep things from feeling limited or cheap. The short actually features as many locations in its 16-minute run as an any full-length episode, if not more. We're treated to time with a Klingon, some Orions, and a Tellarite before a deep cut reference to TOS's "Mudd's Women" caps off the episode.
It's a shame that, since Discovery has jumped 900 years into the future for its third season, we probably won't be seeing any more of Wilson's Mudd. But "The Escape Artist" is a great distillation of and send off for the character and a mildly amusing little tale.