I hope to make it next week

[Othobrithol]

Hehehe I need to get in on this.

Interesting tid-bit: Mudd was supposed to be one of the defrosted people in TNG "The Neutral Zone" but the actor passed before filming. The script was rewritten to place the characters from our time instead. You might want to watch that episode as well after the other three and imagine the snobby rich guy being Mudd instead.

[Richard Trent]

Othobrithol wrote:

Hehehe I need to get in on this. Interesting tid-bit: Mudd was supposed to be one of the defrosted people in TNG "The Neutral Zone" but the actor passed before filming. The script was rewritten to place the characters from our time instead. You might want to watch that episode as well after the other three and imagine the snobby rich guy being Mudd instead.

Given Roger C. Carmel passed away in 1986, a full year before TNG premired, and given what is know about how the first season scripts were commissioned and writen, while I'm sure the TNG staff would hve loved to do a Mudd character episode, I doubt the script for "The Neutral Zone" had to be re-written pre se.

I was at a Loscon Science Fiction convention in 1987 just after the premire in the Los Angeles area, and I distictly do remember at a TNG panel that one of the staff said thgey wish they could have done a "Harry Mudd" episode had Roger C. Carmel still been alive to play the role.

[Othobrithol]

[mark (James Bailey)]

Would they not have to have the scripts written more than a year before the show is released? I know in Canada you need 6 episodes along with the pilot just to get them to consider it. If that is so it falls perfectly in-line with Othobrithol was suggestion. Besides I like his story better

[Richard Trent]

mark (James Bailey) wrote:

Would they not have to have the scripts written more than a year before the show is released? I know in Canada you need 6 episodes along with the pilot just to get them to consider it. If that is so it falls perfectly in-line with Othobrithol was suggestion. Besides I like his story better

When the show started production in the first season, they had the fiirst 12 TNG scripts written. I remember an article (written during the second TNG season after the 1988 WGA strike) ; that TNG's first season was in fact quite hectic and they were struugling to get more scripts ready. When they were filiming the episode "Datalore", for example, they didn't kmnow which of 4 scripts in development would be te next to go before the cameras, and it caused the production staff no end of problems that first season. "The Neutral Zone" was the 26th episode produced for TNG Season 1.

[mark (James Bailey)]

I thought all the scripts were adapted from the new TOS series that they had planned before the Motion picture came out. They had a full season written and then decided to do the movie instead. Then they adapted the screenplays for the new Original Series after the Movie was a success.

[mark (James Bailey)]

Here is something cool. Imaging him in Star Trek IV

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Mudd's_Passion_(episode)

Harry Mudd was subsequently featured in various Star Trek video games. Mudd was also considered for appearances in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (appearing as a character witness at the trial of James Kirk, echoing Kirk's promise to appear as one for Harry's trial in "Mudd's Women") and during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (however, Roger C. Carmel passed away eleven months before The Next Generation debuted).