“The Escape Artist,” this week’s fourth and final installment of the Short Treks ramping up to Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, has a pretty simple premise: venerable scoundrel Harcourt Fenton Mudd is in a tight spot and has to talk himself out of it.

Mudd (Rainn Wilson, who also directs) has been in this situation before, you see, and will be in it again — and again! — but this time is in the clutches of incredulous Tellarite bounty hunter Tevrin Krit (Harry Judge, who also played Tellarite Admiral Gorch in Season 1).

Krit bought Mudd from a mysterious black-market broker (which can only be described as a Breen dominatrix), but before the transaction is even complete, Mudd begins pleading with his captors, alternating between indignance and humility at the flip of a switch… but the Tellarite is less than interested in humoring his charge.

As it turns out, Mudd slept with the Krit’s sister and stole an heirloom cudgel as a parting souvenir; Krit wants to collect the sizable bounty that Starfleet has placed on Mudd’s head. Plus, he really wants his cudgel back!

Armed with nothing but an enthusiastic willingness to lie — and a healthy dose of misplaced confidence in his ability to charm an adversary — Mudd’s first attempt at getting into Krit’s good graces is to feign ignorance. Mudd insists he has no idea what a cudgel even is, which, I’m sorry but if anyone looks like they’ve played more than a few fantasy RPGs in their life, it’s Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

The man knows what a cudgel is. You know it, I know it — and the Tellarite knows it.

Mudd sees that his ploy isn’t working and shifts gears, alternately trying to plead with and butter up his captor. Continually skeptical, Krit rejects each of Mudd’s entreaties; this is when the structure of the episode, and its build-up to the big reveal, comes into play. After each assurance that this is the first time he’s been in this situation or given a particular compliment or made a certain promise, the action cuts to Mudd in the same situation but with very different captors.

First we see Mudd splutter with puffed up offense and indignance at a Klingon captor, before making the mistake of throwing insults him. Later we watch as Mudd proposes a partnership with an female alien bounty hunter (Barbara Mamabolo) who has him in a yoke and is leading him around by a chain and collar; when that fails, Mudd tries to seduce her.

Finally we see Mudd attempt to bribe a somewhat dim Orion guard (Dan Abramovici), then fall back on seduction when the Orion woman in charge (Myrthin Stagg) barges in on the deal. Given that Mudd seems to have a pretty limited repertoire I like to think that he also tried to seduce the Klingon, but I suppose we’ll never know.

Eventually Krit reaches the USS De Milo, where he intends to hand Mudd over and collect his bounty. After giving a cool reception to Krit, the De Milo’s security chief (Jonathan Watton) blandly explains that nope, Krit isn’t getting a bounty because nope, Mudd isn’t Mudd!

The chief’s bored delivery indicates that he’s had to explain this several times this week, and as he opens the brig we see why. The small room is filled with Mudds, one of whom is wearing a very familiar tasseled jacket, and all of whom are mindlessly yammering away at one another like multiple copies of the same record broken in different places.

The main Mudd of the episode, still held at gunpoint in Krit’s capture, is as shocked by this revelation as Krit is, but soon our Mudd has lost his mind and joined the chorus of the others as they all deliriously chirp out their desire to be “sipping jippers on a beach.”

Cut to the Breen dominatrix sitting in her captain’s chair on a bridge that is as cluttered with plundered galactic treasure as it is with Harcourts Mudd. One of those Mudds, wearing a butler’s bowtie and suit jacket, brings a starfruit-adorned jipper to the masked figure, who removes her mask to reveal… Harry Mudd.

In what is clearly a prelude to the android scheme seen classic Trek’s “I, Mudd,” the con man has found a way to capitalize on his own bounty by selling copies of himself that only have to fool their buyers long enough for the real Mudd to make his escape, cash in hand.

It should be noted that, per Rainn Wilson himself, the asides of Mudd with the Klingon, the Orions, and the mystery alien don’t show previous escape attempts by this Mudd, but are in fact the experiences of the other Mudd-droids before they ended up on the De Milo. It seems that, while not being aware of their android nature prior to their ultimate capture, all the different Mudds share a collective memory since our Mudd clearly stops to recollect these asides as we see them play out — and even references one of the experiences while talking with Krit. (Just go with it!)

While Mudd has certainly devised a lucrative scheme, there’s something undoubtedly depressing about being surrounded by a small army of mindless automata who are still more pleasant to be around than the actual person they’re mimicking.

Instead of using his ill-gained wealth to actually go and sip jippers on that beach, Mudd waits anxiously by the proverbial phone to answer calls from the steady stream of bounty hunters who are lined up to take his bait. The supposed end goal of his labor – embodied by the jipper – is an afterthought, an annoyance.

Mudd isn’t really a con man so he can someday stop and enjoy what he’s gained, he’s a con man because he enjoys swindling people. The prize for him is the play itself, not the payoff. Given how giddy the Mudds in the De Milo’s brig are, I think I’d rather hang out with them.

The version of Mudd we’ve seen throughout Discovery is certainly darker and more overtly murderous than the one we meet in the Original Series, but I think it’s a matter of degree, not distinction. Even in his original incarnation, Mudd was never straight comic relief, nor was he harmless; his humor and charisma were always calculated plays, and there was always a wide and unmistakable streak of ruthlessness running through his character.

Later on, when he’s dealing with Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, Mudd will put on his jolly life-of-the-party persona, but right now he’s colder than the robots he’s surrounded himself with.

“The Escape Artist” doesn’t drop any hints about whether we’ll see Harcourt Fenton Mudd again in future Discovery stories, or if he’ll spend the next several years biding his time until he crosses paths with Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise crew as seen in “Mudd’s Women.”

Even if this episode doesn’t end up tying directly into the larger events of Discovery, it was a great use of the Short Treks format and fit well with the other three character driven shorts. And because “The Escape Artist” was scripted by Mike McMahan — showrunner of the upcoming animated Star Trek: Lower Decks series — it also gives us our first glimpse of McMahan’s approach to writing Star Trek.

We don’t know if this is the last Short Trek we’ll see from CBS — or just the last of a first wave of Trek minisodes — but “The Escape Artist,” along with the other Short Treks, was a welcome example of Discovery’s episodic side, and a great way to whet our appetites for Season 2.

Star Trek: Discovery returns for Season 2 with “Brother,” the season premiere, debuting Thursday, January 17 on CBS All Access and Space, followed by a January 18 return to Netflix worldwide.