Harcourt Fenton Mudd

Criminal mastermind, arch-enemy of Captain James Tiberius Kirk and general all round rotter.

Harry Mudd has been giving the security forces of the Federation the run around for nearly a quarter century after his first crime in 2258, during which in a daring raid against the Starfleet, he stole the Federation Cutter USS Lancaster.

"It was just sitting there, with the activation keys in it." He reports of that first crime, "How could a man such as myself, such an upstanding morally coded citizen, allow that deed to go unreported? I ask you, I merely took it from it's docking slip, and headed for the nearest Federation outpost to hand it in! And they took that to b an act of piracy, they tried to shoot me down! Tried to insinuate that me, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, had stolen the craft! I ask you? Is that a fair way to treat a man who is trying to return the ship?"

In actuality, Harcourt Mudd had in fact taken the Lancaster into the Tholian Exclusion Zone and whilst he is technically correct in that he was trying to return the ship to Federation space, he is not entirely truthful about the score of Tholian warships which followed him back from his nodoubt highly illegal trip into their space. Luck to survive as the ship was destroyed aorund him, he was beamed aboard the USS Potemkin, where he then tried to buy the ship from her Captain for the price of three dozen Orion slave girls. His run of luck ran out when he crossed swords with Captain James Kirk on two seperate occasions, the second of which ended with Mudd being stranded forever on a planet filled with android replica's of his wife, Stella Mudd, who later discovered his treachery and divorced him, citing "Androidality" on the papers. It was later discovered that she had visited the planet herself and tricked Mudd into a romantic encounter with the Android which later exploded due to what a prominent expert in the field of robotics can only describe as "Extreme displeasure at a past incident."

Mudd first encountered the crew of the USS Devonshire whilst they were on shore leave at Wrigleys Pleasure Planet (Sure! Leave!). Seeing a chance to get even somewhat with the Federation, he utilised the devices of that planet to ensure that the crew felt unwanted, and rejected by even the pleasure giving mind-reading machines of that world. However, the machines turned on him, and in an epic act of total rejection, they expelled the criminal into Captain Stone's custody where he was returned to Earth for trial and sentancing.

However, the now Admiral Kirk, seeing a chance for revenge on both Stone and Mudd in one swoop, devised a highly unusual punishment for Mudd, forcing him to not only join the Starfleet, but then assigning him as the Bartender aboard the USS Devonshire which was being refitted with a revolutionary new entertainment complex, The Mudd Pitt. To prevent escape, and currently unknown to Mudd or Stone, Kirk has implanted a tracking device in the criminal which would have been able to locate the crew on Gamma Sigma VII, but which the Admiral has ignored at this time. Mudd remains part of the crew of the ship, although if the opportunity arises there is no doubt that he'll escape post haste!