Harry Mudd Creator, Stephen Kandel, Is Dead at 96

Image: Paramount / Memory Alpha (Starlog)

15 NOVEMBER 2023 – Author Tom Weaver said that his “résumé reads like a Baby Boomer’s dream list of must-see TV.” A favorite character among Star Trek fans is on that résumé, too. Writer for a generation Stephen Kandel died on October 21 of natural causes at the age of 96.

Kandel was born in New York City and grew up in Pennsylvania, the son of screenwriter Aben Kandel, who cowrote Kid Monk Baroni (1952), with Leonard Nimoy in the title role. He began writing for film and (mostly) television in the 1950s. Those Boomers (and others, too) will recognize shows he wrote for, including Sea Hunt, The Wild, Wild West, Batman, Mission: Impossible, The Mod Squad, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, and the list goes on.

Kandel wrote four episodes of Star Trek, two for The Original Series and two for The Animated Series. Three of those episodes featured Harcourt Fenton Mudd, about whom Kandel told Starlog in 1987, "I originally had the idea of a kind of a traveling salesman and con man – the medicine salesman in The Wizard of Oz, that ends up as the Wizard, an interstellar con man hustling whatever he can hustle; a lighthearted, cheerful, song-and-dance man version of a pimp."

Kandel was a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award, the Writers Guild of America Humanities award, and a Humanitas Award.

Please join us in offering our condolences to the friends and family of Stephen David Kandel, and head over to The Hollywood Reporter for more on his life and career.