Deep Space Nine 6x10 "The Magnificent Ferengi"

rating: ***

the story: Quark assembles the least likely commando squad ever.

what it's all about: "Magnificent Ferengi" is an interesting riddle.  On the one hand, it's an episode that might actually help convince reluctant fans to give the Ferengi another shot.  On the other, it may actually be the episode responsible for the dreaded "Ferengi episode" reputation.  What fun!

It's actually a nice culmination of the work Deep Space Nine had put into the Ferengi, tying together pretty much every significant representative of the species the series had introduced over the years, from the Grand Nagus (absent but crucial to the plot) to Ishka (Quark's mum) to Brunt (the evil would-be uber Ferengi) and even Gaila ("the one with the moon"), and even suggesting that the path to the future for even a perennially hopeless culture (in terms of the Federation ideal) wasn't as dim as it sometimes seemed. 

...On the other, the Ferengi were always going to be a hard sell.  These were the guys Next Generation botched so badly in its first season, so badly that even in a whole season filled with creative botches, the introduction of the would-be successors to the Klingons felt like the worst one.  Successors to the Klingons?!?  Surely not!  But at the time, they really did seem like they'd be more menace than punchline (see how one of their number was even set up to be Picard's archnemesis!), until fans actually saw them in action.  Their subsequent appearances in that series were concessions to the obvious conclusion that they hadn't worked out as planned, and so they became intergalactic weasels instead, comically obsessed with prophet and just as comically inept. 

Enter: Quark.  The station's resident bartender was a giant reclamation project, meant to showcase the heretofore unknown nuances of the Ferengi.  Actually, he succeeded so well it was almost impossible for any other Ferengi to measure up to him.  His brother Rom actually devolved into such a buffoon that the only direction left to go with him was actually to turn him away from Ferengi norms.  So it became with Rom's son Nog, too, and each subsequent new Ferengi had to either follow the norms or risk being swallowed by them.  Yeah, I don't know how that was supposed to work, either.

The results can be seen in "Magnificent Ferengi."  The ones trying to be true practitioners of the culture (Brunt, Gaila) have tellingly fallen flat on their faces since last we saw them.  This may be due to the effects of an aging leader (Zek) looking to consider reforms with the encouragement of his relationship to Quark and his family, or because of, you know, the Dominion War.

Speaking of that...Following the epic arc at the start of the season, no real fighting had been seen for three episodes, and then along comes this one, in which the fighters are...the Ferengi.  Who are laughably terrible fighters.  The whole episode is about how terrible they are.  I mean, it's a farce!  In any other context, they're so hilariously inept it would undoubtedly make a classic Star Trek farce (see: "The Trouble with Tribbles," although maybe don't because even the Klingons somehow emerge unscathed from that one).  But the joke almost seems like it's on them.  The whole episode focuses entirely on them, with no other species, much less Starfleet, around, except for a Vorta they accidentally kill and then motorize in order to try and complete negotiations with the Dominion.

It must seem like an epic lost opportunity for fans who have little patience for the Ferengi.  I'm hardly saying this is the only interpretation.  I like the Ferengi.  I think they gave necessary color to the series, and this is a great example of how they did so.  I mean, there were several attempts to lighten up the war ("One Little Ship" a handful of episodes later, "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" in the final season), and I think this was the most successful one.  And it does advance the overall narrative of the Ferengi. 

But it may also be the prototypical "Ferengi episode."

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Whether you consider it a good or bad thing, this is arguably one of the definitive appearances of the Ferengi in Star Trek.
• series - Their development as a species, as depicted in Deep Space Nine, reaches a crucial moment.
• character - Quark, and just about every other Ferengi in the series.
• essential - I think it's a terrific farce, but others may simply consider it a farce.

notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs (Brunt)
Josh Pais (Gaila)
Max Grodenchik (Rom)
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)
Cecily Adams (Ishka)
Chase Masterson (Leeta)
Christopher Shea (Keevan)
Iggy Pop

Deep Space Nine 5x18 "Business as Usual"

rating: ****

the story: Quark finds that arms dealing is a heck of thing on the conscience.

what it's all about: This is what the season really comes to, when even the Ferengi aren't immune to the heaviness of the mood that has begun to descend on Deep Space Nine...Quark had certainly found himself in plenty of bad situations in the past, but he was always able to find a clever way out, prevent himself from, y'know, growing, or anything unprofitable like that.  But he finally meets his match.  He finds out that he does have limits, that he's not the shameless Ferengi he always thought he was.

That's the real trick, and perhaps a good way of characterizing the season: being confronted with a situation that challenges every previous assumption.  The situation that provokes this is actually Quark being forced to accept that the weapons he's been selling will eventually end up in the hands of genocidal maniacs, which is to say, people in the business of war.  This is the true irony of the situation, because it's a war-is-bad story on the verge of the biggest war story ever told in Star Trek.

Now, no one has to be told that war is bad.  There's plenty of human history behind us at this point to know exactly what war is like.  But in the past century, we've made a whole cottage industry of trying to explain this.  Actually it's kind of baffling, and it's mostly because there's less of it engulfing whole populations like it used to.  We tell ourselves this in case it ever comes home again (more's the pity for anyone still experiencing it, of course).  And yet, we also tell ourselves war stories because they fascinate us.  A century ago no one was crowing about the American Civil War.  It nearly destroyed the country.  Yet today we fall all over ourselves praising the likes of Robert E. Lee, or the relative merits of a Ulysses S. Grant.  The reality of it, as anyone who has ever actually experienced war, is that it takes a real toll. 

Star Trek has a rich history of participating in this narrative, but until Deep Space Nine it was mostly a problem Starfleet officers came to solve on someone else's world, a backwards culture they could feel free to judge.  Very enlightened.  Not to mention convenient.  Yet with the Dominion War looming, this would no longer be possible.  At this point the producers absolutely knew it was coming.  Viewers probably had an inkling, but there was no guarantee until the end of this season.  Even the Klingon conflict that immediately preceded it was more discussed than experienced.  So "Business as Usual" was a way of testing the waters.  Obviously using someone other than a Starfleet officer (it was Jake, who never joined Starfleet, who experienced Klingon warfare in "Nor the Battle to the Strong" earlier in the season) was the logical way to go, and who better than Quark?  Who better to think there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, until he started to think about it?

So the series that examined war as never before, and its characters as never before, had a moment where this happened.  Of course it did.  If there's anything fun about the proceedings, it's that we finally meet Quark's cousin Gaila (whom he memorably referenced as "the one with the moon" back in the third season), and thus arguably the most successful Ferengi entrepreneur outside of the government in franchise history.  Anyone who ever paid attention to all the Rules of Acquisition dropped every now and again knew that one of them states, "War is good for business."  Well, maybe, but it's not good for the conscience, as Quark finds out.  So after losing his brother (Rom) and his nephew (Nog) to the Federation way of thinking in the past few seasons, and being utterly disgusted with the both of them, Quark finds out how much he's been affected, too, doing business on a space station run by Starfleet.

Which turns out to be good for the conscience. 

Contrasting all this is a B-story in which O'Brien contends with his newborn son, who's demanding the kind of attention O'Brien doesn't think is in him to give.  He nearly drives himself crazy trying to deal with it, but then discovers that it's just a phase.  For those keeping score at home, this is exactly what happens to Quark.  No, not the phase of being a weapons dealer, but believing that he was so different from his family.  He'll certainly question that conclusion the rest of the series (actually, this is the only time we really see him consider such a revolting prospect out loud; he's the only character at the end of the series doing exactly what he was doing at the start of the series, but fans will know that he did change), but it's absolutely true, and "Business" is the episode that proves it.  Deep down, he'll know all his protesting the contrary is just a phase.  I think the first episode of an eighth season will probably find Quark closing his bar to become, I don't know, the Ferengi ambassador to the Federation, brokering the biggest deals of his life.  For no money at all...

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Examines the famous Star Trek line about war.
• series - Prelude to a war.
• character - The facts about Quark laid bare.
• essential - Never before or again will Quark allow himself to be so vulnerable.

notable guest-stars:
Josh Pais (Gaila)
Lawrence Tierney