“False Profits”
Written by George Brozak and Joe Menosky
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 3, Episode 5
Production episode 144
Original air date: October 2, 1996
Stardate: 50074.3
Captain’s log. Voyager has detected signs of a wormhole that has appeared in a region of space several times. That indicates that it may come back. Since it’s been there before, the other end may be fixed. It’s a long shot, but worth investigating. Tuvok also detects a nearby Class M world that has Bronze Age technology, but sensors are also picking up a replicator of a type in common use in the Alpha Quadrant.
After a probe examines the planet for dress codes and such, Chakotay and Paris beam down in native outfits. Chakotay detects the replicator in a nearby temple, but the locals inform them that they can’t even go near the temple without “ears”—necklaces in the shape of a very large ear. They trade their shoes for ears.
The two Great Sages emerge from the temple, and they turn out to be a pair of Ferengi, who dispense wisdom that matches several different Rules of Acquisition. They accept petitions, but their response to same is to preach exploitation of workers and riches for themselves.
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
The locals have a prophecy that the two Ferengi have inserted themselves into rather seamlessly (including their arrival in fire, which happened when their shuttlepod crashed), and so have become the Great Sages.
Tuvok does a Google search and finds the Memory Alpha entry for “The Price.” These are the same two Ferengi, Dr. Arridor and Kol, who were stranded in the Delta Quadrant at the end of that episode by the Barzan Wormhole. Janeway wants to beam the two Ferengi off the planet so they’ll stop exploiting the locals. Tuvok points out the Prime Directive issues, but Arridor and Kol were engaged in negotiations on a Starfleet ship, so Janeway feels justified in “rescuing” them from being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, especially if they can get through the wormhole.
To that end, Kim and Torres have figured out a way to attract the wormhole terminus back to this location sooner. They set to work at that.
Janeway beams Arridor and Kol up, and the Ferengi immediately accuse her of kidnapping. They also point out that just yanking their Great Sages without explanation will send the community below into a tizzy—basically the same argument Tuvok made earlier, except Janeway actually buys it from the Ferengi for no obvious reason and beams them back. Arridor immediately sets up a dampening field to keep from being beamed back up.
Janeway then decides to out-Ferengi the Ferengi. Neelix is surgically altered to look like a Ferengi, despite never having met a Ferengi and knowing nothing about them because, I guess, he’s short? He is sent down with a replicated Nagal staff to pose as the Grand Proxy, the messenger for the Grand Nagus. The wormhole, he says, has opened, and the Nagus has called for Arridor and Kol to return home, leaving their holdings on this planet with the Nagus. The pair are reluctant to leave their wealth behind, and eventually hit on the notion of attacking and killing the Grand Proxy.
Neelix folds like a cheap suit and admits he’s an imposter at the first sign of violence. However, Chakotay and Paris learn of the final verse of the song about the Great Sages which chronicles their eventual departure. Neelix changes his tune and says that he’s really the Holy Pilgrim, here to lead the Great Sages back into the black sky.
Arridor and Kol resist, but the Voyager crew re-creates the final verse of the song, including using photon bursts to re-create one of the omens. Unfortunately, the locals interpret the idea of them ascending by fire to burning them at the stake—not just Arridor and Kol, but the Holy Pilgrim, also, which doesn’t fill Neelix with warm fuzzies. Chakotay and Paris have to find and deactivate the dampening field (which they accomplish by the simple expedient of shooting it), thus enabling Voyager to beam everyone, plus the Ferengi shuttlepod, up.
Janeway puts the two in custody and then heads to the wormhole terminus, which Kim and Torres have managed to attract to them. However, Arridor and Kol overpower their security guard, er, somehow and steal their shuttle by shooting the shuttlebay doors. They head for the wormhole and put up a graviton pulse to keep Voyager from beaming them back. Said pulse messes with the wormhole, drawing the Ferengi pod in and then it disappears and Voyager can’t get it back because the episode is over.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Kim and Torres have the ability to summon the wormhole, but only for the 42 minutes of this episode, after which they lose it. When Janeway asks for options at the end, Kim says they have no options, which is the only time in the entire history of Star Trek that anyone has ever given up so thoroughly without trying anything.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway doesn’t listen to Tuvok’s logical argument for why they shouldn’t kidnap the Ferengi, but does listen to Arridor’s bullshit one. Sure.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok’s security guards are so well trained that they can’t hold onto two Ferengi morons and can’t stop them from stealing their shuttle. Sure.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix actually does a decent job of pretending to be the Grand Proxy right up until the part where he’s threatened with violence.
Forever an ensign. Just like in “Manuevers,” Kim is the most enthusiastic about the possibility of getting home, which makes you wonder why he went to so much trouble to not be home in “Non Sequitur.”
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. The Ferengi have several scantily clad women at their side regularly, who wear revealing outfits that would do William Ware Theiss proud.
Do it.
“I am in need of assistance. My sandal shop is failing. I can no longer feed my family.”
“Same old song.”
“My wife and her mother, my five children, the baby…”
“That’s seven employees—eight if you count the infant. How can your shop be failing?”
“You’re not paying them, are you?”
–A sandal maker petitioning the Great Sages, and Kol and Arridor giving very Ferengi advice.
Welcome aboard. Dan Shor reprises his role as Arridor from TNG’s “The Price,” while Leslie Jordan plays Kol. (Kol was played by an extra, J.R. Quinonez, in the TNG episode.)
Michael Ensign, last seen in TNG’s “First Contact” and DS9’s “The Forsaken,” and to be seen in Enterprise’s “Stigma,” plays the bard. Rob LaBelle makes his second of three appearances on the show, the other two being a couple of different Talaxians in “Faces” and the upcoming “Homestead.” Alan Altshuld, last seen in TNG’s “Starship Mine” and “Gambit, Part 1” and to be seen in the fourth season’s “Day of Honor,” plays the sandal-maker. In all three cases, it’s the only one of these actors’ roles on Trek where they don’t have any facial prosthetics.
Trivial matters: This episode serves as a sequel to TNG’s “The Price,” though many of the details from that episode are botched: the wormhole’s other terminus from Barzan was in the Gamma Quadrant initially, belying Kim’s comment that the terminus bounces all over the Delta Quadrant, and Arridor and Kol weren’t “minor functionaries,” they were the scientists assigned to examine the wormhole, a legitimate test of the wormhole that Data and La Forge did alongside them. Arridor and Kol weren’t trapped in the Delta Quadrant because they were attempting something underhanded, they were trapped because they were morons who didn’t listen to La Forge’s warning to go back before the terminus moved. Also all indications were that the wormhole would move from Barzan, though that doesn’t preclude it remaining in the Alpha Quadrant.
Like “Basics Part 2,” “Flashback,” and the upcoming “Sacred Ground,” this episode was filmed as part of the second season’s production schedule for budgetary reasons. It also was a prelude to Joe Menosky returning to Trek staff work. After leaving his job as co-producer of TNG following the fifth season, he returned as a producer on Voyager in this third season after writing this teleplay while still living and working in Europe. He’ll work his way up to co-executive producer before leaving after the end of season six. (He also served as a co-executive producer on the Discovery pilot, and also co-wrote the episode “Lethe.”)
This was not Ethan Phillips’s first time in Ferengi makeup. He played Farek in TNG’s “Ménàge à Trois” and will play another in Enterprise’s “Acquisition.”
All of the wisdom from “The Sages” comes from the Rules of Acquisition, first established in DS9’s “The Nagus” and quoted extensively throughout that show. (Your humble rewatcher listed all the known rules in his Ferenginar short novel Satisfaction is Not Guaranteed in Worlds of DS9 Volume 3 in 2005.) Neelix also makes up a rule: “Whenever you exploit someone, it never hurts to thank them. That way it’s easier to exploit them the next time.”
Set a course for home. “Exploitation begins at home.” I’ve always believed that the idea matters less than the execution. It doesn’t matter how good—or bad—the idea is. If the execution of the idea is good, even if the idea itself is mediocre, then the story is good, and if the execution sucks, it doesn’t matter how good the idea is.
On the face of it, doing a sequel to “The Price” on Voyager is not only a good idea, it’s an inevitable one. I mean, you left Arridor and Kol in the Delta Quadrant, and now you’ve got a ship trapped in the Delta Quadrant. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up.
Unless of course you screw up the story, and holy crap did they shit the bed with this one. There is nothing redeeming in this episode, from the incredibly stupid Ferengi to the even stupider local aliens to the ridiculous technobabble regarding the wormhole to the idiotic ending. First the Ferengi manage to steal the pod (which crash-landed on the planet, remember) and fly off with it, because now it’s somehow in working order.
On top of that, it’s obvious nobody involved in creating this episode bothered watching “The Price” at any point, since so many details were wrong. And why is Neelix of all people the one going down disguised as a Ferengi? Why not someone who’s actually, y’know, met one? Especially given how quickly he blew his cover…
Even if the rest of the episode was worthwhile (and it really isn’t, though Dan Shor deserves credit for doing the best he can with the material, plus Rob LaBelle is always good to play a schlub), the ending is some of the laziest writing in the history of television. Arridor and Kol steal their ship because Tuvok apparently sucks at security, and they do a technobabble thing to stop the other technobabble thing, which then causes a different technobabble thing that sucks Arridor and Kol into the wormhole, but also makes it disappear. And then the crew just gives up trying to get at the wormhole because reasons. Absolutely pathetic.
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s next Star Trek project was announced today: he’ll be one of the contributors to the forthcoming Star Trek Adventures Klingon Empire Core Rulebook. He’ll be part of the “Day of Honor” virtual conference on Saturday the 11th of July, as part of Modiphius’s panel at 3:15pm Eastern Time, alongside Rick Sternbach, Jim Johnson, and others. Keith will also be doing a panel on The Mandalorian on Saturday at 1:30pm Eastern Time as part of the virtual “Shore Leave 41.5” this weekend.
Well, that and they already have the prosthetics for Ethan Phillips. I think they were so attached to the idea of having a funny reference to his other roles that they didn’t care how silly the reasoning was in-universe. I’ll admit that this is one of those episodes I’ll watch if it is on, it’s stupid, but it’s kind of fun if you don’t think about it, an Phillips does a nice turn as Nellix pretending to be a Ferengi. Making up a new Rule of Acquisition on the spot was a nice touch.
Honestly, though, I always wonder why *this* was the time Voyager decided it was going to be super into continuity. Ferengi episodes were pretty widely panned in TNG, and although they got better on DS9, it’s not like this episode has any of the redeeming qualities that Nog, Quark, or Rom brought to the Ferengi. The Delta Quadrant is huge, and it’s not like “The Price” was such a hugely memorable or popular episode that we just *had* to learn what happened next. There’s about a million things I wish Voyager would have followed up on, and this is pretty low on the list.
I forget how far into the first season of Voyager we were before I turned to my husband and said, “Aren’t there a couple of unfortunate Ferengi in this quadrant somewhere? Wouldn’t it be funny if they met them?”
So when I saw the title of this episode, because it was obviously about Ferengi, I felt so justified in saying “CALLED IT!”
It was a fun little story, and it was a nice callback to the TNG episode. I try not to think to hard about the technobabble and handwaving, that’s all.
Voyager really has a problem making its crew look like idiots. I’m sure the other series had their moments but this was bad. I feel like Neelix gets especially poorly served by the writers as I think he should have put up more of a fight.
One more inconsistency with “The Price” is that the Delta Quadrant location where Arridor and Kol were stranded was less than 200 light years from the Gamma Quadrant location where the wormhole originally came out, so it must be significantly less than 200 ly from the Gamma/Delta border. All the onscreen and behind-the-scenes maps from VGR place the ship’s arrival point near Ocampa much, much further from that border — Star Charts puts it nearly 25,000 light years away.
Still, nobody would’ve let that prevent them from doing this episode. We just have to assume that we “misheard” Data when he said “200 light years.”
It’s a bit incongruous that the crew is so worried about the risk of the natives being “contaminated” by alien contact, when this episode actually demonstrates pretty well what indigenous peoples do when visited by outsiders: They interpret the alien in a way that fits into and reinforces their own pre-existing belief systems, even if that works against the outsiders’ own objectives, preferences, or even their lives (see Captain Cook in Hawai’i). Indigenous beliefs are more robust than the Prime Directive gives them credit for. So even if the Voyager crew had come more openly, the indigenes would still have found a way to filter the experience through their own worldview and beliefs. The Prime Directive is meant to be a caution against aggressive, coercive intervention, against playing God and actively pressuring a society to abandon its ways for yours. Just showing up for a brief visit wouldn’t be as likely to upend a whole society as PD episodes tend to assume.
@3,
Yeah, I mean, he TNG’s crowning moment of idiocy ironically also arguably was with the Ferengi (i.e. “Rascals”).
But anyway, the ending of “False Profits” is…this is one of those tricky balances you have to maintain in any ensemble genre storytelling. You have to make your heroes competent without being invincible and vice-versa with your antagonists and not make anyone look like idiots (unless the characters are genuinely stupid).
It’s a difficult balance to pull off and all to easy to screw up…and oh did VOY excel at it. I mean, yeah, this is not the 1701-D. They’re not the cream of the crop, Starfleet’s Finest, etc. But geez…
“However, Arridor and Kol overpower their security guard, er, somehow and steal their shuttleby shooting the shuttlebay doors.”
… which Chakotay helpfully told them was waiting for them in the shuttlebay, information he only had reason to share so the plot could work. What’s more, they once again fail to beam somebody directly to the brig or, failing that, just hit them with a phaser on heavy stun, manually haul them to the brig, and then deal with them later. If for whatever reason that’s not an option, then at least use a half dozen security guards rather than one guy. And, by the way, even if the Ferengi overpower that one guy, then just how the hell is it that the even know the way to the shuttlebay? I guess the computer helpfully gave them directions. Shades of the Kazon, the only way to have the crew lose to people this inept is to have the script make our crew even more inept.
The security staff on Voyager are The Worst!
Odo, do you have that PADD handy?
Isn’t it only natural that Voyager wouldn’t be the best crew in the world given their circumstances?
@7 and @9 You’d think that a ship specifically equipped for a mission to apprehend dangerous terrorists would have had better security personnel assigned to it. I mean, I can kinda get TNG’s security being shitty, they were there to make friendly contact with people, and I can see where they would err toward giving people the benefit of the doubt and not putting guests under strict surveillance, in the interest of diplomacy. Voyager doesn’t even have that excuse. It would make sense that their science personnel might not be the best of the best (in fact, one wonders why they are on the ship at all, you’d think for this mission they’d have kicked them all off at DS9 before they left for their 3-hour tour), but you’d think they would have gotten some pretty good security people to conduct their “hunt down a fairly important Maquis cell” mission.
I guess this was meant to be Star Trek’s take on “The Man Who Would Be King.” And that’s not a bad idea applying to the Ferengi and their never ending quest for riches. On the other hand, it’s more satisfying when con artists, like in the Kipling story, get their comeuppance directly from the people they’re screwing over without a third party being involved. So, weirdly, this might’ve been a stronger Voyager episode without… Voyager. Hmm.
Let’s be honest: Starfleet sucks at security in general. It’s not just Voyager that lets Ferrengi escape, that forgets to lock its shuttle bay doors, that can get ‘locked out’ of using that lovely transporter technology, etc. Starfleet Security is there to look and sound menacing, then fail utterly at securing anything.
On the other hand, this is a fairly open and tolerant society, which seems to have forgotten about the baser human (and other species) nature, of take something if it’s not nailed down. No wonder Neelix will have to ask permission to replicate locks for the food storage cupboards in “Infinite Regress”. (One of my favourite episodes, BTW.)
It’s interesting that one of Michael Piller’s first episodes as head writer just happened to be The Price, and his second to last episode just happened to be False Profits. Of all the TNG stories Voyager could fall back on, this is the one they choose, just because the Ferengi were stupid enough to cross that wormhole back in 1989, creating that possibility in the first place.
I was not a fan of TNG’s The Price to begin with. On one hand you had that dreadful Troi love story, and on the other a slightly better, but still inconsequential Ferengi B plot. It was their first attempt at moving the Ferengi away from the villainous role they played in the first two seasons, but they were still eons away from becoming a truly interesting race (thanks in no small part to DS9). Easily one of the weakest TNG season 3 entries. And that’s the one they choose to follow up on.
And False Profits manages to be worse. And not because of the main story itself. As contrived as it is, I think Neelix works well playing off against the Ferengi (and Phillips is a natural under disguise).
The real culprit is that ending, all thanks to that misguided and misplotted final act. This episode may have been intended to be a season 3 entry, but you can easily tell it’s a late season 2 episode. The whole script screams ‘rushed effort’. Clearly they ran out of time, because this obviously needed major rewrites. It feels like they shot a first draft. There’s no other way to justify the crew’s appaling inability to handle a pair of Ferengi tools. Tuvok and Janeway make the Worf from Rascals look good in comparison.
Eduardo: As I said nine years ago, I enjoyed “The Price.” It was a fun episode with great dialogue and some delightful comic set pieces — despite the disastrous romance plot with Troi and Ral. It’s not a great episode, by any means, but it deserved a better followup than this piece of shit.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@14/Krad: I wasn’t around for the TNG rewatch (didn’t even know about Tor back then). One problem I had with The Price is that it tried to do too much within 45 minutes. Ferengi/wormhole plot aside, that episode had a problem with the Troi romance in that it tried to be a steamy love story while at the same time also attempting to tell another completely different story about the moral and ethical issues of being a telepath. The end result: it failed at the love aspect, and it also failed to commit to the ethical side of the story. A shallow story on both ends.
“The Price” is good for the chairs bit. I’ll give it that.
@15 It’s a pity “The Price” wasn’t better at handling the “ethical issues of being a telepath,” angle, because I always thought that was so interesting. In “The Price” everyone is basically all snippy with Ral because he doesn’t tell them he is part Betazoid, which always struck me as being weird for the supposedly tolerant Federation. Why should he have to get into his racial make-up with everybody before he does his job? As he points out, it’s not like Troi tells every alien race that the Enterprise encounters that she is empathetic. It always struck me as weird that they basically got mad at him because *they assumed* he was fully human and he never bothered to say otherwise. And it’s not like he has the ability to manipulate people’s minds or change their thoughts- he just has a slightly heightened ability to tell what they are feeling, and got a job where that was a valuable skill. He’s basically treated like a conman for having an ability that lots of people in the Federation have, and because he doesn’t look like a Betazoid, he should have to announce it to everyone.
This was one was a big ‘ol stinker. On the rewatch I couldn’t even make it all the way through so at least there’s this review to spare me the pain. Whoever thought “The Price” needed a sequel? It’s obvious this is intended as the comic relief episode with the Ferengi but that usually doesn’t turn out well unless Quark or Rom or Nog or the Nagus is involved. There really wasn’t much here that was fun or funny IMO. Voyager sure has great luck in running into people from Earth and aliens from the Alpha Quadrant all the way out in the Delta Quadrant. Sure makes the galaxy feel like a relatively small place!
Since the Ferengi were in charge, aren’t all the females supposed to be naked???
@19, these were two particularly kinky Ferengi who had a fetish for clothes. Probably part of the reason they were afraid to return to Ferenginar.
@18:
Whoever thought “The Price” needed a sequel?
I mean, similarly to Keith, I don’t mind the basic concept of the “False Profits”.
It is a justified ‘Get Home Quick’ plot that tied VOY to the rest of the 24th Century canon. And in a way, it’s symbolically appropriate to follow up on it since “The Price” unknowingly laid the first seed for VOY by establishing the Delta Quadrant and the now-familiar Quadrant classification.
But, yeah, the execution sucked.
In a way, this is the episode they had to do. In another way, of course, they didn’t have to do it at all: The Delta Quadrant’s a big place and Voyager hadn’t necessarily come out anywhere near where the Ferengi did. But since “The Price” was the episode which introduced the Delta Quadrant, I guess they needed to complete the circle. I should probably check this, but I’m fairly certain the point of the earlier episode was that the Alpha Quadrant end was fixed and the other end moved around, hence why it appeared to be stable when viewed from the Barzan side but turned out not to be.
Janeway’s display of logic as to why it’s up to the Federation to stop the Ferengi is a good moment that gets Chakotay smirking and Tuvok acquiescing. After that, as Janeway says, it’s a matter of outFerengiiing the Ferengi. The result is a decent sized role for Neelix, in a different manner to how he’s usually deployed. And we get I believe the first team-up of Chakotay and Paris, which is a good way of showing that the tension between them from the first two seasons has gone. Like Neelix, Paris can work well in a light-hearted episode, as with his ironic “He’s got a point. We have never had the Song of the Sages more beautifully recited.”
Rob LaBelle also excels in the relatively small role of Kafar, going along with all this but clearly wanting rid of the Ferengi. His delight when they’re first beamed up is so obvious that it’s a shame Janeway isn’t looking: She’d probably have kept the Ferengi on board and the episode would be half as long. He takes even more delight in calling Neelix “Greater Sage”.
Unfortunately, the show’s premise clashes with the episode’s premise, so a fairly light-hearted episode ends with that rather downbeat “Options?”/“There are none” moment as another chance to get home gets slammed in the crew’s faces. And we can’t have the Ferengi staying on board, so Arridor and Kol tumble into the wormhole never to be mentioned again.
Kol was of course a non-speaking character in “The Price”, so they were pretty much casting from scratch. (That said, he does look enough like the original actor for it not to be noticeable unless you start comparing screenshots.) Chakotay talks of going back to the shuttle which is a bit odd: Okay, the Ferengi have set up a dampening field but just how big is its range? I’d have thought that anywhere remote enough for a shuttle to land unnoticed would be fine to beam down. Then of course they just beam back to the ship, although they do beam the Ferengi shuttle aboard so maybe they did the same with their own. (This could also cover other abandoned shuttles like the one in “Tattoos”.)
I’m assuming the Grand Proxy actually exists since the Ferengi don’t query it and he’s apparently mentioned in their database, even if we never hear of a real one. Oh, and that’s twice in three episodes that shoes have been used for barter. Did someone on staff have an obsession with them?
So…did Arridor and Kol make it back to the Alpha Quadrant? Kim said their graviton pulse disrupted the wormhole axis, so it’s just jumping around. So are those two morons just lost who knows where? Who cares.
I never processed how bad this episode is. I could barely make it through rewatching it for krad’s always-spot-on recaps; the only thing that really kept me watching was to see what krad would make of it. Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber overpower a security guard? Why was Ensign Blah-blah escorting them by himself? And then Voyager lets them steal their shuttle, go into the wormhole, and then once they lose the wormhole, everybody just shrugs and goes, “Oh, well.”
Truly abysmal episode.
@23
All your questions will be answered in Star Trek: Arridor and Kol, coming soon to CBS All Access.
@22/cap-mjb: “I should probably check this, but I’m fairly certain the point of the earlier episode was that the Alpha Quadrant end was fixed and the other end moved around, hence why it appeared to be stable when viewed from the Barzan side but turned out not to be.”
As Keith mentioned, Data determined that the Barzan end would eventually become unstable too. I don’t think it was specified how long that would take, though.
I don’t know how Kim didn’t lead a mutiny right then and there after the wormhole disappeared. Supposedly it’s their primary motivation yet no one has any sense of urgency to get through the wormhole. Just terrible writing to put them in a situation where they have to look so completely out of character.
Once the novelty of recognizing how the Ferengi got to the Delta Quadrant wore off, this episode was a total slog.
@24: Ha!
@21: I guess I don’t look back to fondly on “The Price” because of the dominant lame love story aspect of it and then it was one of the few weak spots of the otherwise stellar season 3 of TNG (my personal favorite season of any Trek series). But I will admit, the one element of that episode that was intriguing to me was about the Barzan wormhole, and especially the last scene of Arridor and Kol who were quite dramatically stranded in the Delta Quadrant. To me, that was a pure moment of horror. I mean compared to Voyager being stuck on its own in the Delta Quadrant, and the Equinox which we’ll meet in season 5, these two Ferengi only have each other in a tiny little shuttle, suddenly cut loose from the tether to everything they have ever known and any support from “home.” So a sequel to that aspect of “The Price” would have been intriguing if it took a dramatic track, showing how the Ferengi were somehow able to survive on their own against all odds, but instead we got a stupid non-sensical and mind-numbing farce.
@19, @20
It seems to me that at some point it became pretty clear that the nudity of females applied only to the Ferengis’ own, who until the Zek/Ishka reforms never left their homes, much less travelled offworld. Having spent several centuries travelling and trading, at least those who travel from Ferenginar are accustomed to the habits of females of other species.
It certainly doesn’t prevent them from exploiting those females of other species over whom they have any control, however (as Quark would repeatedly demonstrate), whether it’s requiring them to dress in a skimpy fashion (by the standards of that other species) or requiring oo-moxx from them. And they did also show that they appreciated the beauty of the females of other humanoid species.
By the way, despite being hilarious in places, it was a terrible episode for all the reasons Keith so eloquently outlined.
@27:
Right, and similarly to “Equinox”, it could’ve served as a nice contrast and compare to what VOY had and hadn’t endured during its trek through the DQ.
But instead, this is what they chose to do…although I’d have to re-watch this back-to-back with “Inside Man” to see which is the worst Ferengi episode of VOY.
As I read your rewatch reviews, I find that they are more than just reviews they are more or less bash Voyager reviews.
They are overly negative reviews every single episode. Every “review” picks apart every single episode to find everything that is wrong or what you don’t like about the series. I can’t tel if you like the series or like tearing it apart.
I’d have thought his shameless collapse in the face of impending violence encapsulates the reason Mr Neelix got the job as Grand Proxy – he clearly had the Ferengi mindset already! (-;
Also, I’m not going to come out and say that Mr Tuvok just might have had some flawlessly logical reason for Mr Neelix to be the face-man on this particular sting (in the same way King David had Reasons of State* for setting Uriah the Hittite at the forefront of the hottest battle), but I’m perfectly happy to insinuate it …
*The reason, of course, being that he was hip deep in the state of being hot & bothered over the glamorous Bathsheba.
I remembered wondering, after seeing Caretaker, and again after seeing this episode, what if instead of heading straight to the Alpha Quadrant, Voyager had headed for the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran wormhole. I decided that off screen they calculated it would take even longer.
@31 It is hardly KRAD’s fault that a lot of the Voyager episodes aren’t good.
@31:
That is weird. I have read through all of KRAD’s Star Trek rewatches and I thoroughly expected what you just described, but instead have found him to find a lot of positives in a lot of drek. Oh well, guess it all depends on the attitude coming into reading his work.
@@@@@ 31, 36
Count me among those that are surprised by the general positive attitude that shines through most of the reviews here. Also, we all know from previous rewatches that krad’s tolerance to Ferengi antics is very finite — he even dissed TNG “Rascals”, which is sacrilegious, because every episode with Ro Laren deserves at least Warp 5. This is because I say so.
Episodes that I considered somewhere between subpar and dreadful (“Emanations”, “Heroes and Demons”, “Cathexis”) got a positive review, while I found “Twisted” much more entertaining than the reviewer did. Obviously, these things happen because, well, we are all individuals. Krad does an excellent job in pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each episode, which is a mostly objective task, but when it comes to a final verdict by weighting the good against the bad, out subjective preferences necessarily kick in.
That’s why reading the reviews is a gain even if (or especially if) you don’t agree with the final rating, because you can reconsider your weighting algorithm (or not); I gave “Heros and Demons” a second chance and find it much better now. That is also why the reviewer’s opinion comes last in the review; everything before is a collection of facts aiming at objectivity, plus occasional and well-deserved snark.
I think KRAD has been incredibly fair and sometimes much more positive than I expected about Voyager considering how unwilling he had been to even do a rewatch. I have yet to disagree with any of his major opinions on these episodes. as someone who likes Voyager the second season and much of the third were definitely uneven and inconsistent and it’s not a surprise ratings dipped necessitating the 7 of 9 addition. Keith’s merely acknowledging the same decline in quality viewers noticed 20 years ago.
Quoth Liam12345: “They are overly negative reviews every single episode. Every ‘review’ picks apart every single episode to find everything that is wrong or what you don’t like about the series.”
This is demonstrably false. Read my pieces on “Eye of the Needle,” “Jetrel,” “Resistance,” “Prime Factors,” “Initiations,” “Projections,” and “Persistence of Vision,” just to name a few.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@31/Liam12345: Meld and Innocence were both highly positive reviews.
A surprising amount of underboob in a Star Trek show. And how weird that a Bronze Age society has plastic surgeons…
He gave a 10 to a Season One Neelix episode, but sure KRAD can never find anything positive to say about Neelix and/or the show… (rolls eyes so hard, they almost pop out of head)
(Liam12345 didn’t complain about ‘Neelix bashing’, but I’ve seen that pop up on other threads & just, ugh…)
@41/Austin: “And how weird that a Bronze Age society has plastic surgeons…”
They’re aliens. Maybe they come that way naturally.
@43 – What planet were they on again? Asking for a friend…
TUVOK: Captain, I must remind you that the Ferengi are not members of the Federation. They are not bound by the Prime Directive. Nor would it seem that the Prime Directive would allow us to interfere with the internal affairs of this society, as much as we may disapprove of what the Ferengi are doing.
JANEWAY: The Federation did host the negotiations. And if it weren’t for those negotiations, the Ferengi wouldn’t be here. So one could say, without being unreasonable I think, that the Federation is partially responsible for what’s happened, and therefore duty bound to correct the situation.
TUVOK: That is a most logical interpretation, Captain.
No Tuvok, that’s not logical. The Ferengi made the choice not to go back through the wormhole. And saying the Federation is responsible because they hosted the negotiations would also mean it the Barzan are even more responsible because they invited the various parties bid for the wormhole.
The only reason the Ferengi are in the Delta Quadrant is because of a decision that they made of their own free will.
Or is Janeway suggesting that any species that has dealings with the Federation should be subject to following the Prime Directive? After all, you could probably create a line of reasoning that says “if we hadn’t done A, B & C, those people would have never discovered this planet”.
@@@@@ 45. kkozoriz: He is Vulcan, and they embrace technicality.
@45, it also begs the question as to why it is so urgent they do this now. Why not go through the wormhole, thus getting yourself back home and completing your mission, and then tell Starfleet about the Ferengi. Then if they want to do something about it, they can. Sure, they have set themselves up as gods, but it’s not like they are killing off the local populace, and they’ve already been there for a while, what’s a couple more months going to hurt? I feel like Starfleet would probably prioritize the return of 40 dangerous terrorists (not to mention getting the crew and the ship back) over a couple Ferengi who got lost through their own stupidity. Janeway seems to be trying to find an excuse as to why she should not go home, with no explanation as to why.
@45 Given the intent of the Prime Directive, an expansive reading of it makes sense. Even if it’s not a Prime Directive thing, there has to be a rule against letting non-Federation people set themselves up as gods in pre-warp societies.
@47 Voyager had no reason to think picking up the Ferengi would interfere with getting home. Why not fix it while waiting for the science to happen?
@48/noblehunter: “Even if it’s not a Prime Directive thing, there has to be a rule against letting non-Federation people set themselves up as gods in pre-warp societies.”
Well, sure. Heck, in TOS, that was the kind of situation where the Prime Directive required intervening, as seen with cases like Merik, John Gill, the Klingons on Neural, probably Vaal (since it’s unlikely the indigenous people built it), etc.
Still, my point in comment #4 was not about the in-story particulars of the PD, but about my real-world perspective as a history student on how cultural interactions really work and how the situation in this episode — where the natives incorporate the alien visitors into their pre-existing belief system and just go on living pretty much normally — is a far more realistic one than the idiocy of something like “Homeward” where the very knowledge of aliens makes a native kill himself because it’s destroyed his faith in his belief system. Indeed, it shows correctly that the threat from the native belief system to the outsiders is usually greater than the threat from the outsiders to the native belief system — because the natives are on their home turf and expect things to go by their rules. Many cultures have mythologies in which gods die, and if you pick the wrong god to play or arrive in the wrong part of the ritual cycle, playing god is more likely to destroy you than the natives (which should be part of the real reason for the Prime Directive, though it usually gets ignored). So this episode portrays that kind of situation more plausibly than most.
Merik was a Federation citizen.
Gill was not only a citizen, he was sent specifically to the planet.
Kirk didn’t remove the Klingon influence on Neural, he simply did the exact same thing as the Klingons.
And there’s no indication that Vaal wasn’t built bu the indigenous population either. They may have regressed due to having their every need met. If Vaal was taking care of them, they may not have felt the need to do any more than necessary. Starfleet showed up on the planet and Vaal was simply defending itself and it’s people from invaders.
And @49, all of your real world examples come from a Human culture, a single culture at that. When you’re dealing with aliens, deciding that anything that deviates from a human perspective is wrong is exactly why there should be a Prime Directive. When you set up your perspective as being the only “right” or even possible way that things should be, you’re a huge danger to all the other species out there.
Would a Vulcan react the same as a human? Would an Andorian react the same as a Vulcan? Why should a humanoid alien be expected to react exactly as a human would?
You know the sad thing is that the ending can be very easily corrected so there’s more intelligence and less idiocy. The Ferengi for one should be partially grateful for being rescued from being barbecued at the stake, so instead should have been miffed that Voyager didn’t rescue their treasure. You have two paths here either they go back for the money and get burned at the stake because of their greed, or they make it through the wormhole and end up wherever.
But for the Voyager crew, this should’ve been their very first big step. There’s no real reason for them to not go through the wormhole. With it known that the wormhole is unstable, having them make it through can still take them 5-10-15,000 light years closer to home without actually getting the job done. That way it doesn’t end up being the case that Voyager’s moral fortitude works against them, but they still get a piece of their victory and don’t look like their squandered another shot.
Even the part of why they’re in the wrong place compared to where they started at the end of “The Price” could be easily handled. The Ferengi could’ve had another chance to enter the wormhole randomly, but instead of coming out in the Barzan system, they could’ve gotten ejected closer to Voyager’s side of the Delta Quadrant.
If they had to send a shuttle and scientists through to determine the wormhole’s terminus in The Price, why is it so easy for Harry to tell that it has become unstable on both ends?
@52: Perhaps Starfleet sensors have improved between the time of “The Price” and this episode.
@52 & 53: Indeed, the data that, err, Data and Geordi gathered in “The Price” probably helped refine their theoretical models of wormhole physics and improved their ability to predict their stability. Plus, of course, in between the two episodes, the Bajoran Wormhole was discovered and Federation scientists were able to study its physics for years on end. So it’s natural that they have better predictive models for wormhole behavior now than they had at the time of “The Price.”
Oh fer God’s sake! Let the natives go into a tizzy at the disappearance of their prophets! They’ll sort it out their own way. They don’t need to be spoon fed more false myths by Voyager.
But the Bajoran wormhole is artificial. There’s no indication that this one is. It’s the difference between Mount Rushmore and The Old Man of the Mountain a natural rick formation in New Hampshire that resembled a face.
Random points:
Isn’t Neelix a space trader – like the Ferengi? No one else on board thinks commercially, even with goods bartering outside and using replicator rations as money inside Voyager are a way of life now. Neelix can play Ferengi without coaching.
Maybe Ferengi are trickier than some other species to manhandle, without training – tough, like hobbits or Gollum. Maybe they have concealed weapons, also concealed from us. Maybe wormholes disturb the security guy’s inner ear…
And where would you put a shuttle, but in a shuttle bay… is it excluded that the Ferengi repaired it already and were just staying for the profit?
And this time I thought the Ferengi broke the wormhole beyond re-use. They’re tricky things. And you can go into one and… not come out anywhere, ever.
It is embarrassing that so many doors or computers aren’t locked on Federation starships, but then we’re also shown security devices being disabled by any passing powerful alien anyway, or by Spock or Data, so why have them?
But… Much was stupid in the Delta Quadrant, this week.
Wow, Kol had so much more personality in this episode than in The Price. It’s as if he was paid to have lines or something!
@The idea Krad is unfair to Voyager:
Wow, way off base there. Ironic that such a thoroughly terrible episode is the one that sparks an outburst directed at the reviewer’s perceived negative bias.
I guess Neelix gets made into a Ferengi because he’s the con artist of the bunch. Well, Paris could have done the job, but he’s too tall.
I don’t remember hating this episode, I thought it was fun.
@24 – JFWheeler: No, no. The show’s name is Star Trek: Kol-Arridor Damage.
What if…
…the details of the previous episode weren’t botched but the official Enterprise report was full of lies? :D
Can’t trust those hew-mons. Quark was right all along.
Oh dear… I have a theory that Ferengi episodes only work if you have either Quark, Rom, or Nog in them… and then not always. Not impressed by the Terrible security work, have these security people really been trained by Tuvok who we saw putting those Maquis guys through hell a while back? One of them gets laid out by the Ferengi he is meant to have under guard, then How did they get the shuttle off voyager so easily.? plus why did big mouth Chakotay even mention they had beamed the shuttle on Board? .. poor lazy writing. As the main review says a good idea terribly executed.
Why do the Voyager crew think nothing of beaming up Arridor and Kol in front of Kafar if they’re so concerned about upsetting the populace? Was Arridor parroting Tuvok’s argument because neither Tuvok nor Arridor seemed concerned with the upheaval removing the Takarians’ gods would do. I wonder if Arridor and Kol originally tried and failed to attract back the Barzan wormhole? Maybe they chose Neelix because Talaxians are the Ferengi of the DQ. How did Arridor and Kol manage to repair they’re downed shuttle with Takar’s resources? “Because reasons”, Krad? What does that mean?
13: “A natural under disguise”. But not duress. 17: B5 does the ethics of telepathy better with Psi-Corps. 22: It’s not noticeable unless you start comparing screenshots, which I used to do with the Star Trek Fact Files. 23: They hardly let them have that shuttle back. 37: You probably wouldn’t like theMovieblog.com because it’s brutally honest about VGR’s shortcomings. 38: Before I started reading this rewatch, I fully expected Krad to tear most VGR episodes to shreds, but I too have found them fair and unbiased. Surprising, isn’t it? 41: Plastic surgeons? 44: The planet Takar. 55: Voyager is the catalyst for a lot of false myths in the DQ, now that you mention it. 57: Neelix was rumbled so easily partly because his research into Ferengi culture was a rush-job. 58: Extras seldom get lines.
@63/David Sim:
Yes, I know, I was being sarcastic..
64: Yes, I know. So was I.
Well I was being sarcasticer! Joking
The sandal-maker’s shop is failing, but everyone is very keen to barter for shoes?
Or was that meant to be a deliberate, subtle, point (the “Sages” have some pretty nifty shoes, after all).
I like how the high priest has gone so thoroughly Ferengi. His behaviour all the way through is exactly like a low status Ferengi, and once he sees which way the wind’s blowing, and there’s a chance people will start asking questions like “do we get the rest of our money back now”, he re-positions himself pretty quick. Pope for life, I reckon.