The Ferengi were introduced in TNG’s premiere episode “Encounter at Farpoint” as a mysterious antagonistic race who were opposed to the Federation. They were seen three episodes later in “The Last Outpost.” While the intention was to make them alien and bizarre, they mostly just came across as incredibly doofy. Before long, they were associated almost entirely with comedy, and indeed some of the worst episodes of Star Trek in general have been Ferengi comedy episodes, from TNG’s “Rascals” and “The Perfect Mate” to DS9’s “Profit and Lace” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak” to Voyager’s “False Profits” to Enterprise’s “Acquisition.”
However, DS9 did a lot to make the Ferengi more complex, mainly through the characters of Quark, Rom, and Nog. And that work is continued in this week’s Lower Decks.
Impressively, this episode signals a major change to the Trek status quo, to wit, the Ferengi Alliance applying to join the Federation. Mind you, it’s one that we knew would happen at some point between the turn of the twenty-fifth century and the thirty-second, as Discovery has given us Ferengi in the Federation, but there has been no indication (up until now) as to when it happened.
The U.S.S. Toronto has been sent to Ferenginar, with the Cerritos in their usual role as backup, to accept Ferenginar’s application to join. This has been prompted at least in part by the mystery ship that’s blowing up ships at random, as the episode opens with a Ferengi ship being so blown up. But honestly, this is the perfect consequence of Rom’s becoming Grand Nagus.
While Freeman assists Admiral Doofus (he is never named in dialogue, but I’m comfortable with that name for him) in negotiating with Rom and First Clerk Leeta—voiced, of course, by Max Grodénchnik and Chase Masterson, respectively—our four main lower-decksers get one of the best junior-grade lieutenant assignments: travel guide duty!
Apparently the Federation travel guide to Ferenginar is out of date, so the gang gets to check out the sights. Mariner is thrilled, as it means she gets to pub crawl (even Ransom has to admit that travel-guide duty winds up being mostly checking out bars), but Tendi and Rutherford have a very specific assignment: to check out a hotel as a newly married couple.
One of my least favorite tropes in all of fiction is the assumption that any male-female friendship absolutely must have sexual tension. Probably the most egregious example is the otherwise fabulous When Harry Met Sally, but it general, the inability of far too many writers of TV shows and movies to write strong friendships between opposite genders without forcing sex and/or romance onto it makes me crazy.
Which is why I adore Rutherford and Tendi so much. They’re a strong friendship that has precisely zero romantic overtones. They’re total nerds, they finish each other’s sentences, they both love science—it’s adorable. And at first, they enjoy the role-play of a married couple—though they’re absolutely terrible at it, as they’re utterly unconvincing as a romantic pairing—but over the course of the episode they start to get incredibly uncomfortable with it.
Making matters worse is that the hotel they’re staying in (which is called Lobes Lodge, exactly the sort of sleazily romantic name a Ferengi hotel that caters to romance would have; recall that Ferengi ears are erogenous zones…) gives them various discounts for being a married couple—but if they turn out to be fake, they’re arrested for fraud. When they’re having dinner in Quark’s Federation Experience Bar & Grill (the maître d’ has his oversized ears pointed and has Vulcan eyebrows and is wearing an original-series-style Starfleet uniform), they see a couple being arrested, and they’re also forced to prove their devotion to each other by saying their favorite things about each other.
Indeed, it feels a lot like the kinds of tests that immigration officials make couples undergo to prove they’re really married and not just getting married for convenience of one member of the couple getting a visa or citizenship. At least, until the end, when they’re ordered to consummate the marriage in a blind room. They’ll have visual privacy, but the people outside will be able to hear everything.
Their solution is a brilliant one. In true Starfleet fashion, they take what appears to be a disadvantage—Migleemo showing up, loudly declaring them to be a famously platonic couple—into a way out. I thought they were just going to vocalize the sex while staying physically apart in the blind room, but this was much cleverer. They make it appear that they’re actually a threesome with Migleemo, but he was jealous that they got married so he’s spreading lies about them being platonic, but it turns out they both love Migleemo more, and so they’re getting divorced, and they storm out.
Mariner’s pub crawl doesn’t go much better, because she’s completely out of sorts. She meets up with her old buddy Quimp (last seen way back in “Envoys”) and deliberately starts a bar fight. It’s obvious to Quimp that she’s not dealing well with being happy at all and is in full self-sabotage mode.
I’ve known people like Mariner in my life: people who can never hang onto good moods or allow themselves to be happy. Whenever things start going well for themselves, they—often subconsciously—tunnel their way back to being miserable again. Mariner is being perfectly written as that type of person, and it’s going to take a lot of work by Mariner herself to climb out of it. (Her friends will help, as Quimp does here, but there’s only so much they can do if she doesn’t acknowledge and deal with the problem.)
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And then we have poor Boimler. As usual, he’s overplanned his itinerary, wanting to see everything he can on Ferenginar. “I’ll pack my schedule so full that I do everything and enjoy nothing!” He wants to set the record for most places reviewed.
The punchline being that he never gets out of his hotel room. (In true Ferengi fashion, the hotel room has a for-profit minibar and a for-profit toilet.) He activates the viewscreen only to be sucked in, first by the Slug-O-Cola commercial, then by Ferengi television, starting with a cop show (they’re actually cop landlords, because of course they are), and that’s followed by a sitcom where everyone is secretly in love with everyone else. By episode’s end, Boimler is sitting in his underwear, unshaven, eyes wide, completely sucked in by Ferengi TV. Ransom actually thinks this is good for Boimler—he needs to go with the flow more often and not plan everything out so aggressively. And he’s probably right. Though sending Ferengi security to abduct him from his hotel room was probably a bit extreme…
The best part of the episode, however, is the negotiations with Rom and Leeta. The two of them make a fantastic pair, aided by Admiral Doofus going in overconfident and then nervously giving in to every demand. Rom plays dumb and pretends to be easily distracted by silliness while Leeta does the really tough negotiating. But all of it is designed to fleece the Federation before joining.
Throughout, Freeman keeps trying to tell the admiral that he’s being played, but he refuses to listen, at least in part because it would be so embarrassing for him to screw this up. So, naturally, his attempts to fix it just make it worse, to the point where he’s agreed to give the Grand Nagus access to any ship in Starfleet any time, even if they don’t join, and also ten percent of the (nonexistent) back-end on all holonovels.
Freeman finally comes to the rescue, handing Rom a revised document with everything they ask for, plus a bonus of a ton of latinum—but also a condition. They have to bring a world into the Federation themselves. Rom thinks this is an easy condition, as there are tons of worlds that are in financial debt to the Ferengi Alliance—but the agreement isn’t for any world, it’s specifically for Kronos, the Klingon homeworld. Which Rom and Leeta don’t realize until after he’s signed it.
Rom and Leeta are impressed with Freeman, as she negotiated like a Ferengi, showing that she respects their culture and customs. And also proving that they weren’t getting into an alliance with a bunch of dumb rubes (like, say, the admiral). Rom agrees to sign the original document, and all is well.
This is a superb episode of LD, as it does what the show does best: a humorous take on a standard Trek storyline. It also does what all the Trek shows do well, and illuminate character through the situations, from Mariner and Boimler’s respective self-sabotages to Tendi and Rutherford being put out of their comfort zone and finding their way back to it. Plus, Freeman—who far too often has been portrayed as barely competent—gets to do the captain thing of saving the day through cleverness. On top of that, it’s always good to see Rom and Leeta, and it’s especially good to see them thriving as Grand Nagus and First Clerk. Grodénchik and Masterson are both fabulous as always.
Random thoughts
- The title is a reference to the 2004 British comedy/horror TV series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, which starred Matthew Holness (who recently revived the character in the novel Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome), Richard Ayoade (these days probably best known for his role on The IT Crowd and his prolific voiceover work), Matthew Berry (these days seen as Lazlo Cravensworth on What We Do in the Shadows), and Alice Lowe (who recently starred in Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch). One suspects that they did a Ferengi episode just so they could riff on this title with its near-homonym for the species…
- We get a new Rule of Acquisition, specifically #8: “Small print leads to large risk.”
- Rom’s constant references to baseball is an amusing in-joke on two levels. The character of Rom knew of the sport thanks to his time on Deep Space 9, as Sisko, Jake, and Rom’s son Nog all played the game on the holosuite. Rom himself played as part of the Niners baseball team in DS9’s “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” and he was by far the worst player on that team. Nonetheless, he was critical to the team’s pyrrhic victory of scoring a single run against the superior Vulcan team they were up against with a well-timed (if unintentional) bunt. In addition to that, Grodénchik is the only person in the cast who actually had experience playing baseball. In character, he played left-handed (Grodénchik is right-handed) in order to make himself look less competent.
- On Ferenginar, the Museum of Gambling is right next door to the Museum of Haggling. Boimler says he’s looking forward to haggling at the former and gambling at the latter.
- Rom and Leeta have a golden bust made of the admiral and present it to him as a gift—as well as the ceremonial invoice. (Leeta kindly says they got the friends-and-family discount.) After it’s all over, the admiral gifts the bust to Freeman, who promptly tosses it in the trash…
- Like his predecessor, Grand Nagus Zek, Rom has a Hupyrian servant, but his presents as female.
- Slug-O-Cola was first introduced in the book Legends of the Ferengi by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe, and then later seen onscreen in DS9’s “Profit and Lace.” The position of First Clerk was established in DS9’s “Ferengi Love Songs,” when Quark temporarily had that role for Zek.
- Insight Editions published a series called Hidden Universe Travel Guides, fictional travel guides to places from TV shows and movies, including a couple of Trek ones: Vulcan and the Klingon Empire, both written by Dayton Ward. I’m sure Dayton’s research was very similar to what the Cerritos crew did in this episode…
- It was established in Picard’s “Stardust City Rag” that Quark has spent the time since DS9 ended franchising, as there are Quark’s Bars all over the place. This was confirmed by dialogue in “Hear All, Trust Nothing.” The Federation-style bar in Lobes Lodge is also a Quark’s franchise, taking advantage of his long association with the Federation.
- Your humble reviewer wrote the first in-depth look at Rom’s tenure as Grand Nagus in a story taking place about a year after the end of DS9 in the short novel Satisfaction is Not Guaranteed, the Ferenginar portion of Worlds of DS9 Volume 3.
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest work is “Prezzo,” a new story that appears in Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, an anthology celebrating the centennial of Weird Tales magazine, edited by Jonathan Maberry. The anthology, which will be out this month, also includes new stories by Scott Sigler, Laurell K. Hamilton, R.L. Stine, James Aquilone, Hailey Piper, Usman Malik, Blake Northcott, and Dana Fredsti; new poetry by Linda D. Addison, Owl Goingback, Marge Simon, Jessica McHugh, Anne Walsh Miller, and Michael A. Arnzen; new essays by Lisa Morton, Lisa Diane Kastner, James A. Moore, Henry Herz, and Jacopo della Quercia & Christopher Neumann; and reprints of classic stories, essays, and poems by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov & Frederik Pohl, Victor LaValle, Charles R. Rutledge, Karin Tidbeck, Allison V. Harding, and Tennessee Williams.
My brain did a record scratch as I read When Harry Met Sally described as “otherwise fabulous” when you remove the sexual tension between Harry and Sally. What is left when that is removed? The friendship having one-sided sexual attraction from Harry towards Sally is an essential part of the movie. He reinforces his own belief that men and women can’t be friends without sexual tension, then learns he and Sally can have a friendship without it after their divorces, then they blow that up by having sex.
KRAD, may I respectfully suggest that if you believe Tendi and Rutherford have had zero romantic overtones then you have missed quite a lot. It’s been apparent since very early on that Sam at least has stronger feelings for D’Vana, starting with him telling Badgey that he was trying to impress her because she was so cute. Even in this one, it was clear that Sam was struggling with trying to keep those feelings inside even though they kept leaking out. I did think it was strange that he kind of freaked out when she mentioned going topless in their room–don’t they have communal sonic showers on the Cerritos?
I believe the admiral’s name was Vassery.
I think my very favorite detail from this episode is that Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from TMP (and later TNG, obviously) is a an actual in-universe music piece. It’s been suggested before that it’s the official Starfleet March, and I’d say the Ferengi playing it at their Starfleet Experience is as good a confirmation as we’ll ever get of that idea.
All in all, it was pretty much a perfect Lower Decks episode.
Chase: I haven’t missed anything, I just interpret the evidence differently than you. For one thing, calling someone cute is not automatically a sign of romantic interest…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I saw this episode very differently. I found it overly contrived and forced; it was unbelievable how overconfident and incompetent they made the admiral to make Freeman look good. Certainly we’ve seen overconfidence in Starfleet admirals before, but it was just so blatant and over-the-top that it lost all believability, and it didn’t make Freeman look good, because there’s nothing impressive about being smarter than a complete self-sabotaging idiot.
I also found the Tendi-Rutherford plot too blatantly constructed to force them into an uncomfortable romantic-tension situation. And I read it entirely differently than you did, Keith — I think there’s absolutely sexual tension between Tendi and Rutherford. I noticed it between them a week or two ago, and it seemed clear to me here that they wouldn’t have been so uncomfortable with the situation unless it were forcing them to confront their actual mutual attraction that they’ve been trying to avoid acknowledging. I mean, there was that one bit where they both blushed, which is a common cartoon shorthand for romantic or sexual attraction. (See, for example, the early interactions between Clark & Lois in My Adventures with Superman.) After all, if there were no attraction and it were just two friends playacting, they would’ve had no reason to be uncomfortable with it.
It bugged me that the characters in the Ferengi TV shows Boimler watched were all dressed in 20th/21st-century Earth clothes and settings. It’s one thing to use aliens to parody our culture, but this was just making it too obvious, and was lazy from a design standpoint.
Speaking of clothes, though, I noticed at least one nude Ferengi female in the background in the restaurant scene (discreetly blocked by the table). That’s the first time we’ve ever seen a Ferengi female nude in public on camera, even though it’s theoretically a commonplace practice on Ferenginar (or used to be).
According to Memory Alpha, the admiral was named Vassery (voiced by Fred Tatasciore), and we’ve seen him before in “Moist Vessel” and as a hologram in “Crisis Point.”
Lots of disjointed thoughts on this one:
I keep saying that Lower Decks is a master class in efficient storytelling, and this episode is case in point; here, we have an A-plot, B-plot, C-plot, and D-plot, all with satisfying payoffs and all fit into a half-hour episode.
We get some more information on that mystery ship: Apparently, one of the Ferengi thought that he was in league with it.
We (finally!) get to see Rom as Grand Nagus: By this point, 6 years after the events of Deep Space Nine, he seems to have become comfortable in the position, though I suspect that there was a lot of reactionary pushback against him for the first few years. Incidentally, I loved that he got people to call him “Nagus” just so that he could correct them Grand Nagus.
And we get a street-level Ferenginar as well! We’ve seen a bit of it before in “Family Business” and “Ferengi Love Songs,” but budget limitations meant that we could never see more than a few rooms at a time. Now it feels like a world–or at least a city.
I admit, I kind of “ship” Tendi and Rutherford, but I also think that a relationship between those two would be redundant. Clearly, they’re already connected on a level far deeper than romance.
Also, we get a ship called the USS Toronto. We had the Vancouver a few seasons ago; are all Parliament-class starships named after Canadian cities?
Finally, I think it’s ironic that Starfleet’s mission to Deep Space Nine apparently failed to convince Bajor to join the Federation, but did convince the Ferengi.
@2/Chase: “I did think it was strange that he kind of freaked out when she mentioned going topless in their room–don’t they have communal sonic showers on the Cerritos?”
Context matters. Being with a friend in skimpy swimsuits on a crowded public beach would feel far less intimate than being in private with the same friend in equally skimpy underwear.
“I think my very favorite detail from this episode is that Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from TMP (and later TNG, obviously) is a an actual in-universe music piece. It’s been suggested before that it’s the official Starfleet March, and I’d say the Ferengi playing it at their Starfleet Experience is as good a confirmation as we’ll ever get of that idea.”
I was really disappointed when “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” didn’t use the Goldsmith theme as the Federation anthem at the baseball game.
@3/krad: “For one thing, calling someone cute is not automatically a sign of romantic interest…..”
But saying you tried to impress someone because she’s so cute is absolutely a sign of romantic interest.
@4/ I would not be the least surprised if the Ferengi produced TV content specifically for Hyoo-mon visitors. (Boims must have racked up quite the hotel bill.)
I also can’t believe the Federation let an idiot like Vassery handle something as momentous as Ferenginar’s admission. Granted, they probably told him it was just a formality… but it’s the Ferengi, for crying out loud! (Rom and Leeta saw this sucker and just had their way with him!)
Am i delighted that Rom and Leeta are thriving as Nagus and First Clerk and have delivered Ferenginar to a new age? Absolutely. Joining the Federation was probably Zek and Ishka’s ultimate goal, and their successors have pulled it off with style.
And, in a sense, Ferenginar joining the club was inevitable, because they’ve always been part of us. The Ferengi are a reflection of our hyper-capitalist era, and everything on display here–from the TV programming to the cityscapes–was a slightly embarrassing mirror of our own world.
JPEG paramount logo
What I don’t understand is, where the hell is the Federation’s diplomatic corps? It was the same as when Bajor almost joined the Federation in “Rapture” and it was all Starfleet brass at the ceremony. Surely the Federation doesn’t rely on Starfleet for its military and its diplomacy?
P.S.: Tendi and Rutherford are totally in love with each other and have no clue how to handle it. Can they find a way forward without ruining the frierndship? Tune in next time for another episode of “Will They, Won’t They”!
Incidentally, the throwaway revelation that Genesis Devices are still a thing and have even been improved on to the point of miniaturization raises huge, huge questions. The technology completely disappeared after TSFS, and the “David used protomatter” thing was evidently meant to establish that Genesis didn’t work after all and would be abandoned. Granted, it would still make a very potent planet-killer weapon, but I always figured the galactic powers agreed on a Genesis ban treaty because of that. The terraforming methods we saw in use in TNG and DS9 were far less powerful.
Of course, it’s possible that other powers who didn’t sign the treaty have continued to develop Genesis tech, but that would be such a big deal that it’s hard to believe it would just be some throwaway detail with no wider ramifications.
(Meanwhile, I was amused to see the Genesis Device here called “miniature,” because I read the novel of TWOK first, and when I finally saw the movie, I couldn’t believe a device powerful enough to transform a planet was smaller than a person. I’d imagined something more like a missile.)
@7/jacoblasky: “I would not be the least surprised if the Ferengi produced TV content specifically for Hyoo-mon visitors.”
Then wouldn’t they be wearing 24th-century clothes? And how many 24th-century humans would recognize 20th/21st-century cop-show and office-sitcom tropes? Boimler couldn’t even pronounce “commercial.”
The clear intent was that these were normal Ferengi programs, but the writers and artists took the “Ferengi are a metaphor for present-day American capitalism” thing too literally.
@6 I’m okay with it not being the Federation anthem, because that would imply that there are words for it and that’s a weird idea to me.
I was thinking back about the other clues about Tendi and Rutherford’s feelings for each other, and I remembered the season 2 premiere when Tendi started thinking that Rutherford had some kind of severe memory degradation as soon as he mentioned he was dating Ensign Barnes again.
@11/Chase: “I’m okay with it not being the Federation anthem, because that would imply that there are words for it and that’s a weird idea to me.”
Hmm…
“U… ni-ted Fe… de-ra-tion… We are joined in a U-ni-ted Fe-de-ra-tion…”
It kinda works!
@11 – The anthems of Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, San Marion, and Kosovo do not have lyrics
Well, that was weird, as in goofy-weird.
The story with Carol was the best. It was wonderful seeing Rom and Leeta again. Even though Rom’s not the brightest, I had a feeling he was playing dumber for a reason. Kudos for Carol for knowing how to deal with Ferengi!
The Tendi/Rutherford story was funny and them using Migleemo to get out of their situation (and him be oblivious) was the best part of the story. However, life in prison for fraud? That seems rather excessive.
Poor Boimler. A part of me is really annoyed that he shirked his duties to watch TV all day, however, that is on-point for him. The upside is we got to see what Ferengi TV is like which I found fascinating.
Mariner’s story is just a rehash of the same-old, same-old. They really need to answer the question of why Mariner acts this way and have her move past it.
Weapons dealing is against Ferengi law now? Wow. I can understand why, but I can imagine that a lot of Ferengi are unhappy about that. [I can imagine Quark complaining loudly about it; someone points out that *he* doesn’t deal in weapons and he’d be “That’s not the point!”]
So, there’s a USS Toronto now? Really would like the now the thinking about the new naming convention at Starfleet Command. (That’s not a criticism; more of an amused observation)
I’d say this episode was my least favorite of the season. However, I did love seeing Ferenginar again. Plus, would’ve thought when the Ferengi were introduced in “the Last Outpost” that they’d be applying for membership in the Federation?
@14/Mary – Like all Ferengi prison sentences, I’m sure that you can bribe your way out.
Also, I think Quark might favour an arms-trading ban just because it screws over Cousin Gaila.
#1.
I second that record scratch. Sexual tension and its complications is a big part of the story. Not sure what the downside was there. In my opinion, if there’s good chemistry to mine from characters/actors, go for it every time.
I’ll have what WHMS is having.
The thing that earned the biggest guffaw from me in this episode was the throwaway by Ransom at the beginning in which he struggled to address the team (“Lieutenant Junior Grades? Lieutenant Juniors Grade? Lieutenants Junior Grade? Whatever.”). I work in a field with this kind of unusual pluralizing (“Attorneys General”) so it made me laugh.
I really enjoyed the episode except for one glaring omission: where was T’Lyn?! I know that we already had four separate plot threads and I know that she’s not technically a member of the main cast, but she’s already my favorite character on the show and I just want more of her. The deadpan reactions to the zaniness of Ferenginar would have been a treat.
I loved this episode. It was great to see Leeta and Rom shepherding Ferenginar into the Federation in true Ferengi style, by trying to rip them off. They make a great team. I also liked Mariner being called out by her Ferengi friend for her self-sabotaging ways. I don’t think she wants to be miserable. I just think she doesn’t believe enough in herself (which is why she puts on such a self-assured face) and so she keeps finding ways to get herself demoted before anyone else has a chance to do it. Finally, I was worried that this faux-couple exercise was a writers’ plot aimed at getting Rutherford and Tendi to actually become a couple, so I was relieved that they remained just best friends at the end. Regardless of whatever sexual tension may or may not exist between them, I prefer their friendship over more predictable romance.
Yeah, I was actually surprised by the Tendi and Rutherford plot because I thought they were already together. Tendi asked Rutherford to dump Lieutenant Barnes, though, which is about as blatant a love confession as you can possibly get, IMHO.
@19 Even after it’s established that Rutherford doesn’t have memory degeneration or whatever, they hug and she whispers “Don’t date Barnes.” That felt pretty obvious to me, especially because Barnes is cool!
Are we now expected to believe that both Freeman and Ransom are competent, and good people? We already knew that Shaxs is. Who’s next, Dr. T’ana? At least we have Migleemo to fall back on.
Tendi and Rutherford”s “Formalwear Freakout”
=
Xander and Willow’s “Clothes Fluke” (Buffy s3)
@10/ I’ll go further down the rabbit hole:
A Ferengi multimedia mogul discovers ancient episodes of Friends, The Office and Law and Order and he feels in his lobes that “this crap will sell!” He keeps the settings and wardrobe, but rewrites the material (to own the “original” stories); he recasts the characters with Ferengi, because nobody wants to look at primitive humans. (Howzat?)
The competence of the Cerritos senior staff follows the Roger Rabbit rule: only when it’s funny.
@22/jacoblasky: As usual, I’m not concerned with whether an in-universe handwave can be invented, but with whether there was a better, more satisfying way the story could’ve been told in the first place, so that we wouldn’t have to bend over backward to make sense of it. If they were going to show us Ferengi TV, I would’ve rather seen a more creative dive into Ferengi culture, rather than just warmed-over Earth TV conventions with a bit of greed and graft tacked on. That was just lazy writing.
Ooh — they could’ve had Boimler watch an episode of Marauder Mo. It would’ve been cool to get a glimpse of that show at last.
I’m more interested in what this implies for the Star Trek universe’s humans than the idea the Ferengi independently has trash television. By Boimler’s reaction, it implies that humans in the future doesn’t watch television at all. Which is a pretty big revelation about their activities and implies an entire medium of entertainment has died out.
@23 / OK, I see your point; but I enjoyed the trash TV stuff anyway. I thought “Will They?/Won’t They?” was Mike McMahan giving the Tendiford shippers a friendly poke; and Boimler’s comment on product placement–with the Paramount logo positioned right over his head–was a pretty funny Lower Decks self-own.
Russell T. Davies did a similar trash TV satire in S1 of the Doctor Who revival (“Bad Wolf”, 1.12), and I guess it was also love it or hate it. Frankly, liked this episode better.
@24/C.T. Phipps: “…it implies that humans in the future doesn’t watch television at all. Which is a pretty big revelation about their activities and implies an entire medium of entertainment has died out.”
Heck, TNG established that 35 years ago in “The Neutral Zone,” where Data stated that TV didn’t last much past 2040 as a form of entertainment. DS9: “Past Tense” implied that it had been pretty much superseded by the Internet by 2024, which was a fairly accurate prediction.
Of course, SNW’s premiere episode showed Pike watching The Day the Earth Stood Still on what certainly looked like a flatscreen TV, an homage to the TV console in Pike’s quarters in “The Cage.” But that was a movie. I guess Data was referring to the programming rather than the display devices.
Is it just me, or was the whole “Starfleet Experience” a direct homage to Star Trek: The Experience that used to be at the Las Vegas Hilton in the 90’s and 2000’s? Between the Quark’s-looking restaurant, the random people cosplaying in Starfleet uniforms, and especially the ships hanging above the whole thing (not to mention calling it an “Experience”), it must have been intended as a reference.
Really? Nobody has commented yet on the self-sealing stembolt joke? That was probably my favorite gag, right up there with the previously mentioned “Lieutenants Juniors Grade” bit.
I couldn’t help but notice that when Rom swung the Nagus staff like a bat at the end of the episode, he swung right-handed. I have to believe (or hope) that was intentional.
Outstanding episode! And I’ll give a +1 for the self sealing stembolt line.
I also like how this implies that Zek/Ishka and Rom/Leeta’s reforms swept quickly across Ferengi space, with a very gender stratified society becoming equal in record time. It fits with what I always took away from DS9: That most Ferengi men, having met people of other species, clearly want a partner who is smart, tough, and with lobes for profit; they just can’t get past the blind spot from the cultural pressure to keep Ferengi females naked, in the house, and out of business. The Ferengi women, who are just as likely to be smart and business savvy as any man, also know that women of other species live differently; they just want to succeed on Ferengi terms, not human/trill/klingon ones. So Ishka and Zek face pushback from the traditionalists, but when Rom makes it clear this isn’t going away I can totally believe that most everyone would find equality a relief and quickly change. I love a message of love conquering all.
ARCHER: Back on my homeworld, that kind of thinking almost destroyed our civilization.
KREM: You should’ve managed your business better.
@27 You are absolutely correct and it’s fantastic. The best part for me is that I’ve never even been to the real thing and I still noticed it from having seen all the bonus features about it on various Trek discs.
Now I’m laughing at the idea that the reason Rom was so bad at baseball on DS9 is because he was using the wrong hand the whole time and everybody just assumed he was left-handed.
For what it’s worth, the 8th Rule of Acquisition first showed up in the Legends of the Ferengi and Rules of Acquisition books.
Starship naming? It seems to me that lots of Star Trek has been shot in Canada. Naming starships for canadian cities might be a way of honoring that.
@34/Rold: “It seems to me that lots of Star Trek has been shot in Canada.”
I wouldn’t say “lots” in the grand scheme of things, since it’s only Discovery, Short Treks, and Strange New Worlds to date, all based in Toronto. And yes, naming a starship the Toronto is pretty clearly a nod to that.
@34/Rold
It’s not so much Canada. The entire California class has ships named after cities in California. Starships have always been named after historical figures or ships.. Now we see them named after locations.
Quoth elcinco: “I couldn’t help but notice that when Rom swung the Nagus staff like a bat at the end of the episode, he swung right-handed. I have to believe (or hope) that was intentional.”
Possible, but unlikely. People rarely notice handedness (I’ve lost track of the number of people who never realized that Michael Dorn is left-handed, e.g.), and they probably just portrayed Rom batting right-handed as the default. I mean, the artist of the Muppet Show comic book that BOOM! Studios published a decade ago totally never noticed the fact that Floyd and Janice in Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem play their guitars left-handed, and none of the people at Disney who did the approvals noticed, either. I would love it if it was intentional, but the cynic in me thinks otherwise….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@37/krad: I realized decades ago that most Muppets are left-handed because most Muppet performers are right-handed and use their dominant hand to work the mouth.
I mean, Rutherford and Tendi conduct their relationship platonically, but they’re also actively and mutually possessive of each other, spend almost all of their free time together, and in this episode any inclination towards intimacy caused them to blush. And I don’t chalk that up to being uncomfortable in the sense of seeing a sibling naked, it was “I can’t be perverted towards my crush” discomfort.
I think it stems from Rutherford naturally being more attracted to engines than other people and Tendi identifying her sexuality with her Orion-ness. Neither of them are comfortable in the natural modes of romantic advancement. Rutherford was good with dating Barnes, until she was more interested in making out than in a systems malfunction
I still think they’re soul mates though, even if it never becomes romantic. They could marry other people and still they’ll grieve each other more than their spouses should one die.
Admiral Vassery seems to have been given the job for being aggressively obsequious instead of an aggressive negotiator. Since Starfleet Command assumed light work, they likely sent him because he wouldn’t try to renegotiate but would instead follow orders. Unfortunately the orders he chose to follow were the orders to “make sure they signed” rather than “Make sure they signed this that we’ve already negotiated”. I like seeing Freeman competent, and seeing how ultra competent Mariner often comes off as, it makes sense that her Mom has the same tendencies. With her daughter being less and less of a screwup and her stress load depleting, along with the events of the last few seasons giving the California class and the Cerritos the respect if not prestige that she feels it should have always had, it follows that she would be more focused now and her competence is regularly coming to the fore.
Aww Boims. Fell victim to the boob tube.
I feel like this is the start of them resolving that problem with Mariner. We’ve seen her confront who she really wants to be and where she wants to go. But this seems to be the beginning of attacking why she gets in her own way, to wit, what made her the pain in the ass we’ve come to love.
Rom and Leeta/Max and Chase back at it again. They also voice acted their characters in Star Trek Online’s Victory is Life expansion, and Chase has been playing the Terran Empire Captain/Admiral Leeta for something like a decade now. Rom playing into his perception of being dumb while his hot way works the okie doke is brilliant. “Rom’s an Idiot” now seems like dangerous subterfuge. That look they shared when Vassery agreed to reopen the contract negotiations was priceless. They eyeballed that mark from two sectors away. I wonder if they requested him?
Ferenginar’s First City being all Las Vegas casino and nickle and dime grifting was just perfect.
I found this episode to be a little off the streak of awesome episodes, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
One thing I appreciate about this extended visit to Ferenginar is that it reminds us that change is a slow process. This episode takes place roughly 6/7 years since the end of DS9. Rom being appointed Nagus came with the promise of major social reforms that Zek and Ishka had already set in motion over the last two seasons of the show (and I love how Rom/Leeta’s leadership mirrors Zek/Ishka, in the sense that she was the real brains behind the operation).
But of course Ferengi society is still very much ubercapitalist to the extreme (of course hotels would charge premium for things like toilet use), and there are also plenty of Ferengi who aren’t remotely satisfied with the ongoing changes, and would very much like for things to go back to the way they were (in other words, “make Ferenginar great again”). We see a glimpse of that during the teaser before they’re blown to bits by our recurring mystery ship thanks to that profit opportunist officer outright calling them to begin with.
There were a couple of moments worth some loud belly laughs. One was the first TV commercial that Boimler catches – the treatment that ‘enlarges’ your ears. The other one was the Ferengi that Mariner bumped into. What could have been a brutish bully willing to start in fight for any stupid reason in fact turns out to be the most gentle polite Ferengi we’ve ever seen on screen (other than Rom and Nog), and he keeps trying to apologize to Mariner and find ways to get out of that mess. I love this kind of role reversal.
I wish the episode had spent a little more time on Boimler’s TV marathon. It reminded me a little bit of Fry’s recent TV binge on Futurama season 8. But what little we got was worth it, especially him at his dirtiest unshaven self (and looking whiter than usual – he needs a tan ASAP).
As for Tendi and Rutherford, I always expected the show to eventually do a story about them discovering a mutual attraction that’s more than just friendship. Do I think that’s a good thing? I’m honestly not sure. But they were always yin and yang to each other, in perfect sync (and they remind me of the Josh Lyman/Donna Moss relationship on West Wing more than anything, which took 7 seasons to evolve into something more). If anything, I’m surprised at the restraint the writers had to wait until season 4 to hint at anything more. Then again, @krad might have a point, which means this story was all about them feeling embarassed and ashamed at having to be something that’s never been and will never be part of what makes their bond special.
For what it’s worth, the notion of restaurant patrons being able to hear sex noises from couples while eating was also worth a belly laugh before the episode threw that unexpected hilarious Migleemo lifeboat to settle the plot.
And lastly, I wasn’t as fond of the Freeman negotiations plot, just simply because I couldn’t keep track of the details that were coming at a rapid-fire pace (not a fan of having to rewind HD video on Amazon Prime’s already questionable glitchy interface to catch details I missed). But overall I was just happy to hear Grodénchik and Masterson’s voices. Like Visitor and Shimerman last season, it’s like they never left their characters.
@40/Eduardo: “before they’re blown to bits by our recurring mystery ship”
I’ve been convinced since the start of the season that the mystery ship is teleporting the crews rather than destroying them; only the ships are being destroyed in the process of abducting the crews. After all, some of the characters we’ve seen are returning from “wej Duj,” and the others have been corresponding “Lower Deckers” from other fleets. I doubt they’d introduce or bring back those characters just to kill them off unceremoniously.
@41/Christopher: Given that it always ends on a searing white flash with them screaming, I just assumed the weapon was so radioactive they were being vaporized. But it could also be a case of last-minute teleportation. It fits the animated effect. And you’re right – it makes little sense to reintroduce Lower Deckers we’ve seen before just to kill them off like that. The LD writers are likely more than aware of Trek’s redshirt syndrome and could be setting up some kind of twist based on that trope.
@6/CLB: My headcanon is that the tune played in Take Me Out To The Holosuite is not necessarily the Federation anthem — I don’t think it was identified on screen, and it’s plausibly an anthem representing Bajor, Vulcan (for the Logicians), or whatever location the baseball field depicted in the program.
So the Goldsmith tune could still be the Federation anthem, or perhaps Starfleet’s anthem.
@42/Eduardo: “Given that it always ends on a searing white flash with them screaming, I just assumed the weapon was so radioactive they were being vaporized.”
Which is exactly what they want us to assume. But stories often take advantage of our assumptions to mislead us.
@41 – It’s fairly common to introduce someone one of the main characters has a connection with, a coworker, a relative, a neighbour, and then kill off that new character in order to give the main character a personal interest it “the big bad”.
And the effect when the ship is attacked doesn’t look like a teleportation effect at all. It looks like there’s bits of the characters being blasted away from their bodies. I’m reminded of the dream sequence in Terminator 2 when the bomb goes off and you see rge fleshbeing ripped from the skeleton. If it’s misdirection it looks badly done to me.
@45 I went back and re-watched the opening, and it’s clear that the Ferengis’ screams continue after the “vaporization” occurred. I think there’s much more to this than simple destruction, and I think there’s a very good chance that we find out a lot more about this next week in “A Few Badgeys More.”
I’ve noticed that, when they showed the debris fields after the destruction of the Klingon and Romulan ships, no organic remains were visible, even among items that are recognisable from the previous scene. I think that the crews must have been transported away.
Also, I’d thought for years that the “Federation Anthem” from “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” was the same as Archer’s theme from Enterprise, but no, they’re quite different (and Archer’s theme is a great deal better). Perhaps the TNG theme in universe is actually just the Starfleet March?
Incidentally, they established a few years ago that the Voyager theme also exists in universe. I’ve headcanoned that it’s a piece from an opera that someone wrote based on Voyager’s mission logs.
@48/jaime: The “Take Me Out” anthem was written by David Bell, while Archer’s theme was written by Dennis McCarthy. You can tell Bell wrote the anthem because it’s in 3/4 time, like almost everything he wrote for Trek (except for the Captain Proton source music in “Bride of Chaotica”).
Even if i consider the series of somewhat a parody, it was extremely unbelievable that the admiral would come without a basic preparation and study of both Ferengi culture and Rom in particular…this could have been a bit more nuanced. But I have to say that it was great to see Rom and Leeta again and they did their parts really well here. As i can see even some comments here assume that Rom would be dumb, which is definitely not the case. :)
And Rutherford and Tendi have definitely much more romantic interest mutually towards each other than Boimler and Mariner for instance.
I liked that one of the cocktails was named “Dagger of the mind.”
@51/JohnC: It annoys me when LD has characters mention Trek episode titles in-universe, but at least “Dagger of the Mind” can be taken as just a Shakespeare reference — although why a Ferengi bar would have a drink named after a line from Macbeth is a mystery.
@52/Christopher
One of the old Star Trek books mentioned that episode titles were actually Starfleet Command’s name for said mission log.
I always liked that explanation. Showed that those as Starfleet Command like to have a little fun.
@53/Mary: That sounds very unlikely to me. Formal military logs would not have “episode titles.”
But there is Roddenberry’s conceit from the prelude to his ST:TMP novelization that TOS was an occasionally inaccurate 23rd-century dramatization of the Enterprise‘s missions. I alluded to a variation of that idea in one of my novels.
I think “dagger of the mind” is adequately explained by the fact that it’s a really good name for a cocktail
@45/Christopher
But there is Roddenberry’s conceit from the prelude to his ST:TMP novelization that TOS was an occasionally inaccurate 23rd-century dramatization of the Enterprise‘s missions. I alluded to a variation of that idea in one of my novels.
I like to see the events as happening ias we see them. Now, that does require see waving aside inconsistencies, but that doesn’t really bother me.
Rom is the ultimate embodiment of one of the Rules of Acquisition: “Acting dumb is often smart.”
(Not sure about the number…. 15? 110?)
Although one thing that occurs to me, now that I think about it, is that, while Rom is an engineering genius, he’s been pretty consistently framed before now as a hopeless businessman (other than that one episode where he managed to defraud the Grand Nagus of several hundred bars of latinum while he was on his Wormhole Alien-induced ‘benevolence’ kick). And when did Leeta gain the ‘lobes for business’, as it were?
I feel fairly sure that the first couple of years with Rom as Grand Nagus were a steep learning curve. Rom and Leeta must have leaned on Zek (and Ishka) to help push through reforms, probably working their old connections from behind the scenes. Eventually, Rom and Leeta developed and honed their dumb cop/smart cop double act and they grew into their positions.
I suspect that anyone who had to put up with, be nice, soothe, and serve many of the patrons of Quark’s bar as a dabo girl, getting them to stay and spend money, and anyone who had to make her meager salary from Quark stretch as far as it needed to go, was primed to develop excellent lobes for business once she was given the opportunity.
I dearly, dearly hope that if any future STAR TREK show makes the Klingons a part of the Federation it will be explicit canon that the Ferengi made it happen: bonus points if this results in an episode where Starfleet and the wider Federation have to wheeler-dealer their way out of the hilarity likely to ensue when some excessively-ambitious Grand Nagus tries to enforce the centuries old deal.