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Apparently the Federation travel guide to Ferenginar is out of date, so the gang gets to check out the sights.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.
