5-20. Ferengi Love Songs.

Quark's mother, in love with the Grand Nagus.

THE PLOT

With his bar closed due to a vole infestation, Quark falls into a deep depression. At Rom's urging, he returns home to Ferenginar, much to the dismay of his mother, Ishka (Cecily Adams, taking over for Andrea Martin). He has barely arrived before he discovers someone lurking in his closet: Grand Naguz Zek (Wallace Shawn), who is in a secret relationship with Ishka.

Quark senses an opportunity to use the relationship to have his FCA license restored. When the Nagus refuses, however, Quark falls under the venomous sway of Liquidator Brunt (Jeffrey Combs). Brunt promises to issue a new business license if Quark sabotages the relationship between Zek and Ishka. It's a despicable act, one Quark is all too happy to commit - until he realizes that Zek is slipping into senility, and that it is actually his mother's advice that is enabling the Nagus to hold the Ferengi government together.

Meanwhile, Rom and Leeta announce their marriage. Rom agrees to a traditional Bajoran ceremony. But when some ill-advised words from Chief O'Brien lead him to think that Leeta should agree to some Ferengi marital traditions as well, he picks the wrong one: a prenuptial agreement that would deny her the right to hold any property whatever. When Rom insists, Leeta announces that the wedding is off!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Sisko: Just to add insult to the injury that is this terrible episode, we get a quick aside in which Sisko is mediating between Worf and Odo. The issue at hand involves Klingon General Martok's difficulties adjusting to life on Deep Space 9. It's a fun little scene, well-performed by all three - and enormously frustrating, because that would have been a much better plot than either of the ones actually follows.

Quark: We discover here that he's actually miserable in the wake of the FCA blacklisting and hates his life... Which would ring far truer if he hadn't seemed emotionally fine in every other episode this season. Quark is horrified to admit that he has any sort of conscience, despite many previous episode showing him doing decent things in full awareness of what he's doing. But then, this isn't the real Quark, this isn't the Quark who stood up to Sisko for his people being better than humans or the Quark who wrestled with a hard-fought internal battle between profit and saving innocent lives just two episodes ago. No, this is Quark as caricature, reduced to a joke character to further some bad comedy. Armin Shimerman does his best, as always, but there's just no saving the material.

Grand Nagus: While I was never a big fan of Zek in previous episodes, there at least was a bit of an edge to him. He was genuinely shrewd and manipulative, which kept him from being an entirely "safe" comedy character. This episode reduces him to exactly that. Giving Zek Ferengi Alzheimer's isn't entirely without merit as a plot turn - but not when that concept is used solely as an excuse for "senile old man" humor, as is the case here. Making matters worse is the portrayal of the love affair between Zek and Ishka, with the two cooing at each other in a manner that's not simply undignified, but leaves both characters downright infantilized. I never looked forward to a Zek appearance before; but now, I suspect I'll be outright dreading future guest spots.


THOUGHTS

After Business As Usual followed in the footsteps of some solid Season Four offerings, showing how enjoyable a Quark-centric episode with a bit of edge and bite can be, Ferengi Love Songs helpfully reminds us just how tedious and soul-sucking a toothless Ferengi "comedy" can be. We revisit Quark's mother, last seen played by Andrea Martin in Season Three's dreary Family Business. The change of actress has not made the character any more endearing, though in fairness to actress Cecily Adams, the problem isn't her - I just find the character to be entirely grating.

The episode really is just two jokes, alternating back and forth: two old Ferengi in love (because old people in love = comedy, particularly when they act like children), and the Nagus slipping into senility (because real life senility is such comedy gold). The "B" plot is actually even worse, with Rom attempting to push Leeta into being a proper Ferengi wife... which predictable results, only to reach a predictable conclusion.

The ever-reliable Jeffrey Combs manages to inject a few chuckles into his too-brief appearances as Brunt. Even Brunt manages to be entirely neutered by this episode, though, reduced to hiding in Quark's closet while practicing his evil laugh. The end of the episode has Quark treating his threats as a joke.  What a way to treat the first and only genuinely menacing Ferengi in all of Star Trek: de-clawing him for the sake of a few cheap (and unfunny) gags.

All told, I would rank Ferengi Love Songs as the worst episode of the season. Yes, in my opinion, even worse than Let He Who Is Without Sin... I was reduced to watching this in installments, simply because I could only take ten minutes or so of it at a time, and I will be very happy to never go anywhere near this episode, ever again.


Overall Rating: 1/10.

Previous Episode: Ties of Blood and Water
Next Episode: Soldiers of the Empire

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4-25. Body Parts.

Quark has a vision of the Afterlife.

THE PLOT

A trip to the Gamma Quadrant leaves Keiko injured. Dr. Bashir is able to easily stabilize her, but her fetus' lifesigns begin dropping. Bashir is left with only one option to save both mother and child, and he takes it - Transferring the baby from Keiko into Major Kira!

Meanwhile, Quark is diagnosed with Dorek Syndrome, a rare but incurable Ferengi disease. His doctor gives him less than a week to live. Faced with the prospect of paying off his considerable debt, Quark opts to sell his desicated remains on the Ferengi futures exchange. The full set is purchased, allowing him to go to his grave debt-free. 

Predictably enough, it turns out Quark isn't dying after all. The entire set of events was set in motion by Quark's old adversary, Liquidator Brunt (Jeffrey Combs) of the FCA.  When Quark listed his remains on the market, Brunt was the buyer.  Now he has come to collect on his contract: "Fifty discs of vacuum-desiccated Quark available within six days." If he doesn't collect, the contract will be declared broken - leaving Brunt free to strip Quark's family of all property and status.  To save his reputation, Quark has only one choice: Kill himself!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Sisko: Another episode in which he appears only briefly. Still, his brief appearance does show his shrewdness in dealing with people, as he finds a way to help Quark in terms that translate into Quark assisting him.

Quark: His imminent death snaps into focus just how much his fellow Ferengi see him as a failure. He remains in debt, his fairly petty successes and failures never really balancing the scales. His brother formed a union, his nephew has joined Starfleet, and his own business acumen is eclipsed by that of his mother - a female, who practices business despite it being forbidden by their society. Even after he learns that he is actually healthy, he remains vulnerable to Brunt's accusations that he is too much of a "philanthropist," not true enough to Ferengi ideals. 

Liquidator Brunt: Jeffrey Combs remains a malicious delight as Brunt. What makes him work so well is that Combs isn't playing him as a comedy character. Brunt is a proper villain, a genuine threat to those within the influence of Ferengi society. He is as smart as he is ruthless, using the rules of his society to crush any opposition. His dislike of Quark isn't motivated by personal vengeance - As he observes, Quark's encounters with him have been annoyances to him more than injuries. No, he is a fundamentalist with regard to Ferengi culture, and he sees Quark's flashes of decency as signs of a cancer within their society. The trap he sets for Quark is masterful, allowing Brunt victory whichever path Quark chooses: Either Quark dies, removing the cancer; or he breaks the contract, allowing Brunt to make a public example of him.

Garak: With Quark determined to honor the Rules of Acquisition, even at the cost of his own life, he has one obvious place to turn for a quick assassination: our friendly Cardassian tailor. Though his role in this episode is fairly small, Andrew Robinson deftly steals every scene in which he appears. Particularly fun is the scene in which Garak uses the holosuite to demonstrate to Quark various methods of dispatch. He becomes exasperated at Quark's squeamishness: "You don't want to be vaporized because you need a body. The disruptor ruined your clothing, the knife was too savage, the nerve gas smelled bad, hanging took too long... For a man who wants to kill himself, you are strangely determined to live!"


THOUGHTS

One of the remarkable things about Season Four is that even its Ferengi episodes have been pretty good. Little Green Men was one of the most successful pure comedy Treks in the franchise's history, as well-crafted as TOS' The Trouble with Tribbles. Bar Association was not on the same level, but managed to take a potential "bad comedy" storyline and wring some decent drama out of it. Finally, this episode takes another potential "bad comedy" situation and uses it to move the character of Quark along from where he has been from the show's inception to a new point from which he can take any number of possible directions.

With the other Trek series, that would be a meaningless statement. After all, Worf can sustain a major spinal injury and have that all forgotten about come the following episode. But DS9 has a pretty good track record of actually following up on events. This episode itself is a direct followup to Bar Association and Family Business.This gives me optimism that Quark's epiphany about the Rules of Acquisition and his new relationship with Ferengi society will have consequences in future seasons.

The episode itself is suprisingly good, a decidedly unpromising teaser followed by a story that gets more and more complicated as it goes. Quark is boxed in by Brunt, but also by his own values. He can survive fairly easily, but to do so he has to accept a situation that goes against everything he has believed in his entire life. His struggle to come to terms with such a choice provides a wonderful opportunity for Armin Shimerman to show his dramatic range along with his comic timing. Avery Brooks directs, and he's once again on form behind the camera, leaving memories of Season Three's Fascination mercifully far behind.

The Kira/O'Brien "B" plot is a fairly obvious case of "writing in" Nana Visitor's pregnancy. Still, it works well enough thanks to the sincerity of the three actors. Visitor, Colm Meaney, and Rosalind Chao all project a basic decency that makes them very easy to watch, even if the situation feels desperately contrived. Even so, the Quark plot was far more interesting to me than the O'Brien plot, and it's a good thing that Kira and the O'Briens take up relatively little of the episode's screentime.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: The Quickening
Next Episode: Broken Link


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4-16. Bar Association.

Liquidator Brunt (Jeffrey Combs) of
the Ferengi Commerce Authority.

THE PLOT

It's the Bajoran Time of Cleansing, a month-long period in which the Bajorans abstain from worldly pleasures... which puts a severe dent in the business at Quark's bar. Seeing his profit margin slipping, Quark decides to make up the difference in time-honored Ferengi fashion: By exploiting his employees. He gathers his workers and announces that he is going to cut their pay by a third, snapping at Rom when he dares to protest.

An offhand comment by Dr. Bashir leads Rom to consider a drastic means of retaliation. He holds an employee meeting and calls on them to create a union and go on strike. But Ferengi law does not smile on labor unions, and it isn't long before the dreaded Ferengi Commerce Authority turns its gaze toward this dispute. Quark's old adversary, Liquidator Brunt (Jeffrey Combs), arrives with a promise to end the strike - "by any means necessary!"


CHARACTERS

Capt. Sisko: When the strike begins to cause disruption among his officers, he sits down with Quark to push the Ferengi to settle the situation. Quark balks, so Sisko shifts gears and intimidates him instead. He threatens to hold Quark accountable for five years' worth of back rent, power, and maintenance unless the Ferengi sits down with his brother to hammer out an agreement.

Quark: The first half of the episode shows him at his most grasping, and his treatment of Rom is outright cruel. Quark never considers trying to deal with Rom's strike with violence, however. Once Brunt and the FCA become involved, Quark instantly worries about Rom. He begs Rom to give in before he gets hurt, and is clearly uncomfortable when Brunt begins musing about "sending a message." In the end, Quark is able to solve the problem he helped create by using his Ferengi ingenuity.

Worf: Continues to find life on Deep Space 9 "unsettling." When he catches a thief stealing from his quarters, he confronts Odo about the lax security on the station. Things like this, he says, never happened on the Enterprise - which hilariously prompts Odo to read from a datapad a few of the Enterprise's highlights during the time Worf was in charge of security. Worf resolves his issues, at least for now, by moving his quarters to the Defiant. Meanwhile, his flirtation with Dax continues to grow, as the writers wisely build on the chemistry Michael Dorn and Terry Farrell have demonstrated in previous episodes. 

O'Brien: Gets a terrific little scene in which he responds to Rom's plan to form a union with enthusiasm. He recalls an ancestor who led a coal miner's strike in Pennsylvania. All the workers' demands were met - but O'Brien's ancestor didn't live to see it happen. The scene is still funny, particularly Rom's reaction to hearing about the union leader's fate, but it also has a bit of added texture that the rest of the episode lacks.

Rom: Season Four has been very good to Rom. He already worked as a sparring partner for Quark, but he has steadily emerged as a strong character in his own right. The show has gradually demonstrated since Season Two how strong Rom's technical skills are, and his Season Three appearances started to show that he was a lot smarter than his brother gives him credit for. In this episode, he finally stands up to Quark and shows genuine courage and leadership skills.

Leeta: Moves from a background character to a significant supporting role, acting as Rom's second once he forms the union. She admits to being surprised by Rom's courage, but she is entirely supportive of him throughout the show. Chase Masterson is appealing, and plays so well opposite Max Grodenchik that I wouldn't mind seeing this relationship developed further.


THOUGHTS

Last week, I reviewed False Profits, a Voyager episode centered around the Ferengi. This week, I find myself reviewing a Ferengi episode of DS9 - and the difference is stark, and really points to the difference between the two shows. False Profits saw two Ferengi guest characters behaving like pretty typical, one-dimensional Ferengi. Some of the gags were funny, some weren't, but with everything played for laughs there was no real added dimension to carry the show through the jokes that misfired.

Bar Association seems on the surface to be a typical Ferengi comedy. Quark is at his most greedy and selfish, and even Rom initially struggles to get the word "union" past his throat even as he forms one. But there's added depth here, and that goes beyond the regulars. Quark and Rom are established characters who have depth, but even the Ferengi guest characters show more dimensions than Voyager's guest Ferengi in the other show. One of the Ferengi employees reacts to the FCA's arrival by falling to his knees and begging for mercy - but the other Ferengi do not. Meanwhile, Brunt in this episode may be the first Ferengi to actually succeed in being sinister, as he plots violence in a matter-of-fact manner, all the while keeping a crafty grin on his face. Instead of one, monolithic personality for all Ferengi, each speaking Ferengi has his own persona.

The "B" plot with Worf also works well. Writers Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe build on issues Worf has had in previous episodes, principally his problems with being constantly surrounded by disorder. When Dax tells him that he will have to adjust eventually, Worf replies with strength: "Maybe it is all of you who will have to adjust to me." Even so, Worf gets a deserved smackdown from Odo when he tries to claim that Deep Space 9's security is more lax than Enterprise's. Like all the characters, the Klingon has his strengths and also his weaknesses.

This wasn't an episode I was looking forward to - but all in all, it was surprisingly entertaining. As with almost any Ferengi comedy, not all of the gags work. But with the character depth and the building character relationships, there is plenty of genuine interest to keep the episode going even when a joke falls flat - and the raising of the stakes, with Brunt and his Naussicans presenting a genuine threat in the latter half, keeps momentum building instead of letting it lie flat as so many "comedy episodes" do. 


Overall Rating: 7/10

Previous Episode: Sons of Mogh
Next Episode: Accession


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3-23. Family Business.

Quark and his dysfunctional family.

THE PLOT

Liquidator Brunt (Jeffrey Combs) of the Ferengi Commerce Authority appears in Quark's bar and immediately posts a Writ of Accountability by the door. When a panicked Quark asks what the charges are, Brunt informs him that his mother, Ishka (Andrea Martin), has violated Ferengi law by earning a profit, something which is forbidden to women. Quark now has three days to get her to confess her crimes, or else she will be sentenced to indentured servitude and he will be responsible for making restitution.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg. As Quark looks into his mother's finances, he discovers the shocking truth: Ishka has assembled a financial empire. And if the FCA uncovers what Quark has, then he'll be broke forever!


CHARACTERS

Commander Sisko: A "B" plot sees Sisko finally meeting Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson), the freigher pilot Jake mentioned in Explorers. The first half of the episode, we see some labored comedy scenes in which Sisko learns that Jake has told "everybody" on the station about Kasidy. But once the two characters finally do meet, they share a couple nice scenes that help keep this episode from being a total write-off.

Quark: Armin Shimerman gives a good performance, but this particular script focuses on all of Quark's worst characteristics. He is greedy and self-centered, concerned only about his mother insofar as her activities will affect him. He's rude to both mother and brother, while making a fawning display of himself around Liquidator Brunt. Where is the dignified Ferengi who stood up for his people as "better" than humans and who showed both cunning and courage before the Klingon High Council?  This version of Quark is a two-dimensional construct, a Frank Burns figure whose main purpose is to make clear that anything he stands for must be, by definition, Wrong.

Rom: Though Quark's characterization is poor, Max Grodenchik's Rom gets a rather good episode. Grodenchik is the saving grace of the "A" plot. He tries to act as the peacemaker between his mother and his brother, working to calm Quark while standing up for Quark's good qualities (unseen here). As the family conflict spins out of control, Rom finds his backbone again, the same way he did in defense of his son's ambitions to join Starfleet, and stands up to both of his family members.

Cassidy Yates: Penny Johnson's first appearance as freighter captain Kasidy Yates. Johnson, who went on to notable television success in 24, is terrific, conveying confidence and competence without ever showing that she's playing a part. She's completely naturalistic, and if anything slightly overshadows Avery Brooks in their scenes together. What we see here is pretty surface-level stuff, but I do look forward to getting to know this character better as the series progresses.


THOUGHTS

Ugh. A combination of labored sitcom material and heavy-handed drama on issues that may have been very relevant in the 1960's and '70's. After a run of pretty high quality episodes, including the previous Ferengi-centered one, Family Business lands like a lead weight.

I will give some marginal credit where it's due. Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe's script makes a legitimate effort to give us a Ferengi episode that isn't played principally for laughs. It starts out with weak comedy, but by the midpoint it has firmly transitioned to a serious episode that happens to be about Ferengi.

Unfortunately, weak drama isn't particularly preferable to weak comedy. Armin Shimerman, Max Grodenchik, and Andrea Martin are all very good, and they do their best to breathe life into this story. But a few clever side bits notwithstanding, the script alternates between cliched family dynamics and a message of Equality Between the Sexes that seems out of date for the mid-1990's. It's predictable, slow-paced, and more than a little dull - and it ends too easily, with a pat ending.


Overall Rating: 3/10

Previous Episode: Explorers

Next Episode: Shakaar

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