Ferengi: Remarkable Writing Experiment.

I had a lot of trouble finding the video clips that I wanted to share.  Most people are fascinated with the more immature facets of the Ferengi race, but when I look back on them on the whole over the years, I see a remarkable writing experiment.

Yesterday I was discussing their introduction and labeling it a "bomb" as most people do.  Had they continued writing these little trolls the way they'd started, they were surely destined for file 13.  I would honestly love to know what the person was thinking of that dreamed up the design of this race.  The original Klingons weren't anything special, but that was because a low budget doesn't make for very good makeup effects.  So they were dark skinned with some kind of fu manchu thing going on and very bushy eyebrows.

But what they lacked in appearance was made up for in the way they acted out their hostile, warrior type personalities.  It helped that they were as tall as the other actors or taller when it could be managed.  The fact that all three Ferengi in the first episode featuring them were all terribly short was an indicator that this was no accident.  Short doesn't necessarily equal silly and comical, but I think where it took a wrong (yet ultimately right) turn was those ears.

It ends up being not a very scary face at all.  The face hair of the original Klingons gave them a devilish look.  The ears... well, I'm sure I've said it too many times already, but the ears were just troll-like.  Garden-gnomish.  Like children outfitted for Halloween.  And the way they fought wasn't frightening either.  The whips made it cowardly and just running and jumping on people made them seem more like crazy badgers than fearsome humanoids. I'm glad they saw early on that there was no way to take this look seriously as a nemesis.

So they try a little one-on-one action. Banking on Picard as a strong enough character to sell a Ferengi as a believable personal rival.

They were somewhat right.  The first time was sketchy like most other early episodes, but the second time it was fixed and had the effect they were going for I think.  Picard is indeed a strong character and can make a concept like this work.  But not consistently.  So they decided to just give into the comical elements of the characters.

They made them a little on the stupid side... or at least easily fooled.

And while I would normally complain about the juvenile writing when sexualizing their ears, I have to say it made perfect sense.  Perfect comical sense this time.  And it also helped with manipulating a race that was starting to become a more an more manipulative race in and of itself.

But where the Ferengi development really took a wonderful turn was making one of the main characters of DS9 a Ferengi.

 Him and his family.  A brother and his nephew.  What better way to really get into the details of a race of beings.  They continued in their comic relief role, but once they weren't actively in spaceships anymore, they became more intelligent in matters of their own commerce and lifestyles.  They kept the idea of making their females go without clothes (and adding to it that the females pre-chew their food!) to show you that the females are secondary and demeaned in their society.

But, and this is why I loved the two middle series the most, they didn't look at any issue one-sidedly.  Even when Ishka is fighting for her rights, we still see a touching moment between Rom and his mother.  It's one of the moments I tried to find on video, however nobody is interested in this sort of thing but me.  Rom had a sweet and innocent personality compared with Quark and seeing his mother with clothes wasn't something that he just saw as shameful, but heart breaking.  As though we were to see our own mothers dressed like strippers or prostitutes.  And after she annoys Quark into leaving, she undresses for Rom and holds him close to make him feel comfortable since he was accepting of her and not trying to control her like the other males.  And later on we even see the double standard set for people in government as opposed to average citizens.  The Grand Nagus has no problem with her clothes since he's the beneficiary of her business prowess, affections, etc.

The Grand Nagus!  Wallace Shawn!... Could there be a more perfect casting job ever for the role of Zek?

 The Ferengi start as an embarrassment and end up making their own mark on the Star Trek universe with a unique culture that has good parts as well as bad and characters that you can genuinely care about.

I'll close with the rules of acquisition.  I'm sure someone out there has all of them listed, but these are the only ones listed in DS9.  Some of them are more like proverbs than rules for acquiring gain, but they are a great running joke set up by the writers and a big part of the improved Ferengi culture brought to us in DS9.