#92, The Magnificent Ferengi, Deep Space Nine, Season 6, Episode 10

"Look, brother! Hu-mons!" — Rom

Quark lives his life by a different set of values than the rest of the DS9 regulars. His vision is clear, earn latinum by any means necessary (provided that it's not in conflict with self preservation, of course). He's constantly evaluating risk and reward for his schemes, and gets as much thrill out of the execution plans as the profit itself. He's smart. He's proud. He's a brilliant negotiator and knows the Rules of Acquisition by heart.

In the opening of this episode, he's just pulled off one of the aforementioned brilliant negotiations — piecing together bits of obscure information to learn that a merchant is hoarding precious goods to drive demand up, and uses that information to blackmail the merchant into giving him a large quantity of precious cargo. Space syrup or something. Quark's trying to celebrate by laying out his scheme in detail for anyone who will listen. But nobody's is listening. Bashir and Dax just got back from a secret behind-enemy-lines mission against the Dominion and Quark's tale of cunning and profit is overshadowed by more, shall we say, conventional acts of heroism.

In the eyes of the his people, what's he's just done is masterful. Epic. Heroic. Quark knows he's a bad ass, even if the rest of Deep Space Nine don't see it. His ego is bruised, unsure why his heroic act isn't viewed in the same light as the Starfleet covert mission. Remember when I said Quark was proud? Yeah, this starts to eat at him.

"Why won't any one take me seriously? Is is the suit made from pimp curtains? It's probably that." – Quark

Why can't the Ferengi get any respect from the Federation types? Why are they dismissed? Isn't the Ferengi Alliance an empire on par with the Klingons, the Romulans, or the Federation? So, when Quark learns that his mother has been kidnapped by the Dominion, he decides that instead of hiring alien mercenaries to pull off the rescue it should be a Ferengi-only tactical mission. Quark believes that Ferengi are every bit as formidable as the aforementioned Klingons, Romulans, and Federation. And why should be not believe that? The Ferengi are smart, cunning, ruthless, and driven with vast resources and powerful warships.

Hilarity ensues.

No, seriously, this is a fun episode. Quark puts together a rag-tag team of Ferengi warriors and his team is a mix of old and new Ferengi faces. Rom is the first to join. Nog is eager to use his Starfleet training to coordinate the military effort. There's a guy who likes explosions. Quark's cousin, I think. And their former foil, Brunt played by the great Jeffery Combs.

Together, they make an ineffectual commando team in training, so Quark relies on what the Ferengi do best. Negotiation. They decide to exchange a captured Dominion Vorta, for Quark's mother and things get complicated when they accidentally shoot their prisoner before they can make the exchange.

What's interesting here is the episode mirrors the fate for the Ferengi in the mythology of Trek.  They were supposed to be the nemesis of the Next Generation. The new Klingons. Perhaps it was their production design or their early portrayals, but as the Next Generation progressed, the Ferengi went from credible threat to cartoonish foils. And that's kind of what happens in this episode. Quark sets out to put together a team of Ferengi commandos, but it degenerates into playing for laughs as the traits of greed, self-interest and backstabbing set in.

There's a lot of things that may have been funnier on the page than in execution, but it's an amusing episode. Quark's role is as a foil and to provide an outsider's perspective on the Federation. This episode provides some much-needed comic relief in an otherwise dark time for Deep Space Nine crew. Quark, Nog and Rom are fine as flavor, but when the entire episode is Ferengi-focused like this one, it can be a bit much. It's entertaining, but not my favorite Quark-centered adventure. That's coming up later in the countdown in "Little Green Men."

Also, Iggy Pop is in this episode as a street-walking Vorta with a heart full of napalm.

The runaway son of a nuclear warp bomb.

And his performance is fantastic. So, I can't really complain about that.

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Next up, the Voyager crew are hunted for sport by alien-Nazis in the two-part "The Killing Game."

#93 Future's End, Voyager, Season 3, Episodes 8 & 9

This is where I take a beat to remind everyone reading that this is not my list of the Top 100 Trek Episodes of All Time. This exercise for me is a chance (an excuse, really) to examine a brand I love and revisit some great moments of science fiction television. So, not my list. I say this because I would have never...

Neh-vher...

...Put the two-part  'Future's End' on any list of anything other than Top 100 things I don't ever need to see again. The Voyager crew travels back in the past to the 1990s to stop a catastrophe in the 29th century and... Because... Ed Begley, Jr.? There's a time paradox and a ship from Voyager's future and the crew dresses all 90s and... Ugh...

Trek is known for its comedic episodes. And this one, well, falls flat. There's a lot of forced attempts at humor in this episode. Neelix watches tabloid tv! Voyager is an UFO on the news! Ed Begley, Jr. is a villain! Janeway wears a pantsuit with giant, giant shoulder pads! The crazy homeless guy who claims to be from the future is actually from the future! Tuvok wears a hat!

"This hat hides both my alien heritage and my dignity." — Tuvok

We even lose some of the time-travel-fish-out-of-water shenanigans because Tom Paris is supposedly an expert on 20th century. And, for all that seems to be be going on with the future time ship, stealing technology from the future, trying to stop the paradox, Tom's romance with an astrophysicist...

Hold up.

Is that...?

Holy crap, that's Sarah Silverman. Mind... blown...

Okay, I digress. For all that's going on, they're seemingly spread too little episode over too much time. It's so thin, that they throw in some survivalists/government conspiracists at the end of the second episode to hold Chakotay and B'Elanna hostage seemingly to just run out the clock and provide a modicum of action. Hacker Begley, Jr.'s main threat to Voyager is taking over their computer so there was a lot of evil typing while grinning maniacally.

Silverman's character, Rain Robinson, is an astrophysicist working for Ed Begley's Harry Starling and is not having any of Tuvok's and Tom's shenanigans. She sees right through their attempts to be 90s. She calls out their odd behavior and isn't fooled by Tuvok's hat covering his ears. She's surrounded by spacemen, aliens, holograms, starships and takes it all in stride. She's written smart and it's refreshing to have someone call bullshit on the things going on around her. If there's one thing that works in this episode, it's one of the icons of the alternative comedy movement playing it straight. A feat of cosmic irony, which I calculate as making zero-point-zero sense.

Silverman makes zero filthy jokes in these episodes. What's wrong with the universe?  

According to rumor, Silverman was considered to be made a series regular, joining the crew. And one can't help but wonder what direction the show might have taken if she had been part of the retooling of Voyager and not Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One. Fewer formfitting silver catsuits, probably, but we'll never know for sure.

Speaking of casting against type, Ed Begley, Jr. plays a billionaire mogul driven to steal technological advancements from the future at any cost so he can sell them for even more billions! He's selfish, destructive, and sociopathic, and carries about as much weight as a substitute chemistry teacher. If I've noticed anything in episodes that I've not really connected with is a villain who's non-threatening or miscast (I'm looking at you Kivas Fajo).

And in complete trekkie nitpickery, there's not one single mention of the Eugenics War that was supposed to be happening on earth at the time of this episode. Not even an obligatory 'historical records must have been off by a few decades' or 'the timeline's been altered.' Come on, Trek! 

Now, it's time to say something nice. These episodes provides the show with an excuse to let the Doctor out of sickbay with a piece of technobabble from the 29th century. Something that the show will play with throughout the remainder of the series. The Doctor, as always, is fun.

Trek in all of its iterations has its ups and downs. What surprises me is how well this episode is rated.   The reviews are generally positive, citing both Begley and the time travel bits as clever. I'm here to offer the counter argument, I guess. This one was just not for me.

Sorry, Sarah.

--

Next up, it's back to Deep Space Nine with the Magnificent Ferengi.

#94, Disaster, The Next Generation, Season 5, Episode 5

 'Disaster,' the second entry on Top 100 from the Next Generation, is fine example of a bottle episode. When a collision with an interstellar technobabble something or other (a quantum filament) causes an accident that incapacitates the Enterprise, the crew struggles to get back control before the ship explodes.

The Enterprise in 'sleep' mode. 

I should note that this episode was written by future Battlestar Galactica mastermind, Ronald D. Moore. The focus here is entirely character driven, and on putting these characters in unfamiliar territory. Situations counter to their nature. Captain Picard has to lead a group of children. Worf has to guide a woman through childbirth. And, the situation with the potential for the most disaster, Troi is put in command of the Enterprise.

Captain Picard has promised the winners of the Enterprise children's science fair a special tour of the ship. Picard, who in the pilot of the series stated that he's uncomfortable around children, is forced to get in touch with his paternal instincts and lead the children through the disaster. Throughout the episode, Picard has to adjust to leading children, something he admits to having little experience. By the end of the episode, he's bonded with these children. Effectively overcoming his admitted awkwardness with kids. Which means, by the end of the episode Picard is now without any weaknesses whatsoever. Because he is awesome.

When the accident happens, a redshirt bridge commander -- who we've never met before — bites it, and leaves Troi in command. Troi, it turns out, has the rank of Lieutenant Commander. This is not a thing that comes up often. Or, well, ever. Usually her role in the show is to state the obvious or move the plot forward. Here she's got to and she transitions from a position of uncertainty, blindly taking suggestions from O'Brien and Ensign Ro, to making command decisions that saves the lives of everyone on the crew.  But she does so on nothing but blind luck.

With no section of the ship able to communicate with any other part of the ship, their plan to save the Enterprise is dependent on someone alive in engineering able to reactivate the antimatter containment field saving the ship. Ro pushes for Troi to separate the saucer section and save everyone they can. And pushes hard. Troi refuses, wanting to give everyone the best possible chance to survive.

Troi is running entirely on faith, with no evidence that there's anyone else alive on the ship. Why she can't sense them is a convenient oversight in the story. But it's the convenience of her being right that kind of irks me here. There's an infallibility to the crew that cuts out the dramatic tension. And though there was never any real threat of the Enterprise blowing up, the only real consequence is the aforementioned redshirt. Everyone does the right thing in this episode. And every decision is validated with success. Fortunately, Riker and Data's head (see the episode, it'd take too long to explain) make their way to Engineering just in time, and everyone gets a mega-happy ending.

"Where is my happy ending, Counsellor?" — Data

Marina Sirtis does a good job of showing someone completely out of her element finding confidence in their decisions. When she finally takes control she does with as much gravitas as she's able.

And Worf delivers a baby in Ten Forward. Hilarity ensues.

My Favorite Moment in the episode... When Picard meets the winners of the children's science fair, he asks them about their experiments. The youngest of them had the strangest, and most awesome response. The boy said, "I planted radishes in special dirt and they came out all weeeeird." Complete with maniacal grinning and finger steepling. Aaaaannd, what? What the hell kind of mutant soil are they letting kids play with? What the hell kind of kid would want to do that? What the hell, Next Generation? Maybe growing up on a starship warps kids in ways we can't possibly imagine. During the episode, when Picard is trying to boost morale of the kids by assigning they ranks in their small crew, he appoints the kid the Executive Officer in Charge of Radishes.

It's a position that will not turn out well for any radish on board.

--

Next up on the list, Voyager's two-part 'Future's End.' Voyager travels back to the distant past in the 1990s and the villain is Ed Begley, Jr. If that doesn't sound like a recipe for success, then...

Okay, I have no idea how to finish that sentence. 

#95, The Most Toys, The Next Generation, Season 3, Episode 22

Here's the first entry for The Next Generation on the list, with 'The Most Toys.' I'm not unbiased here. The Next Generation is my Trek.

What's Klingon for 'Boo-yah!'? 

I think of Season Three of TNG as the season where the show found its legs. When it got it's space-crap together. When they ridded themselves of the zipper onesie, moved past left-over Phase II scripts, and started to get out of the shadow of The Original Series. There were hints of greatness throughout the first two seasons. Notably, 'Measure of a Man,' (later in the countdown), 'Matter of Honor' (which holds a special place in my heart because it may be the first episode of Trek I ever saw), 'Elementary My Dear Data,' 'Q Who?' and 'The Emissary.' But Season Three is, in my mind, when The Next Generation started to click.

Then, I re-watched 'The Most Toys.' On the whole, it's not a bad episode, but suffers from the production design. The sets, makeup, and costumes for the alien baddie Kivas Fajo and his crew have not aged very well. And in instances, look downright silly.

"Why, whatever are you saying?' — Kivas Fajo

However, if my gushing over seeing Brent Spiner as Dr. Soong in the three-part Khan-fest on Enterprise wasn't enough of an indicator, Data is one of my favorite characters in all of Trekdom. And there's a whole lotta Data in this episode. And the interchanges between Data and his captor are well-written.

An insanely wealthy, and amoral monster who is obsessed with unique artifacts throughout the galaxy. He's a collector who's private museum includes the Mona Lisa, a bird-thing that's thought to be extinct, a Joe Dimagio baseball card (complete with gum), and now, the universe's only known sentient android. He went through this ridiculously complicated scheme to kidnap Data, convince his crewmates that he perished in a shuttle accident, and put Data in his personal museum of one-of-a-kind object d'arts.

Meanwhile on the ol' 1701-D, as they with Data's passing, the rest of the crew start to realize that something was wrong with the accident and they hunt for the truth behind what happened to Data.

Data and Fajo go back and forth about the morality of keeping a sentient being as property. About passive resistance. About his personhood. About his rights as a living being, even if he is an artificial one. It would make a nice companion episode to 'Measure of a Man.' Spiner let's Data play in the quiet moments when he's alone with the other Exhibits. Playing with the alien bird-thing or trying to imitate Mona Lisa's smile.

Sentient Android, mint in box. 

Here's the thing I observed about Kivas Fajo. He's written as a stone-cold sociopath. His actions are taken without any consideration of anyone but self. He's insanely wealthy, and keeps his servants in line with the threat of torture and death. He kills on a whim and is single-minded in his mission to subjugate Data and bend the android to his will. Sit in the chair, android. Do as your told. Entertain me and my guests. This is your life until I tire of you and then put you in storage. I extrapolated that last part. Once he's stopped, in the Enterprise's brig for  he even promises to one day own Data again, as if the whole incident was a mere inconvenience to his obsession of possession. On the page, Fajo could be terrifying.

But he's not. The way he's played is effeminate, flighty, and flamboyant. He comes across as a spoiled brat rather than a threat. It's distracting from the weightier conversation of Data's newfound status as a slave in this man's private collection and the lengths to which Data must go to regain his freedom. And it's kind of disappointing, because there's a lot of good dialog here, undercut by a directorial choice. Data comes within milliseconds of vaporizing Fajo with an illegal disruptor as the only way out to not only free himself, but Fajo's other servants as well.

Throughout the episode, Data attempts passive resistance, trying to adhere to his Starfleet training and ideas. But when faced with the choice between slavery and freedom at the price of violence, he makes the latter choice. The only thing the stops him from that act a chance teleporter from the Enterprise that beams him to the safety of the ship. Data goes back to his duty, with only him knowing how close he came to killing someone.

It's a moment his crewmates never see — a super-intelligent machine who's made the decision that his survival is necessitated by the logical choice to override his programmed ethics and kill.

And it's a great moment, in an otherwise uneven episode.

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Next up, #94 in the Top 100 Episodes of Trek of All Time. An accident leaves Troi in charge and it's a 'Disaster.' Season 5, Episode 5 of the Next Generation.

Troi-centric episodes are usually a warning sign, but I remember this one being not bad. We'll see.