EFFORTPOST Star Trek DS9 Season 1 Reviews: The Nagus, Vortex and Dramatis Personae

The Nagus

The cold open drops more foreshadowing than sunshine on my butt: Sisko wants go to Bajor with Jake- he plans to visit The Fire Caverns (later revealed to be home to the Pah-Wraiths and they will be the site of Sisko's last confrontation with Dukat in the final episode)- Rom is acting like Rom and he quotes our first ever Rule of Acquisition (Number One, no less- "Once you've got their money, never give it back". As the episode progresses we get the sixth rule too- "Never allow family to stand in the way of opporunity")- we see Grand Nagus Zek, his weird staff and his huge manservant Maihardu. Loads of important shit gets shown for the first time this episode (EDIT NB: Because some r-slurs need it spelling out- the writers did not preplan anything in DS9 and merely returned to these ideas later on). This is also the first proper "Ferengi Episode"- a controversial concept as a lot of people don't like them. Although there were some rotten Ferengi episodes, there were plenty of good ones and I've always had a soft spot for them because they show a slice of Star Trek life from a different cultural perspective- a window into another way of thinking and existing within a setting we've only seen from one perspective in the past. Also, they're kind of like Fiddler on the Roof in space.

The Nagus has arrived on DS9, apparently on a cooming expedition. He intends to indulge in five of Quark's most popular holoporn programs. They would tone down the gooning implications in later seasons (and the holosuite would be used more for recreations of the Battle of Britain, somewhat-self-indulgent Rat Pack knock-offs and copyright infringing James Bond parodies- no seriously... Paramount got threatened with legal action by MGM after 'Our Man Bashir' in Season 5. How New Line's Austin Powers avoided this I don't know) but here in season 1, the message is clear as to what people are paying for in the holosuite:

_{They were together in real life btw: deal with it...}

_{At least he's not really a Jeet}

Zek invites himself to dinner at Quark's apartment. Side note- Ferengi use chopsticks and a lazy susan. There he explains his real reasons for the visit: he plans to use Quark's bar to host a biznez meeting to discuss Ferengi biznez, especially Gamma Quadrant biznez. He's chosen Quark's bar because apparently only Quark can arrange some uncomfortable-looking Ikea furniture in a room for short men with big ears to sit on. During the dinner Zek expresses disdain for BIPOC attending the hoo-man school so Rom tells BIPOC not to go there any more. BIPOC is less than happy about this and matters are not made better because Chief Obrien is currently teaching classes because the casting budget for this episode was already stretched by the Ferengi characters & would not cover Rosalind Chao's fee while Keiko is on holiday. This is the same Chief Obrien who literally had to fix every replicator on the station a few weeks back- now his wife's away he suddenly has all the time in the world to moonlight as a teachercel.

Getting back to the meeting: Nagus Zek explains that it's important that the Ferengi expand into the Gamma Quadrant so as to exploit a market where the unfounded reputation they have in the Merchant-phobic Alpha Quadrant can't ruin their chances.

Everyone agrees that this is an unreasonable goyim misrepresentation of a simple hard-working people.

But Zek feels he's too old to lead his people into this new frontier and he announces that he will now appoint a successor... Quark.

Nobody's impressed and spend the next few days low key threatening Quark- someone even tries to assassinate him. Compounding his woes, Zek suddenly dies leaving Quark without any support. Odo suggests doing an autopsy but everyone laughs as Zek's body is already gone- upon their deaths Ferengi are vacuum dessicated and the dishes of their remains auctioned off. One piece of Zek is worth 20 bars of gold-pressed latinum and is expected to double in value by the following year.

I'm not sure what Ferengi do with these powdered remains but those of great men like Zek sell for a high price and generally increase in value over time.

Quark tries to play it tough and act like he knows what he's doing which leads to this bizarre scene:

Turns out the bomb was Rom and Zek's useless son. They then try and blow Quark out of an airlock- something they're only prevented from doing by the reappearance of Zek who faked his death to test his useless son. A test his son failed uselessly. So Zek must remain Nagus and exploit the Gamma Quadrant personally, a task which will have huge implications in season 2. Far from being angry at his brother, Quark is just pleased he's not a complete failure as a Ferengi. For some reason Rom does not face charges for attempted murder.

There's a B plot about Jake teaching BIPOC to read which isn't worth getting into except for this bit where they goon over a hot Vulcan girl:

The first true Ferengi episode is... fine.

It lays the foundations for a lot of future Ferengi culture- their society is not one of true capitalism and free markets but rather a rigidly hierarchical one based on monopolies and price-fixing with the Nagus sitting at the center dictating everything and taking a cut of it all. Later we will learn of the Ferengi Commerce Authority which creates an impossible web of red tape in the Alliance which can only be navigated via extortionate bribes. This is why Ferengi have to gouge the life out of any non-Ferengi they do business with: their margins are so narrow due to all the bureaucracy and corruption.

Quick note on gold-pressed latinum: it's not a currency- it's a commodity and therefore it's price presumably fluctuates. Latinum is a metal, liquid at room temperature, which cannot be synthesised or replicated- hence it's intrinsic value. The latinum is traditionally pressed into sleeves of gold (which can be replicated and therefore has no real value besides looking nice) which are shaped as slips, strips and bars. Although the value of latinum fluctuates 100 slips make a strip and 20 strips make a bar. There are also bricks which are massively expensive but I don't know how many bars make a brick. I think that if you consider a slip to be worth about $1 you are in the right ball park. Other non-replicatable materials include dilithium crystals and possibly uridium (a fictional metal, originally invented for the 1980s vidya of the same name, from which starship sensor arrays are made) because the whole reason for the Cardassian occupation of Bajor was to strip-mine the planet for uridium. I suppose it's possible that different materials use different amounts of energy to replicate and it might just be more energy efficient for the Cardassians to mine the stuff. I suppose it's also possible that Cardassian replicators (which the show has established already as being a bit shit) can't do it but Federation ones can. Anyway...

Vortex

Jeff Lynne from ELO (or an alien who looks a lot like him) comes aboard DS9 and gets involved in some plot to rip off a Faberge egg thing Quark's trying to sell to a pair of twins (it is never explained why Jeff's involved in this). In the ensuing fight Jeff shoots and kills one of the twins and is arrested on suspicion of murder (although the twins fired first, it was Jeff who pulled a gun on them) while the surviving brother swears revenge.

I do wonder how they cast these twins and who got the decision on which one lives (and gets most of the speaking lines) and which one dies. Did they share both salaries equally? After all- they wouldn't have gotten the gig unless there was two of them.

Anyway, Jeff is one of those tricksy types who gaslamps Odo into believing he can lead the constable to his people- as proof he shows him a shapechanging butt-plug thing he keeps in a locket (why the heck was he allowed to keep this in his cell?).

Sisko and Dax go to Jeff's home planet and find them to be authoritarian buttholes but this week's interpretation of the Prime Directive demands that Jeff is returned to be executed without trial. Odo gets the gig to take him but re-routes to a nebula where Jeff says Odo might find his people. Of course he can't and it's just a stasis pod where Jeff has stashed his daughter (how did he get it here?). The shapechanging butt-plug is a key. He's a dissident, you see and was just trying to protect his daughter (from what? Are they a persecuted minority? We never find out).

The twin shows up in a sharp pointy-looking starship (must be a nightmare to dock) and there's a bit of action which, I'll grant you, does look nice...

...but this whole story makes no sense and Jeff's bullshit about the Changelings (this is the first time we ever hear Odo's people referred to as such) just feels like the episode itself bullpooping the audience into wasting our time watching this because we thought something important might occur. You might also notice a lot of "never explained" and "for some reason" bits in this review- that's never a good sign. There's also this bit where a rock falls on Odo's head and knocks him out- how the frick does that work? He doesn't have a brain.

It's all so disappointing.

Dramatis Personae

Another alien mind-virus has everybody on the station acting weird except for Odo. It was brought on board by a Klingon ship which asplodes after coming through the wormhole after cutting short their planetary survey mission into the Gamma Quadrant. I can't help but wonder how a Vor'cha class battlecruiser can blow into pieces right next to a busy star port and yet not cause any damage to any other vessels or the station itself.

One Klingon is successfully beamed over before his ship asplodes and mumbles one word before he dies; "victory". He carries his own personal logs which have suffered enough damage as to take a while to decipher (or maybe they got the logs from the cruiser wreckage, I can't remember). While this is happening Odo has a massive spazz in Quarks...

...but quickly recovers. This is never explained but is clearly his reaction to the virus. Quark also doesn't seem affected but his usefulness is restricted for reasons you'll see in a minute. Everybody else starts acting paranoid and weird and turns on each other forming into two groups- one loyal to Sisko and the other seeking to overthrow him, led by Kira. The Klingon logs eventually show that the exact same pattern of events occured aboard their cruiser but the significance of this is downplayed by Obrien (acting as Sisko's enforcer while Sisko hides insolently in his office and DNGAF) who, correctly, points out that Kingons tend to get promoted by assassinating their commanders. How the frick things like a Gamma Quadrant planetary survey mission get done under these conditions is unfathomable. The Klingons found some kind of ancient alien historical archive and it somehow causes people to reenact ancient historical events, presumably this was supposed to happen under more controlled circumstances than we see happening here.

There are two good things about this episode: the first is the subtle way the characters are afffected by the archive- they retain their sense of selves and their motivations seem consistent with their previously established characters. Kira's initial reasons for toppling Sisko is that she thinks he and the Federation are a threat to Bajor, Dax is an old man who is full of reminiscences and Obrien is a chippy and bad tempered Irish shit. The second reason is Kira being crazy hot. I never remember finding Nana Visitor this attractive before but, God-she is sexy AF and some of her antics in this episode are particularly coom-worthy.

God I wish I was Quark right here...

Avery Brooks is quite good doing Sisko's Nero act in this episode (Brooks was always better playing bad guys) and it causes him to make a strange alien clock instead of playing a fiddle. the clock was a really nice prop and we often see it in the background in his office during subsequent episodes:

Possibility of making a Starshit hole

I'm thinking we need to have a hole dedicated to SciFi TV and movies- particularly shows like old school Star Trek, Stargate etc. I'd be willing to put 50,000 DC towards it if other people could help raise the other half of the cost. I also have no ability with CSS or banner creation. IDK, what do you think?