Necessary Evil and Rom

[JirinPanthosa]

Does anybody get the feeling they completely retooled Rom's character right before filming this episode?

It's like they decided over the course of a week to make him from a spiteful incompetent sidekick into a friendly passive technical genius. A good decision, and also probably one dictated by focus groups. But they're so different it's like they're too separate characters, almost as much so as Bashir's eugenic reveal.

[R. Star]

Well, the incompetent lackey only has so much storytelling potential, but the oppressed genius can star in a number of episodes. It was a change from the Rom we saw in season 1, but one that was for the best of the shows.

I particularly liked that DS9 made an active effort to improve upon their disliked characters. Bashir never topped my favorites list, but he wasn't at the bottom of it anymore by the end, like he was at season 1.

[Tosk]

They definitely discarded the "He couldn't fix a straw" season 1 version of Rom, and I'm glad for it. Also, NE is one of my favorite episodes, and I love Rom in it.

[grabthars hammer]

I agree it was a very good decision; at first Rom was nothing more than a dumb version of Quark; this allowed him to become his own character and a moral influence on Quark as well.

[Tosk]

And the good thing is, even though it's obvious they 'retooled' Rom, there's nothing that needs to be ignored for it to work. People change. Rom himself even tells Quark later, "I've always been smart, I just lacked self-confidence."

[Xhiandra]

To be honest, that's a change I never bought.
Bashir's reveal, yeah, ok. But smart Rom? Didn't compute at all.

That line doesn't even make sense, early seasons Rom didn't lack confidence at all, he clearly lacked intelligence.
Even post-retcon, he was still extremely thick half the time.

[Timo]

Doesn't mean he wouldn't have been smart, too. He just never was smart enough to properly put into words exactly how smart he was - or brave enough, but the latter thing changed while the former did not.

Timo Saloniemi

[JarodRussell]

They might have retooled Rom, but we, as the audience, just like all of the characters, suddenly realized that he isn't that stupid. Happens.

[Tosk]

Xhiandra wrote:

---

To be honest, that's a change I never bought.
Bashir's reveal, yeah, ok. But smart Rom? Didn't compute at all.

That line doesn't even make sense, early seasons Rom didn't lack confidence at all, he clearly lacked intelligence.
Even post-retcon, he was still extremely thick half the time.

Rom is only tech-smart though. He's still hilariously stupid when it comes to other things.

After a lifetime of his brother telling him he was stupid, it's no wonder he'd believe him. He didn't have the lobes for business, which Quark saw the be-all, end-all test of worth.

[JirinPanthosa]

I believe Rom's change more than I believe Bashir's. Rom was raised in an environment where anybody who was bad at making profit was treated as useless and stupid. He's smart by our standards but a moron by farengi standards. I believe a person told he's stupid his entire life would play up his stupidity to meet expectations, and I believe that he was more greedy before being surrounded by women with personal freedoms who didn't want to exploit him the way his first wife's father did.

[Merlanthe]

I recently did a rewatch of the first few DS9 series with my mom and i remember thinking at the time that Rom's sudden technical genius did make a weird kinda sense. After all the Ferengi value buisness smarts so Rom's intelligence regarding tech would go unoticed/underappreciated by his own people and since he spends the majority of his time working or hanging out with his own people all of whom view him as stupid because of his lack of buisness sense.

Its entirely plausible that the non-ferengi characters would who only usually encounter Rom when he is working as a waiter and are unlikely to ever discuss technological issues with him would not realise that Rom is in fact a technical genius. I myself have a degree and masters in literature but because of the limited number of jobs in my local area am currently stuck working as a cashier at a small store where most customers behave as though i am stupid simply because i am a cashier. Rom is a waiter, a job that doesnt look as though it requires much skill and doesnt give the employee much if any opportunity to display their intelligence in any area other than balancing stuff on a tray, and Rom is often clumsy or tongue tied so its not surprising that people would believe Rom to be stupid based upon his occupation and outward appearance and what Quark says about him.

Furthermore Rom's technical genius is portrayed as being more of an instinct or intuition about how to fix things or make them run more efficiently with often limited resources rather than through an academic/intellectual knowledge of engineering. Rom himself is not good at expressing himself though he gets slightly better when he gets some confidence but even then he mainly just shows up and does his work. Imho i think Rom has the kind of genius that shows itself in what the person does rather than what the person says and until the later seasons he had very little opportunity to show what he could do engineering wise to anybody other than his fellow ferengi who didnt care.