S: 3 E: 5 A fun one-off episode featuring a guest appearance from those wacky Ferengi. We get to see Ethan Phillips as a Ferengi and that's fun. The episode runs on a bit long like an SNL sketch that overstays its welcome by just a little bit. Maybe a subplot or two to pad things out might have helped. The Capt and the command staff are faced with the decision: waste valuable time playing galaxy policeman w the Ferengi or go home. 3 guesesas to which they pick. The arrogance and myopia of Starfleet are truly awesome to behold at times. Anyway, if they find a way home, then the series ends. Thus, Janeway and Co. are obliged to outsmart themselves whenever they might actually be able to return Voyager to its rightful owners, Starfleet. 7/10 Stars
Yes Starfleet's fatheadedness is one of my favorite bashing points I love this ep, it actually shocked me the depth of the belief the Ferengi have in profit that they would rather have enormous riches (that can be spent on nothing) all by themselves on a rock completely cut off from home than return to Ferenginar. It's pretty interesting, and while Starfleet only sees greed there is something a lot bigger at work there.
I figured the Ferengi liked being the only Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant because of the lack of competition and oversight. There's also the power aspect. Would you rather be a big man on a little island or a little man on a big island? I've heard the theory that Ferengis are really meant to be ST's versions of Americans with their naked greed masking as capitalism. That inside nearly ever moral upstanding American is a greedy little troll.
I'm still not sure if the Ferengi would have worked as the new big enemy to replace the Klingons had they tried to run with it based on their capitalism vs the Federation utopia.
The ST powers that be abandoned the idea of the Ferengi as the new Klingons almost immediately. They were just too silly. The Borg represented a much more formidable foe.
I don't think the producers really had the Ferengi completely thought out at the time we first saw them. Making them more the British East India company who were first moving into the Federation territory would have been interesting. To be a credible threat, the Ferengi would of had to occasionally of been successful against the Federation.
The sense I get from their earliest appearances, particularly in talk like how the Federation criminally deprived species of development opportunities and forced women to go about clothed and the like, is that the producers may have been thinking of the Ferengi as a kind of satire or parody of the Federation itself. Take cherished Federation ideas like the value of letting people be, or equality of status, or the like, and invert it, and you ought to get good potential for drama and social commentary. It misfired, because Next Generation Season One was barely up to the task of convincing people this was a starship they were on, but the idea was a sound one, I think.
I never thought the Ferengis were that bad in Season One TNG, just nowhere near Big Baddie status. The constant gyrating moves I must admit are rather annoying, not sure why they wanted them to move around like wild animals. "False Profits" however is an above-average Voyager episode, makes me think of TNG which can never be a bad thing when I'm cruising the Delta Quadrant (at least at this point in the series, later TNG connections were very hit-and-miss IMO). I think "False Profits" was a cool concept and a great piece of continuity, the only thing that really drives it down is the overbearing blandness that Star Trek: Voyager can often have, especially in the more gimmicky episodes like this one. Also, the amount of times Voyager could have gotten home by now is rather ridiculous, starting with Season 1 Episode 7 "Eye of the Needle" the Voyager writers dangle the resolution of the series' major concept probably not just for dramatic tension but because even then they were reeling for ideas.
The Ferengi were way better in the DS9/VOY era though. They were fairly one dimensional in Season 1 TNG.
Oh I completely agree. I would argue though that they remained one-dimensional (with the exception of Quark and to a lesser extent Rom & Nog) all the way until the end. DS9 just did a really good job at exploring that one dimension but never really bothered to give the Ferengi any more depth besides being opportunistic hyper-capitalists. Do the Ferengi appear in any Voyager episodes besides this one?
Yes, we see them much later, in the alpha quadrant this time. spoiler: "They are trying to steal seven's nanoprobes, long story"
That was the director's decision in "The Last Outpost". The Ferengi looked pretty vicious in concept drawings, and the viewscreen conversations seemed to keep the idea of them as a potential threat. But once on the planet, any credibility went right out the window. Armin Shimerman was one of them, and he blamed the manic behavior on the director.