*Could* The Ferengi Have Been Good Villains

[Emperor Norton]

Ehhh...I don't recall being overwhelmingly impressed with how the Remans turned out...

That was in that period of 2000s-trek where it was "meh" aliens, where the makeup was thick but forgettable. I'm talking about legitimately like Nosferatu: more Human, less Reman. Nosferatu is a rat hidden behind a superficiality of some destitute regality, and that's what they were going with for the Ferengi initially.

 

[JesterFace]

Could the Ferengi have been good villains?

I don't think so, their somewhat comedy appearance and jumping around like little trolls in their first appearance was enough to label them not that dangerous.

And then there were the whips... oh the whips...

 

[Leviathan]

Could the Ferengi have been good villains?

I don't think so, their somewhat comedy appearance and jumping around like little trolls in their first appearance was enough to label them not that dangerous.

And then there were the whips... oh the whips...

Meh, just explain the campiness with a throwaway line and move them into a more credible evil case.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I thought the whips were the only thing that actually worked about the Ferengi in that episode.

 

[Prax]

They didn't really become capitalists until DS9. Before that, they were basically pirates with really fancy ships.

Quark? Now he's a true capitalist.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

They didn't really become capitalists until DS9. Before that, they were basically pirates with really fancy ships.

Quark? Now he's a true capitalist.

Quark is more of a true capitalist than the other Ferengi. Remember Ferenginar has laws that allow all your wealth to be seized by the government without recourse. He will happily work with women if he finds it profitable to, whereas his government arbitrarily locks out half the consumer base from consuming. Also most of the other Ferengi characters pass up large amounts of money in order for revenge. Gala buys him a ship to kill him, when he gains no profit by killing him and could have killed him a lot cheaper in other ways. Brunt spends massive amounts of money to get his commerce license revoked purely out of despising his politics. And his opposition to unions isn't a practical one, it's a moral one.

The entire Ferengi race has a habit of going out of their way to screw over their customers, totally ignorant of the fact that the effect on their reputation kills their profit potential in the long term.

Quark doesn't care about oppressing women, killing anyone, or anything other than making the most money while staying alive. He'll even deal with unions if he's placed in a situation where it's his most profitable choice. The only true capitalist in the show.

 

[Prax]

Lol. That's why Quark set up shop on a grim Cardassian space station...to escape big governmenl(either that or it was the cheap labor).

 

[tomalak301]

I thought the whips were the only thing that actually worked about the Ferengi in that episode.

I too liked the whips and the fact that Enterprise brought them back made me smile.

 

[Knightstorm]

The Ferengi didn't really come across as particularly threatening. Not quite Tribble levels of non-threatening but.....

 

[Paradise City]

Gala was a very good villain in his first appearance. Lurin (the Ferengi boss in Rascals) was another pretty well executed Ferengi villain. So, yeah, you've got the raw material there.

A guy like Brunt would never challenge anyone in Starfleet however. He was a great character, just not a villain of the first rank.

 

[Mojochi]

I always found Bok to be a very good villain. Greedy may not come off as exceptionally villainous, but self-serving can, especially in his case. Someone who wants what they want & is willing to do anything to get it, is easily a good archetype for a villain. Admittedly though, it works better on an individual basis. Being a big bad species is probably not the direction to go with it

 

[Prax]

Is he the one that had it in for Picard all those or the one who became infatuated with Lwaxana?

I thought Picard's nemesis was Daimon Goq.

 

[DonIago]

Without checking...
I'm almost entirely certain that Bok is the one who had it in for Picard.
And the one who liked Lwaxana was Tog.

But really, five seconds on MA would clear this up.

 

[Prax]

Google takes the spice out of life.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The Ferengi didn't really come across as particularly threatening. Not quite Tribble levels of non-threatening but.....

They kept trying to make Ferengi threatening through violence threats, which was a mistake because it had been established violence is not their forte. They would have been much more threatening if they used economic violence.

I'm imagining an alternate universe where TNG was written by people who understood economics. The Ferengi aren't mincing through space showing themselves at inconvenient moments where the Enterprise happens to be disabled. Instead they are the lead planet of a competing libertarian power. They are tempting Federation worlds away with promises of economic advantage for the planet's leaders. They're weapons dealers for the Federation's enemies, but also membership in their alliance offers protection from the wars that the Federation are dragged into.

That way they could set up a situation where the leaders of a planet are personally incentivized to sell out their people's interests.

 

[DonIago]

I think that would have involved more serialization than TNG was generally willing to involve itself with.

 

[Qonundrum]

Ahh Gene.

That's what she said!

Uh...

 

[Qonundrum]

I remember "The Battle", which was probably the best Ferengi-TNG episode of the bunch. "Last Outpost" did feel like a TOS script... DS9 definitely did something more with them and Quark and Nog are fantastic characters. DS9 could never retcon the Ferengi, but the spinoff did make them a more in-depth species. Though "Profit and Lace" was a mistake, for which even Henry Gibson couldn't salvage.

 

[Gul Sengosts]

Maybe could have if they had lived up to their premise. They're a race of traders and deceivers. That's all they do with their big brains, so they should be good at it. That they're so laughably easy to manipulate and outwit makes them absurdly implausible.

 

[Vger23]

I liked the fact that you had a group of alien villains (hypothetically) that were not "warriors" or "war-like" or whatever. I thought the fact that they were motivated by self-gain and were largely independent Dai-Mon to Dai-Mon in terms of executing their business (unlike the Feds, Klingons, Romulans who are all tied to a military structure) was unique and had some interesting potential. Like every time you encountered a Ferengi ship, you would get a different flavor.

But, since they failed miserably to execute on any of that...it was never meant to be, and Ferengi became a comic relief species.

 

[DonIago]

I think part of the problem here is that you have a species driven by profit interacting with a Federation that typically doesn't use money and that, at least at this point in the Trek franchise, was portrayed as generally not having any moral difficulties. Can you imagine anyone we saw on the E-D ever accepting a bribe?