Worst Voyager race: Farengi

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by JirinPanthosa, Jan 6, 2013.

  1. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    I've been running through Voyager episodes for the first time since it originally aired, and out of every episode in the series (Except for the three I skipped, Threshold and the two Fair Haven eps), two stand out as by far the worst.

    1. False Profit. It almost made me want to quit watching. And then I realized, when it originally aired, it made me quit Voyager for a couple weeks before coming back to it a little later in the season. If any episode makes you almost quit the entire series, twice, I think it's by far the worst episode.

    2. Inside Man. Holy crap, what a bad episode. Besides the fact that it brings the farengi back to the cartoonish level of ridiculous evil they were in season one of Next Generation, it makes no sense. Durr durr I'm Janeway, I'm going to take the ship into this phenomenon that to my knowledge is a death sentence, and take it on faith that these shield improvements and inoculations work without thoroughly testing it.

    After DS9 turned the farengi from something cartoonish and silly into something a little more gray and far more interesting, Voyager brings them back to the abject silliness and absurd capitalist caricature they were originally meant to be. What the heck were the writers thinking?
     
  2. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    They're so bad they can't even have their name spelled right? ;)
     
  3. SonicRanger

    SonicRanger Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Regarding False Profits, the director Cliff Bole gave some insights in interviews that are quoted over at Memory Alpha:

    There's one other interesting bit of information at Memory Alpha: the writer Joe Menosky hadn't even set foot in the writers' room when he wrote the script:

     
  4. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    How this episode should have went.

    Kim: "Scans show a ferengi shuttle pod ahead."

    Janeway" Really? Ferengi? Any Life Signs?"

    Kim "No."

    Roll Credits.

    ...

    Seriously.

    Slingshot back in time 20 years and go through the wormhole when it still behaved back to the Barzan System. I wouldn't feel so bad if this wasn't the exact same soloution to route the conclusion of Eye of the needle too, and then again in Futures End, or even in that Episode where Janeway sold Seven of Nine to George Costanza, actually there is not a single episode, starting with and including Caretaker that couldn't have been cured by going back in time a century or more.
     
  5. BruntFCA

    BruntFCA Commander Red Shirt

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    Both episodes suffered from a fatal case of stupid. VOY had an annoying habit of making the characters act stupid to fit the plot, not that it was the only one (Dax in Meridian).
     
  6. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I have forgotten Inside Man. I can't remember a thing about it :(

    False Profits I like just fine. I am always impressed by how profit is so deeply critical to Ferengi beliefs and identity that they are willing to give up everything they ever knew just to amass profit in a place they can't spend it. Just to sit on it. Never see Ferenginar again or their families but to be HAPPY, super super happy because they have profit. They don't even get to gloat about it to other people.

    Not too impressed with the dumbass star trek villagers but they are in every series, always the same.
     
  7. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    Now now lets not bring common sense into the debate.
     
  8. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Slingshotting around the sun and the failure of everyone to keep dong it has a lot to answer for.
     
  9. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The kazon chased them for two years.

    it would have been so easy to hide from hem 20 years earlier.

    Going around Borg Space?

    Going through Borg Space?

    Adding 40 years to the trip or out right Suicide.

    Going back in time 800 years?

    Piss easy.
     
  10. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Heck everyone should go back to some dark age where no sentient races had warp drive and no super races from other galaxies were larking about in this one. Go back to the time, zip across the neutral zone, never get a ticket.
     
  11. Lynx

    Lynx Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I must admit that I actually like the Ferengi and I do like "False Profits" too. Most of all because we could see what happened to those Ferengi from "The Price" and also because I think it's OK with a rather funny episode sometimes.

    Not to mention that I find the parody of capitalism and greed both funny and appropriate. It reminds me of greedy people I've actually met.

    And Quark is one of my all-time Trek favorites! :techman:
     
  12. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Maybe the technique is not public knowledge?
     
  13. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Voyager basically proved it's easier to accidentally travel in time than it is to travel from point a to point b.
     
  14. Sandoval

    Sandoval Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Clive Owen is hiding behind a false wall in a bank and Denzel Washington and the bad guy from Serenity are trying to find him.
     
  15. jpch

    jpch Commander Red Shirt

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    Thank you for the Information very nice:bolian:
     
  16. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    I don't think it's the premise that's the major issue here so much. It's more the two dimensional-ness of it.

    First, no way they should have done the "We can get home now! Oops, sorry, our morality screws us over again." That was just plain awful.

    I would have liked to see the episode play out more than that last Maybourne episode in Stargate. That the planet realized they were not Gods and were exploiting them, but also realized that their economy was much better off and they had advanced more in the last few years than the previous few centuries. So maybe they let the ferengi stay, but as equal competitors instead of superiors. And I would have the ferengi be able to spin their tongue as well as Quark could and advocate his position instead of just snarling off how awesome profit is.

    The way the villagers were written, I imagine one year after the ferengi left, the whole population went extinct due to a series of minor accidents. Somebody falls off a building, somebody sticks their arm in a wood chipper, somebody climbs into a lion cage. It really would have been more humane to leave the Ferengi as their gods. At least the Ferengi could teach them how to dress themselves, and teach them the stove is hot.
     
  17. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Then Denzel gets to confront Gen. Chang. (I love Inside Man :))

    The VOY one not bad either. That's the one with the cool, confident holo-Barclay?
     
  18. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Love to see a episode sometime where the ox cart technology villagers, show up our intellectually evolved heroes at the end of the episode.

    :)
     
  19. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Isn't that Errand Of Mercy? :)

    But yes, would have been fun to see more in Trek (and Stargate)
     
  20. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    I think this is the best line of ferengi dialog ever written in Trek:

    ZEK

    Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more difficult to find truly lucrative business opportunities here in the Alpha Quadrant.

    ZEK

    And why? Because no matter where we go, our reputation precedes us. A reputation that has been tainted by the lies of our competitors who maliciously spread the erroneous impression that we are not to be trusted.

    In Voyager all we get is. "We must have more PROFIT! So we can get LOBE ENHANCEMENTS!"