Ok, my wife and I actually watched this episode just last night in our cycle of DS9 episodes we've been watching, and in regards to some here commenting about how sexist it was because of Quark being emotional at the end and them not using a real female are waaaay off base.
First, they talked about getting another female to replace Quarks mother, however they had less then two days to find someone, get them to travel to DS9 and fill them in on all the details, before their meeting with the Slime Cola guy..... and since the Slime guy was already on his way to DS9, there wasn't any time, thus they needed to use Quark since Rom was useless for business and there were no other ferengis in the area as skilled as Quark, including his waiters.
Second, even today with sex change operations and such, one is subjected to many hormone drugs (which they mentioned in the episode) that depending on your gender, will be estrogen or testosterone..... and if someone has never had to deal with that sort of shift of chemicals in their body before, testosterone will make some people short tempered, while estrogen will play on one's emotions..... it's not sexist, it's reality.... and if you never had to deal with that drastic shift before in your body, anybody would be a tad volatile for the first little while until their brain learns to adjust to the new chemical balance.
It's the same with some recreational drugs that can play with someone's emotions or view of things.
Thirdly, the comment about how easy it was for Quark to have the sex change and wondering why some people may not get them done for a day or two for fun can also be logically explained.
• Federation doctors have on a number of occasions changed someone's appearance into another alien for various missions, etc.... a sex change probably isn't much more difficult, albeit perhaps more time consuming and involved.
• Most Doctors would have better things to do then to do these operations every single day for one person who can't make up their mind.
• Quark was not only a friend of the crew (believe it or not), but this was also a request on behalf of Zek to ensure Brunt didn't become nagus, with Quarks approval of course.
There were a number of factors that lead up to what happened in the episode, and after watching it last night, while it's still not a favorite episode for me, I still appreciate it for what it was.... which was an episode for Quark to work out his sexist views towards women in the work place, which he had since the beginning of the series and even this episode started off with him being sexist to one of his best workers and then learning for himself exactly what it's like being in their shoes, especially when he had to face a male Ferengi who acted much like (perhaps even worse) then himself.
First, they talked about getting another female to replace Quarks mother, however they had less then two days to find someone, get them to travel to DS9 and fill them in on all the details, before their meeting with the Slime Cola guy..... and since the Slime guy was already on his way to DS9, there wasn't any time, thus they needed to use Quark since Rom was useless for business and there were no other ferengis in the area as skilled as Quark, including his waiters.
Second, even today with sex change operations and such, one is subjected to many hormone drugs (which they mentioned in the episode) that depending on your gender, will be estrogen or testosterone..... and if someone has never had to deal with that sort of shift of chemicals in their body before, testosterone will make some people short tempered, while estrogen will play on one's emotions..... it's not sexist, it's reality.... and if you never had to deal with that drastic shift before in your body, anybody would be a tad volatile for the first little while until their brain learns to adjust to the new chemical balance.
It's the same with some recreational drugs that can play with someone's emotions or view of things.
Thirdly, the comment about how easy it was for Quark to have the sex change and wondering why some people may not get them done for a day or two for fun can also be logically explained.
• Federation doctors have on a number of occasions changed someone's appearance into another alien for various missions, etc.... a sex change probably isn't much more difficult, albeit perhaps more time consuming and involved.
• Most Doctors would have better things to do then to do these operations every single day for one person who can't make up their mind.
• Quark was not only a friend of the crew (believe it or not), but this was also a request on behalf of Zek to ensure Brunt didn't become nagus, with Quarks approval of course.
There were a number of factors that lead up to what happened in the episode, and after watching it last night, while it's still not a favorite episode for me, I still appreciate it for what it was.... which was an episode for Quark to work out his sexist views towards women in the work place, which he had since the beginning of the series and even this episode started off with him being sexist to one of his best workers and then learning for himself exactly what it's like being in their shoes, especially when he had to face a male Ferengi who acted much like (perhaps even worse) then himself.
