LIFEFORMS: Ferengi

Applying Quark's Ferengi Make-Up

ARTICLES INDEX

BRIDGE

FONT COLOR KEY:
ordinary commentary
Herb Wright
Michael Piller
Ira Steven Behr
Armin Shimerman

FONT COLOR KEY:
ordinary commentary
Herb Wright
Michael Piller
Ira Steven Behr
Armin Shimerman

FONT COLOR KEY:
ordinary commentary
Herb Wright
Michael Piller
Ira Steven Behr
Armin Shimerman

FONT COLOR KEY:
ordinary commentary
Herb Wright
Michael Piller
Ira Steven Behr
Armin Shimerman

1. INITIAL CONCEPT

When work began on [TNG] Gene Roddenberry had a new ship, with a new crew, and he wanted new villains for them to contend with. He asked one of his writers, Herb Wright, to develop a race who would become the show's recurring villains. The new villains appeared in the sixth story of [TNG]'s first season, [TNG: The Last Outpost] - see screenshot, a story which depicted the Federation's first official contact with the Ferengi species.

Herb Wright: When Gene asked me to come up with a kind of grand villain for the new Star Trek series, he said he didn't want to rely on the old stuff. Well, take a look at the Klingons; they were basically the Stormtroopers of space, and the Romulans were kind of like the SS of space. I went off to noodle what the look and shape and construction of this new villain would be physically and emotionally and to work out what their society would be like; basically I had to come up with a new world. That wasn't too hard. I just looked around at 80's America, where greed was good and Gekko was one of our heroes. I came back to Gene and I said, "Where are the carpet baggers? Where are the robber barons? (screenshot is from [TNG: The Last Outpost]) Where are the guys where every time you turn around they're buying space ships out from underneath your feet or stealing from you?" He said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea." "Those guys," I said, "You know, like all the agents and lawyers we've ever been involved with." He laughed and said, "Love it." With the Ferengi, the idea is that profit is the most important thing. You always like to come out on top, and business rules supreme. Even when you die, the heaven you go to is in fact where they count up how much profit you have and give you a good table in front, while hell was the place that you'd go to penniless and have a damned future in which you would be taken advantage of every five seconds, which is the worst thing the Ferengi can possibly imagine."

One of the reasons that Herb was attracted to the idea of a greedy, robber baron race was that he felt they could provide the ideal contrast to Gene Roddenberry's highly evolved crew. He was intensely aware that Picard and his team did not have most of our 20th century vices. The 24th century that Gene envisioned was one in which humanity had worked out their personal and public differences. Gene's unique take was that none of our crew would ever argue with each other, nor be jealous of each other, nor be angry at each other, and certainly not cheat or steal from each other, because humanity has cleaned up its act by the 24th century. I saw the inner logic of what Gene was doing. He said he had tried for that in the first show, and for all kinds of reasons he was never really allowed to take it to the nth degree. Now he wanted to show us that it was possible for there to be a higher ideal. The real conflicts would have to do with cosmic rays or alien possession things that would alter us against our will. But there was no one who could voice those aspects of greed and corruption and selfishness, so the only people we could relate to on the show were the aliens and the villains, because those were the people who acted like us.

Thus the Ferengi continued Star Trek's tradition of creating alien races who reflected real groups of people on Earth, but whereas the Klingons had stood in for the Russians, the Ferengi would stand in for the forces of unrestrained capitalism.

The thing I've always thought about a good villain is that, basically, they're just like us; they've got our vices, our faults, but they are exaggerated - or at least everyone thinks they're exaggerated. The reality is they are usually closer to us than we would wish to admit. Look at 80's America. What was it all about? How much stuff have you got? How big a car? How big a house? How much did you have in the bank? How many stocks have you got? How much profit? In ancient Japan, it went from the Samurai and the priests and the royal court being the people who were highest in the hierarchy to it being the merchants. All the so-called higher-class people had to go and court favor with, and take loans from, them. That was really the genesis of the Ferengi. Things aren't that different now. I'm currently involved in my own startup internet company cybersci-fi.com and I look around me and I see the countless people who think they are participating in a grand gold rush. Can I be the next $150 million dollar man? The Ferengi also owe their existence to a rather curious thing that Herb Wright had noticed about our heroes. In Star Trek the crew have very little stuff. You go into their quarters, you don't see a lot of stuff around. You can have your Earl Grey tea, but it's almost a monk-like existence. Again I discussed that with Gene when we first got into this. I said, 'I'd like to have a bunch of guys where their whole space ship is something to store their stuff in. Then they need all the weaponry to protect it and then all the speed in the world to make those fast getaways when the deal goes bad.'

This changed a bit with [Star Trek Voyager], the next series but one after [TNG], as we see Janeway's personal mementoes in her ready room and private quarters, and also the private possessions of Tuvok, Kim etc, and in [#138 Ashes to Ashes] Kim kept some of Ensign Ballard's personal items after her death such as her skates and hairbrush. As USS Voyager's crew included former Maquis they had personal possessions such as Chell's pendant [#16 Learning Curve]. The children aboard USS Voyager are also seen to own, at least use, personal items such as a bicycle [#139 Child's Play], kadiskot board, and Naomi Wildman's toys are seen in various episodes such as [#54 Macrocosm]. USS Voyager's circumstances, however, are different from the Federation starships of the previous Star Trek series, as USS Voyager is out of contact with home.

Therefore large parts of Ferengi society were worked out from the basic premise that they were greedy and unscrupulous. However, this was not quite enough for Herb and Gene, who decided they should give them a few even less attractive traits. (screenshot is from [TNG: Captain's Holiday]; the Ferengi called Sovak is played by Max Grodénchik who later played the Ferengi called Rom in [DS9])

Sexism came with the package, and Gene wanted to take that to an ultimate degree. He loved that idea enormously. It was his idea that it was by law that no female Ferengi could even own clothing, let alone wear it. The fact that women are not allowed to make profits was decided early on. It's almost like Victorian industrial revolution kind of attitude toward women, which is they should be home, taking care of kids, and they shouldn't even be wearing clothes, because that just gets in the way and it costs money. There's no profit in that!

A female Ferengi, naked. This is Ishka, mother of Quark and Rom. She is holding a toothpick. Note that her ear lobes are rather smaller than those of a male Ferengi. In [DS9: The Magnificent Ferengi] she is seen after having cosmetic surgery to lift her lobes. Screenshot is from [DS9: Family Business]

Unpleasant as the Ferengi may seem, Herb wanted us to recognize that their society did work for them and we seemed as strange to them as they did to us. One of the first things they do when they first come aboard and realize they're looking at human females is say, 'My God, you clothe them? Why would you want to do that?' They were examining us in the same way I'm sure the first explorers examined the Indian cultures. They're thinking, 'What are these, savages doing?' To the Ferengi, it's such a savage idea to have women clothed, and they're thinking how disruptive it would be to one's society.

Gene Roddenberry also wanted to make sure that, if we stopped to think, we would have reasons to be jealous of the Ferengi. Gene went off on a whole thing about the sexual prowess of the Ferengi. I'm going, 'Gene! This is a family show.' I'm sitting there in the chair and I'm looking around. Everyone else was trying to look at the ceiling or their shoes. But his whole point was they may be nasty, mean little sons of bitches, but, between all the stuff they've got and the money, they get all the hot ladies, and they know what to do about it; that's something they're actually good at. See what happens down the road: Quark has some hot women on his arm. If you look at all those who have got that kind of power, the same thing applies.

This aspect of Ferengi 'superiority' goes to the heart of the race; the idea was that, because they were really more like us than the Starfleet characters, we would find ourselves agreeing with them. I also wanted to create someone who we could love, and then hate ourselves for loving them which is always the dirty little secret of villains. People like Freddy Krueger because they'd actually like to appear in somebody else's nightmare and rip them to pieces.

2. CREATING THE LOOK

In order to work out what the Ferengi would look like, Herb Wright worked with concept artist Andrew Probert and they started to produce different drawings. Herb remembers that the original brief he gave Andy was relatively simple.

When I first thought about these guys, I had kind of an image of Scrooge McDuck diving into his gold coins and cackling. I figured that since we had the big guys already with the Klingons, and the medium-sized guys with the Romulans, the little guys who you really have to worry about would be the Ferengi. I wanted us to loathe them, and despise them, and fear them, and also think they were ridiculous. We played around with a bunch of concepts. I kind of scrunched up my face, and popped my eyeballs, and bared my teeth, and put my hands upbehind my ears. It was probably the most grotesque thing you could get. We always fear the thing that doesn't look like us. In this case, the idea was to take them away from looking like us, but of course they do look like us in some ways. They're weird, but they are still humanoid." In some of the early drawings, the Ferengi have small pointed beards, something Andy recalls adding in order to give them a different look. Herb adds that he thought it was a good idea, because it reminded him of another inspiration for the Ferengi: Shakespeare's Shylock who puts business above all else. He goes on to say that the beards also had distinct echoes of ancient Babylonian sculptures. That middle-Eastern look came right off the statues. What was Babylon all about? It's the same issues of greed and gold that we were trying to endow the Ferengi with. But they were looking a little bit too Assyrian, and a little bit too severe because of that. At the end of the day I felt it was better, and so did Gene, that they would have hairless features. We felt it would be more interesting if they weren't hairy. I'd always admired Spock's ears (first seen in [TOS]). The idea was to take that to a different level, so they almost had elephant ears. When I first described what might look like, it was by holding my palms out on either side, like you do when you're a kid. And having that heavy eyebrow ridge that went across made it even more weird, because it's almost like their whole head is a cap. It also accentuated the baldness and the prominence of the brain.

The large, four-lobed brains almost led to the Ferengi becoming rather more violent (and powerful) than the creatures who made it to the screen. I had been deeply affected by the horror film 'Scanners.' There was a moment when I thought, 'These are the smartest villains out there; they have to be. They're businessmen. Jeez, they generate all that electrical steam upstairs; how about if one of the things they could do is make your head explode?' The intention was that they'd have this brain-splattering ability and could literally blow out the brains of other people. That was deemed, first of all, way too expensive; Gene said, 'Yeah, and who's going to pay for take two?' Secondly, it was obviously too far afield for our family audience. Thirdly, once you've done that stunt, who's going to get in a room with a Ferengi? That was one of the things I remember most vividly. We had a lot of fun playing with that, and then we finally said, 'No, we're not going to be doing that."

Originally the tattoos would indicate a person's wealth at a glance. They were actually used as a small tattoo on the upper right cranial to denote the rank of military personnel. The small military tattoo is green, for the colour of (20th century USA's) money, with the number of chevrons indicating rank. (I detect what seems to be a tattoo, though unlike the military style, on Sovak's upper right cranial, in [TNG: Captain's Holiday] and he is not in the military. See screenshot of Sovak here in 1. INITIAL CONCEPT).

Compare the concept sketches with Quark, who appears in [DS9] as a regular on the show, in the section below.

3. FERENGI MAKE-UP

The finished appearance of Quark, like the concept of the Ferengi as a race and culture, developed over time. For information about the development of Ferengi culture etc. see 8. RE-INVENTION FOR [DS9].

Quark, the finished concept as regards appearance: front and side views. [#1 Caretaker, Part One]

Throughout [TNG], the make-up department had a 'one head fits all' policy. When Armin Shimerman was cast as Quark for [DS9], (he had played Letek, one of the first Ferengi ever seen, in [TNG: The Last Outpost]), that policy changed. The original heads were relegated to Max Grodénchik (who would play Rom), Aron Eisenberg (who would play Nog, and who later guest-starred in [#21 Initiations] as Kar) and background Ferengi. For Quark, a newer larger head was constructed, something that would be more comfortable for the actor to wear. To make the head appliance more comfortable, the make-up department sculpted holes in the sides of the appliance for his ears to go through so that would not have to be flattened, an important consideration in view of the long hours he would be working because Quark was to make regular and sometimes long appearances on the show. His ears fit inside the ear appliances.

Eventually two customised heads were developed, one for another Ferengi called Brunt (played by Jeffrey Combs, who later guest-starred in [#135 Tsunkatse] as Penk) and the female Ferengi whose ears were smaller than those of a male Ferengi. For the Grand Nagus (the character named Zek holds the title Grand Nagus), the make-up started with the basic Quark head appliance and made larger ears and a ore wrinkled forehead and neck. Thus the Zek head contains additional pieces which are glued on over the top of Quark's head to make the Grand Nagus look older and far more wizened than either Quark or Rom.

Another development was the way the make-up department enhanced the teeth. The original [TNG] Ferengi had sharp jutting upper teeth but straight lowers. In [DS9] the make-up department added a set of lower teeth to fill the gaps in the uppers and give them an even more piranha-like appearance. The designers made moulds for the lower teeth to fit into the spaces between the upper teeth so that the character could talk, even though it affected their speech. The Ferengi also had blue painted fingernails. Zek was given longer false nails.

Article: Applying Quark's Ferengi Make-Up.

4. CANNIBALISM

Several early discussions focused on ways the writing staft could make the Ferengi seem more dangerous. In [TNG: Encounter at Farpoint] there is even a reference to them eating people. "There was an area where there was a potential to go with a more monstrous quality, and cannibalism is the most monstrous thing that humanity can face. It's even worse than genocide in most people's eyes, because literally eating people is, well, pretty disgusting. We were toying with that idea. I was worried about that, because I thought it would allow people to turn around and step away from the larger issues that these villains were about, because they could just say, 'Oh well, they're just a bunch of cannibals,' as opposed to saying, 'Yeah, they seem silly, but you find yourselves agreeing with them. They get things done, they're wearing the hot clothes, and they're the ones living life with all the stuff.'

5. TOO COMICAL

Although there were good reasons for pulling back from these more dangerous qualities, the result was that the Ferengi may have been taken less seriously than Herb hoped. He thinks this is partly because the mix of humor and social commentary he was aiming for was very difficult to pull off. Right off the bat, we were supposed to have these guys appear in at least 15 or 20 percent of the season. They didn't really get that much play in the first year. I think in large part it had to do with the fact that people had to understand a more complicated villain. As I discovered, the greedy guy is a much tougher job to bring to the screen without being some kind of laughable stereotype. You also worry about making someone small, because that's the hardest villain to draw. You have to convince people that these guys are really dangerous, despite their diminutive size. Another one of the big problems is that no matter what you write it's still got to come across in the performance. Some of the early stuff in the first two shows did make them too comedic. It made them so we could not be frightened. I wanted the Ferengi to be disarming in their comicness, and the next thing we know they've ripped us off or set us up. That's something that anyone with any Hollywood experience would recognize in a heartbeat.

The story [TNG: Menage à Troi] was played for laughs. Deanna Troi (played by Marina Sirtis) (who appears in several [Star Trek: Voyager] episodes, the first being [#130 Pathfinder]) and her mother Lwaxana (played by Majel Barrett) are beamed, without their clothes, to a Ferengi Marauder spacecraft by DaiMon Tog (played by Frank Corsentino, who later guest-stars as one of the three villainous Ferengi [personally I believe he plays Gegis] in [#152 Inside Man]). They are met first by Dr Farek, one of Tog's crew (played by Ethan Phillips who, of course, plays Neelix in [Star Trek: Voyager]). The screenshot shows the moment when Dr Farek (to the right in the picture) thwarts an escape ploy by Lwaxana Troi (in the left of picture).

6. ANTI-SEMITISM DISMISSED

One thing Herb is quick to dismiss is the notion that the portrayal of the Ferengi is in any way anti-Semitic, and says that this certainly did not occur to him when he was creating them. That's so astonishing to me, because Jews come in all shapes, sizes, forms; it was,just that the Nazis tried to impose a stereotype. I'd heard concern about that, but, you know something, there's been concern about every villain that's been invented.

7. RE-INVENTION FOR [TNG]

Herb left [TNG] toward the end of the first season. In 1989, nobody liked the Ferengi. The original idea had been to make them into [TNG]'s new villains: a race of unscrupulous capitalists who posed a constant threat to the Federation. They were supposed to combine humor with a genuinely aggressive side, but from the moment they first appeared on screen something had been wrong. The humor had overbalanced the threat, and they had literally become a laughing stock. [TNG] show-runner Michael Piller remembers that when he arrived on the scene in the show's third season the Ferengi were actually on the point of extinction.

Michael Piller: There's no question that most people would have been happy to lose them. In general, the perception was that they were silly, even stupid. Everybody felt that it was a one-joke premise and, for all intents and purposes, the joke had been played out. So they said, 'We don't like the Ferengi; let's not do them anymore.' I can't say that I was the Ferengi's greatest champion, but, at the same time, I felt that the series worked very well when there was and I didn't see anything wrong with some villains that brought smiles to your face. Fundamentally, I just thought they could serve as a change of pace.

Thus, under Michael's guidance, the Ferengi continued to make appearances on [TNG]. But they were no longer played as a major threat to Picard and his crew; in fact, although we encountered a few rogue Ferengi, they started to integrate with the Federation. As Michael says, this approach allowed the writers to play to the Ferengi's strengths specifically: Ferengi stories could deal with themes that were normally off limits to the noble Starfleet officers we were used to.

The Ferengi represented a segment of the universe that was not being dealt with in any other way at the time. You know, Roddenberry's vision was very clear human beings had evolved to a place where they wouldn't be particularly interested in material goods or petty jealousies. It was impossible to get those kinds of emotions out of our human characters, so we had to use aliens to give us conflict and the ability to comment on the kind of social issues we wanted to explore. My philosophy about the Ferengi was that they were the most 'human' aliens that we had to work with. I think we identified, as Star Trek does so very well, a theme of life that needed commentary, and we were able to do that through the Ferengi. We certainly felt that you could see what life in America was coming to in the 90's - it was an era in which you defined how successful you were by how much you accumulated. I think it is a trap if you ever lose the genuine threat. I remember we did the show where there was an arch-enemy, Bok, who came back to haunt Picard. There was no question that had to be a serious threat.

8. RE-INVENTION FOR [DS9]

Although the Ferengi made several appearances on [TNG] they were still very much a supporting race, and we knew relatively little about their culture. All that changed when Michael developed [DS9] with Rick Berman. In a bold move, they decided to make one of the series regulars a Ferengi. In the beginning, the station was seen very much as a frontier town in the tradition of Dodge City, and this environment instantly suggested several characters to Michael.

Michael Piller: Every frontier town that I've ever seen in the movies had a Brian Donleavy character who ran the saloon, who was greedy and was buying land, and was cheating at cards and running hookers. To me, it seemed like a natural place for a Ferengi. Some of the references in the writer's bible suggest that the Ferengi, who was soon named Quark, would have been quite a malevolent presence who had a hand in every illegal activity on the station. Nevertheless, Michael insists that there was never any question of making him into a real bad guy. I don't think Quark was ever going to be our house villain. He has a different agenda to everyone, else. I think what you wanted was a strong, adversarial, but not unlikable, character to play against Sisko. Quark was always meant to be a benevolent adversary; remember, he was going to be a regular character. Look at Dr. Smith in 'Lost in Space': you have a really hard time when one of your regulars is just pure evil. It becomes tiresome. You really need to look at a character for who he is and what he wants out of life. And this guy is a Ferengi; he really wants to flourish and thrive and prosper, and, yeah, he's willing to do just about anything to do that, but he's smart enough that and this is a very important part of it; these Ferengi are very smart people he doesn't go out of his way to involve himself in things that are going to get him kicked off the station.

When [DS9] was in the planning stages, Michael intended Quark to be a thorn in Sisko's side but, as he was writing the pilot, it became clear to him that Quark was a more natural adversary for one of the other characters, Odo, the lawman on the station. In Quark and Odo he found two characters who were philosophically opposed, but were also inextricably linked by their roles on the station. It soon became clear that they had a grudging respect for one another, and over the years their many scenes together provided a rich vein of humor. It was clear to me that having a Ferengi aboard Deep Space 9 would provide the show with instant humor and built-in conflict with the Federation guy in charge of the station, and also with Odo, who I'd always seen as the 'sheriff' of this town. Obviously conflict is a wonderful thing, and conflict with burner is even more fun. When you discover it, you realize you are tapping into a goldmine. We all know what the relationship was between Spock and Dr. McCoy in the original series; it was an unrelenting conflict, but it always was fun. Nobody set out to create an imitation of that in [DS9], but whenever you can you look for conflict between two characters, and the lawman and the outlaw are the classic two. Also, I think that relationship turned out to be the result of two terrific actors who worked extremely well off one another.

DABO ARTICLE & 3D CUTAWAYS OF QUARK'S BAR AND THE PROMENADE

Once [DS9] was up and running, Michael stepped back from the day to day running of the show and handed the reins over to Ira Steven Behr, another veteran of [TNG]'s third season. Ira is widely credited with rejuvenating the Ferengi, but he admits that when he got to [DS9] he had no interest ill them at all.

Ira Steven Behr: I never took them seriously, and no one I know took them seriously. So I was quite surprised when Mike Piller told me that there was going to be a Ferengi on [DS9]. It was like, 'OK ... "' Ira rapidly decided that he had very little interest in playing the Ferengi as straight villains, but beyond that he tried to keep an open mind about Quark. The idea became that Quark was someone who was still looking for his main chance. It's obvious, really - the guy's a bartender. You can say that a lot of the Mafiosi led sedate lives and did not live in palatial estates, but they weren't bartenders; they made sure they never had to wait on people, and that's what Quark was doing. He wanted to get that leg over and prove to everyone, and I guess to himself, that he had what it took. I also had the line where Quark said about Rom, [Rom is Quark's brother) 'He couldn't fix a straw if it was bent.' Rom was supposedly going to be this other tough character, and I didn't buy that either. I have to be honest; I looked at Sisko, I looked at Kira, I looked at Dax ... I was looking for something humorous that was going to be clearly different from [TNG]. Instead of Data walking around making comic remarks, I wanted someone who was going to embody a different sensibility. The Ferengi gave us the chance to bring something to the show that was different from anything we had seen in the other Star Trek series. I don't mean this to be as comedic or as pathetic as it's going to sound, but I thought that the Ferengi gave us the chance to bring back the notion of the loser. And when I say loser, what I'm really talking about is the 20th-century human being. The Ferengi gave us a chance to see the kind of people who grasp, who reach, but can't get there. One of the great lines I ever heard was Chuck Jones, the animator, who said, "the reason those cartoons worked so well is because in their heart everyone wants to be Bugs Bunny, but in reality we are all Daffy Duck." That's true. To me Star Trek is filled with Bugs Bunnies: confident, fearless people who are going to get the job done. It was essential to have a Daffy Duck for the show to take off and develop its own identity.

In an early scene in [#1 Caretaker, Part One], Ensign Harry Kim visits Quark's Bar where Quark tries to sell him some worthless Lobi crystals. Quark is not seen again in [Star Trek: Voyager] although he is implied in [#22 Non Sequitur] when the alternate Tom Paris mentions he got into a brawl with a Ferengi at Deep Space 9.

Quark's Ferengi perspective on life automatically placed him alongside other Star Trek characters who provided an alien commentary on human behaviour, in the tradition of Spock. Ira points out that Quark and Spock probably would not come to the same conclusions, and goes on to say that in contrast to Spock or Odo, Quark, who was always concerned with self-preservation, provided a valuable critique of Starfleet heroics. One of the things that really worried us as writers were the clean deaths in Star Trek and the way we were feeding this rather insidious view of violence and heroism. Something about it did not seem right. We tried to deal with it in a number of shows, but one of the ways we could address it continually was to have Quark. Any time you showed weakness or fallibility, it had to be in alien characters. When you have eight people talking and saying, 'We should attack,' or 'These people need our help,' it's good to have someone saying, 'I want to get out of here!' I felt most of the time Quark was right; it was absolutely, positively, common sense. To me, when a flawed character like Quark is able to rise to the occasion, it means that much more. The thing I like about Quark is that when we gave him those moments when we made him two-gun Quark and had him save the day I always felt it worked because we hadn't done it to death.

Armin Shimerman, who plays Quark: I always expected to be comic relief. I knew that was my primary role, and it was a brave thing that Star Trek did, very brave, putting in a comic character. They had never done that before. It was an experiment, and to some extent I believe it worked, or else they wouldn't have imitated it with Neelix over on [Star Trek Voyager].

I've come to realise Quark can do anything: he can be greedy and crafty, and he can be generous. That's the great thing about Ira and the other writers' contributions to me. There is nothing I can't be, whereas there are many things that the other actors can't be. They cannot be greedy, they cannot be lecherous, they canot be self-serving. These are all things that I get to play and they don't, and I'm grateful for it, because I get the whole palette of the human emotional scheme and not just the nice parts. There is nothing where I would say, 'Quark wouldn't do that.'

I think sometimes people miss the point because of the way we look on the show ([DS9]). Having had a lot of feedback from a lot of people, when they see the sort of grotesque head and the teeth they immediately discount us because of it. And the Ferengi have always been comic characters, so you come to expect that Ferengi episodes should be comedies. The writers try to dispel that and the actors try to help, but it was always an uphill battle. Sometimes people did indeed get it, but sometimes people saw the trappings and that's what they focussed on, which was not really what the core of the story was about. If you took the make-up off it would be a rather serious story.

9. THE GRAND NAGUS AND THE RULES OF ACQUISITION

(Screenshot shows the head of the [replicated] Grand Nagus staff, as used by Neelix disguised as a Ferengi in [#47 False Profits].) Exactly where Ira was going to take the Ferengi became much clearer when he wrote [DS9: The Nagus]. When the story was originally pitched, Quark was not even involved, but the premise did not seem to work. I just suddenly thought, 'Why don't we make this a Quark show?' I don't think we'd had one or were planning one. Why don't we, look at the Ferengi? Once I had that, I needed to come up with the name of their leader. I remember looking in the thesaurus for a name that would be different, and in Indian there's a word which I think is 'Ny-gus,' I thought, 'Well, we can't do that.' Then I thought of 'Nagus,' and once I had 'Grand Nagus' that was it. If the Ferengi have a leader named the Grand Nagus, then everything's just going to fall apart. I mean, what kind of people have a Nagus?!"

Ira's finished version of the story dealt with the Nagus's apparent death and the search for his successor. When Quark seems set to take over, Rom assumes that he will inherit the bar. Almost all the Ferengi attempt to kill one another before the Nagus finally reappears, announcing that he was simply trying to put his son to the test. Ira says that the story made enormous strides in fleshing out Ferengi society because the plot focused on changing their leader, and inevitably referred to many of their core beliefs. We just got to touch on a lot of things. Of course, the brothers were involved and we got to do the macro and the micro of that world. It was lovely that at the end of the show Quark is proud of his brother for trying to kill him. That's a uniquely Ferengi approach to life. The show also included the first mention of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, which Ira developed as an attempt to make sense of their culture. I remember sitting at my desk and thinking about all this stuff that the Ferengi are supposed to be they take, they want, they're capitalists - but there had never been any defining element that you could point to and say, "This is what they believe in.' So I was thinking, 'What are the rules?' It just popped into my head we needed the Rules of Acquisition, and little did I know that was going to become such a major thing. Once we knew that they had the rules, once we knew they had a philosophy, it became easier. There's no doubt that the rules really focused the race. For the first couple of years, I think no one wrote rules except for me, or, if they did, they had to run it by me, and run it by Rick (Rick Berman, executive producer). Then, as time went on, all the writers wanted to have a rule. You had to have at least one rule that you could point to and say, 'That one's mine!' That was fine with me because, after a whole, it became a little bit of unnecessary pressure. There were long periods of time where we didn't come up with rules; there were episodes where you just said, 'I give up already!... [DS9: The Nagus] also established one other very important thing; Ferengi society worked, at least for some people. The Nagus enjoyed himself. He enjoyed the wealth, he enjoyed the power. There was something likable; he seemed to have a pretty good life. Ferengi society worked, at least for males, who were smart enough to make it work for them. Which is not unlike the capitalistic system here in the United States; it could be pretty cozy if you're willing to go there.

10. MORE INSIGHTS INTO FERENGI SOCIETY

[DS9: The Nagus] opened the doors on Ferengi society, and, over the next six years, we learned more about how it worked, not just from Quark and the Nagus but from Rom, Nog, Moogie [Quark's and Rom's mother called Ishka, pet name Moogie], and Brunt [the villain], who all became a part of the rich Ferengi tapestry. There were some very good reasons for expanding the Ferengi's role on the station. There were three Ferengi characters from the very beginning. Quark ran the bar and was the focal point, but he had Ferengi staff, and, most importantly, a nephew called Nog. [DS9] co-creator Michael Piller remembers that Nog was designed as a friend for the young Jake Sisko and adds that the initial idea was that he would be the kind of companion most parents would not want their kids to have. Michael Piller did not want to saddle Quark with a wife, so he decided that Nog would be his nephew. This meant that Nog needed a father, so Rom was created, and Quark gained a brother. Despite his early reservations about the Ferengi, Ira remembers that he was interested in the possibilities offered by all these relationships. Well, we'd never had brothers before, so that was great. One reason for using the Ferengi was that they had different kinds of relationships with one another than the Starfleet characters, who were essentially professionals working together. The Ferengi also offered Ira the opportunity to tell very different kinds of stories, which, he says, was very important. My job was to see the big picture. I wanted to make the series as rich as possible, and above all to make it as intensive as possible. I was always thinking, 'What can we do that's going to be different? What can we do that's going to give us an identity?' And the Ferengi were different types of characters to the ones we were used to - they oftered opportunities.

What Ira saw in the Ferengi was a chance to write for characters who were much less emotionally constrained than the Starfleet officers. Their position outside the command structure meant that they did not have to be involved in every single story, so, he says, they could have "large" personalities, which might have become annoying if we dealt with them on a weekly basis. He even remembers that he consciously pushed them in this direction, which he says is not necessarily related to their love of money. The rich are not always the most colorful lot. It's not so hard to make money if all you want to do is make money. I know people like that today, who have incredibly low expectations and a limited understanding of the world, but they understand making money. That in itself is boring. I thought I had to try to make the Ferengi more colorful. I have to say that in all the market research Quark was constantly voted either the most-liked character, or one of the most-liked characters on the show, so that worked.

There was also another very serious reason for introducing more Ferengi characters; Ira wanted to be absolutely clear that with all races there are different types of people. Quark, Nog, Rom and all the other Ferengi that followed proved that there was no such thing as a typical Ferengi. And breaking down stereotypical ideas about race was particularly important where the Ferengi were concerned. The character who did most to attack this stereotype was Nog (played by Aron Eisenberg who plays the Kazon youth Kar in [#21 Initiations]). By the third season he was completely transformed. Now, far from being a bad influence on Jake, he was a hard-working teenager who was determined to earn a place at Starfleet Academy. Ira freely admits that one of the reasons he changed Nog so much was to surprise the audience.

Rom and Nog came to represent a kind of kinder, gentler Ferengi, and by now even Quark had shown that he was capable of selfless acts. So it was not entirely surprising that a new Ferengi character was introduced who embodied the traditional Ferengi 'virtues' of greed, ambition, and ruthlessness. Toward the end of the fourth season, Quark encountered his nemesis Liquidator Brunt (played by Jeffrey Combs, who plays the villain Penk in [#135 Tsunkatse]), who reminded us that most Ferengi are still a long way from joining Starfleet.

11. FERENGINAR AND FERENGI HOME LIFE

Brunt's arrival also signalled a new phase in the Ferengl's evolution. Until this point we had only encountered a handful of Ferengi and they were far from home, so we had very little idea of how their society operated. In order to deal with their mother, Quark and Rom had to go back to Ferenginar, where we would get our first glimpses of Ferengi domestic life. As we learned, the planet is covered with a steady drizzle, and the Ferengi live in small domed houses and eat tube grubs. When one Ferengi visits another, he pays to enter his house and the host tells him to remember "What's mine is mine." Ira remembers that his writing partner Robert Hewitt Wolfe had been particularly keen to see the Ferengi on their own turf. Robert was always saying, 'Just look at 'em they obviously come from a very rainy planet.' At that point we were working so closely I can't remember who came up with what. The weather was his; something about the shape of the houses was his too. I don't remember who came up with the towel drying. I think the mantra 'What's mine is mine,' was mine.

12. HANDLING NAKED FEMALES

I loathed that backstory about the Ferengi keeping their women at home, and naked," Ira says. It was like this little boy's idea of being controversial. That's why I felt it became necessary to do something with Ferengi females. It took a long time, obviously, because we had to get around the production problems of how to show a naked Ferengi female, and who wants to show one even if you could! That was tough.

Ira's solution to the problem was to make Ishka a feminist. Unlike other Ferengi women, she insisted on wearing clothes and engaging in business. Even more significantly, unlike her sons, she had the lobes for profit. She appeared in [DS9: Family Business] and again in [DS9: Ferengi Love Songs] which established that she was in a romantic relationship with the Grand Nagus, and was effectively the power behind the Ferengi throne. This was something that Ira knew would have huge implications.

13. TYPICAL OR ATYPICAL FERENGI?

We gained most of our insights into Ferengi society by observing Quark and his family, but it now seemed that they were far from typical: Rom had little interest in making profit; Nog had joined Starfleet; and Ishka was joyously breaking all the taboos of Ferengi society. This raises the question of whether we really learned much about the average Ferengi.

I don't think in a lot of ways Quark's family were that typical, but they probably were more typical than they thought. They both thought that their mother was like nobody's mother. And I think Moogie is one of the great leaders of any alien race that we've seen on Star Trek. I think, as it turned out, they were unique in that they helped change Ferengi society in an amazing way.

14. A FERENGI IN STARFLEET

But at this point that change was still in the future. Meanwhile, back on station Deep Space 9, Nog's position in Starfleet involved him in many stories, and his Ferengi attitudes offered an opportunity to play familiar scenes in a different way. Nog also gave the writers the chance to offer a more positive spin on Ferengi philosophy which until now had appeared to be entirely obsessed with cheating people out of money. In [DS9: Treachery, Faith and the Great River] Nog told O'Brien that the Ferengi believe that the Great Material Continuum flows through the universe like a river, bringing items to the people who need them. The episode aired in the seventh season, and Ira says he was delighted that the staff were expanding on Ferengi thought at such a late stage in the series. He adds that the audience would probably only accept such a positive piece of thinking from Nog. The fact that we saw Nog convincing O'Brien (in the Josh Clark interview - he plays Lt. Joe Carey - O'Brien is very much the standard of Starfleet officer that he aimed for in his acting portrayal of Carey) of the merits of Ferengi attitudes shows just how far the Ferengi had come, but what Ira is really pleased with is how they had subtly altered our view of the Star Trek universe.

15. SUMMARY BY IRA STEVEN BEHR

In all kinds of little, below-the-surface ways the Ferengi enabled us to do so much else with the other characters. I think having them on the show, having that element in the series, freed us up to explore other parts of the characters. We got away with a lot of things, and a lot of attitudes that had not been part of Roddenberry's universe for a while. They had been there in the beginning, but then they had gotten lost. We could be greedy; we could be in love with latinum; we could be less than perfect. We saw these shows and the Star Trek world didn't implode. At the beginning we thought, 'Well, you know, you couldn't have a brother plot the death of another brother', But by the end of the show we had human beings plotting each other's deaths all the time! The Ferengi opened the door to make everyone not more Ferengi but, the irony is, to make everyone more human. That's the beauty of it. That's the success of it."

16. ENDURING ASPECTS OF FERENGI CHARACTER AND CULTURE IN [VOYAGER]

The enduring aspects of Ferengi character and culture which are seen in [Star Trek: Voyager] include:

• The Ferengi business ethic ("greed is eternal") in [#47 False Profits]. Kol and Arridor exploit the primitive Takarians, though in the eyes of the Ferengi they are successful businessmen. The dwelling of Arridor and Kol inside the temple precinct is grand, ostentatious, impressive and luxurious. Many of the treasures are secured behind a wall of bars, and the door to their chamber is a wooden one comprising locks and a bar. Their possessions, along with their clothes, denote great wealth. In [Inside Man], three villainous Ferengi plot to steal Seven of Nine's Borg nanoprobes which would gain them enormous profit. When discussing how they might spend some of their wealth to come, Nunk suggests a spaceship with a gold-pressed latinum hull.
   
• oo-mox (Ferengi sexual foreplay, involving a gentle massaging of the ears, considered one of their most erogenous zones e.g. [TNG: Menage à Troi] [DS9: Prophet Motive]): Kol and Arridor receive oo-mox, administered by their female Takarian attendants in [#47 False Profits]. (Screenshot shows Kol enjoying oo-mox.) When Arridor calls out to Kol that profits in the Ga'Nah province are down, Kol, once he hears properly, jumps up and shoos away the attendants telling them, in effect, that he has more important concerns i.e. business. In [Inside Man], when Nunk, Gegis and Yeggie see data on Seven of Nine, including a picture of her, they notice her hands: "Look at those hands." "I bet she gives great oo-mox." "Too bad she'll be dead when she gets here!"
   
• The Grand Nagus: Neelix disguises himself as his deputy, the Grand Proxy, and uses the (replicated) Grand Nagus staff. As seen first in [DS9], Ferengi kiss the head of the staff as a sign of respect. Kol and Arridor do this.
   
• The several references to ears and lobes e.g. having the lobes for business, mentioned in [False Profits], and possible ear-enlargements mentioned in [Inside Man]. Neelix's disguise is proved when Kol tugs on Neelix's fake Ferengi ears and Neelix feels no pain [#47 False Profits] (pictured).
   
• Most civilian Ferengi have a keen sense of self-preservation and will avoid a fight if possible, and actively run from it if necessary e.g. Quark, and most of the Ferengi group in [DS9: The Magnificent Ferengi]. In [#152 Inside Man], in their spacecraft the three Ferengi do not just brace for impact as a possible missile comes toward them, but thoroughly dive for cover by diving to the floor including one who hides under the captain's chair with his right hand over his head, though as one suggested it might be a phage torpedo they could be forgiven their panic.
   
• In [DS9: The Nagus] the Ferengi Rom is willing to kill another Ferengi (his own brother) in pursuit of profit. Kol and Arridor try to kill Neelix, believing him to be the Grand Proxy, to protect their profits. The three villainous Ferengi in [#152 Inside Man] plot to kill USS Voyager's crew in order to gain vast profits.
   
• It is in the nature of Ferengi to deal with a crisis by trying to do a deal. Kol and Arridor each try to do several deals with Neelix in his disguise of the Grand Proxy, in order to safeguard their profits. Before that, Arridor uses rhetoric to convince Janeway to release him and Kol and, furthermore, return them to their lifestyle and position on the Takarian homeworld (which she does until another plan can be formulated to try and remove them).
   
• Hu-mons: This is how Ferengi pronounce the word "humans", notably by Quark in [DS9] (for instance, to him hu-mons all look the same, [DS9: Little Green Men]) and the same pronunciation is used by Dr Arridor in [#47 False Profits].

17. THINGS WE LEARN ABOUT FERENGI OR FERENGI CHARACTERS FROM [VOYAGER]

• What happened to Kol and Arridor when they became stranded in the Delta Quadrant via the Barzan wormhole, in [TNG: The Price], namely that they ended up on the Takarian homeworld and, true to the Ferengi ethic, set about exploiting the native population. While it is certainly not essential for a tv viewer to have seen the story, the events and backstory in [#47 False Profits] is a nice follow-on. It is also a clever way to have Ferengi appear in a [Star Trek Voyager] story since the Ferengi are not a native Delta Quadrant species; likewise, in [#152 Inside Man], the Ferengi plot, hatched in the Alpha Quadrant, is also a clever way to have Ferengi feature in a [Star Trek Voyager] story, as well as incidentally drawing attention to the fact that Borg nanoprobes are valuable for their various properties.
• The unabridged Rules of Acquisition, which can be contained on the Ferengi equivalent of a PADD, come fully annotated with all 47 commentaries, all 900 major and minor judgments and all 10,000 considered opinions. This would not be up-to-date but be the data available to Kol and Arridor as at 2366, stardate 43385 to be precise which is the stardate given in [TNG: The Price], i.e. seven years previously. Arridor consults the Rules of Acquisition to try to work out what to do about the Grand Proxy (Neelix in disguise): he says there is a Rule for every conceivable situation but then reads the following entries: "'Grand Proxy, avoidance of', 'Grand Proxy, censured by', 'Grand Proxy, encounters with - see 'hopeless situation'."
• The Five Stages of Acquisition: This is the emotional evolution associated with new purchases. Kim explains to Torres that, according to the Ferengi, the Five Stages of Acquisition are: Infatuation, Justification, Appropriation, Obsession, and Resale. Harry Kim believes Tom Paris experiences the same progression with his new hobby, namely the secondhand ship he purchased to restore [#125 Alice].
• Ear lobe enlargement is feasible cosmetic surgery, though it is implied that it is expensive. In [Inside Man], one of the Ferengi suggests this as one of the ways to spend some of the vast profit they expect to gain through the sale of Seven's Borg nanoprobes. In [DS9: The Magnificent Ferengi], Quark's mother Ishka is taken prisoner by the Dominion on her way back from having her lobes lifted, but ear lobe enlargement is not mentioned until [Star Trek Voyager]. That ear lobe enlargement is attainable does, however, make one wonder how many Ferengi males undergo such treatment, for large lobes is considered in Ferengi society to indicate masculinity and an aptitude for doing successful business.
• A Marauder D'Kora class spacecraft can be owned or at least used by civilian Ferengi. Leosa says the ship is Nunk's, which implies that he owns it although (and this is speculation) it is possible he could have bought/borrowed/stolen it in any number of ways. This is seen in [Inside Man]. In [TNG] Marauders were used by military personnel; in [TNG: Menage à Troi] DaiMon Tog did, however, use his spacecraft and crew to engage in a personal mission, namely that of abducting Deanna Troi's mother because he lusted after her, both her body and, for business reasons, her telepathic abilities. We learn from [TNG: Force of Nature] that the average crew complement of a Marauder is in the region of 450, but in [TNG] episodes we never see more than a few, and in [Inside Man] only three Ferengi are seen; it is possible that there are other crew aboard but they are not mentioned/shown on the tv screen.

18. ACTORS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE WHO APPEAR IN [TNG] AND/OR [DS9] AND ALSO IN [VOYAGER]

Name, guest or regular, character, character's species, series (excluding the series [Enterprise] which post-dates [Star Trek Voyager]):