DS9 Stories/News: Legends of the Ferengi Review

Legends of the Ferengi

Rating: Series: Deep Space 9
Author: Quark, as told to Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Published: August, 1997
Review by: CL6 Kali D’or

Found this one in a used book store and couldn’t help myself. The premise of the book is that Quark tells stories based on the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. It is done totally tongue-in-cheek and is a great laugh of a book. I have yet to read the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition which Quark wrote some time ago, but it has to be as good as this one.

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All 285 Rules are not included, the book would be too long and cumbersome, but Quark has taken some of his favorites and explained the who and how and why they came into being through tale tales, old stories, family fables, lies and other devious means to get his/their point across.

Some examples:

Rule #31: “Never insult a Ferengi’s mother….insult something he cares about instead.” A good insult is a thing of beauty, a work of art that endures long after it’s crafting. Not bad, and the attached list of the 10 Most Famous Insults in Ferengi history are a hoot.

Rule #104: “Faith moves mountains…of inventory.” This has a clever little folk tale attached, about one of the really old guys, Grand Nagus Gint, who died of a tooth sharpening accident. But a clever Ferengi, Yost, came up with a plan to liven up the mourning citizenry with figurines of the Nagus and marketing was born.

Rule #177: “Know your enemies….but do business with them always.” Another short little ditty about the Tholians, silk, bog moss and how things really work. According to Quark.

Rule #94: “Females and finances don’t mix.” Funny picture, reputed to be an old cave drawing, showing a female Ferengi with bags of “profit” while all around her, the men are dead. This stuff is just too funny.

This is not a big book – just a small paperbound one, only 157 pages long. It’s the kind of book you might keep in the bathroom, for a quick page or two every day? Or next to your computer – read a rule while something downloads. It’s up to you. I found the writing to be very clever, totally in keeping with the character. There are pictures of all our favorite Ferengi cast members, and their “victims” to entertain as well. And references into the history and culture of the Ferengi that we didn’t know before, and may well not really have wanted to find out. Thank you for sharing, Quark!

 

DS9 Stories/News: Boss Chicks: Kai Winn Adami

Source: http://www.amaya-radjani.com/2011/11/boss-chicks-kai-winn-adami.html

Kai Winn Adami, played by the marvelous Louise “Nurse Ratched” Fletcher, is the spiritual leader of the Bajorans.  The Kai, which is the equivalent of the Pope, is a very powerful, influential figure.  When DS9 begins, Winn is a Vedek (or a cardinal).  She is ambitious, devious, and calculating.  She is deeply resentful of Captain Sisko, who is the Emissary of the Prophets (Jesus, in other words).  Winn has a very strong, very deep faith; she is a true believer, but her true nature keeps her from being the voice of the Prophets.

The first time she stepped foot on DS9, she started causing problems.  She disagreed with the teaching of evolution in the Bajoran school and called for a boycott, which led to the school being bombed and Keiko (the teacher) losing her job.  In actuality, the protest and bombing was designed to lure her greatest rival to the throne, Vedek Bareil, to the station to be assassinated.  She manages to get out of this situation unscathed.

Major Kira openly disliked Vedek Winn.  She doesn’t trust her, and she has reasons not to.  Shortly after the bombing, Winn secretly backed the leader of a rebel faction called The Circle in order to force the Federation from Bajor.  She agreed to bless Jaro (the leader of The Circle) in exchange for being made the next Kai.  The coup fails and Winn managed to get out of this situation as well.  The woman was made of Teflon.

When it was clear that she was going to lose to Vedek Bareil for the position as Kai, she came upon some information that led to him having to remove his name from the ballot and ensured her election.  Kira is forced to accept her as the new Kai.

This opportunistic woman tried every trick in the book (and then some) to make sure she became the spiritual leader of the Bajorans.  While Winn’s unswerving faith is commendable, the Prophets never spoke to her or guided her because of her true allegiance, which was to herself and not the Bajorans.  As a result, she turned against them and began to worship the Pah-Wraiths (the enemy of the Prophets; or the Devil, as it were).  Kai Winn is helped along this path by none other than Gul Dukat, who disguised himself as a Bajoran farmer to gain her trust.  But her new faith in her new gods turns out to be a mistake, as she ends up being betrayed by them in favor of Dukat.  At the end of her life, Kai Winn tries to redeem herself by destroying the book that called forth the Pah-Wraiths, the Kosst Amojan, but she dies at the hands of Gul Dukat, the physical embodiment of the devil.

Winn Summons the Pah-Wraiths

Winn Adami Dies

You may ask why I think such a horrid woman worthy of Boss Chick status.  It’s simple:  This woman did whatever she had to do in order to get what she wanted, fair or foul, while maintaining a false façade of goodness and honor.  Talk about being boss?  As far as I’m concerned, the Kai was one of the baddest chicks in the DS9 series.  You gotta respect a woman who lives by the motto of Malcolm X: “By any means necessary.”

DS9 Stories/News: Learning to Love Star Trek, Part 43: “Captive Pursuit”

Source: http://scifiblock.com/features/blog/learning-to-love-star-trek-part-43-captive-pursuit.htm

By Robert Ring, Tue, 11/02/2010 – 08:45

“Learning to Love Star Trek” is a weekly blog series by Sci-Fi Block Editor in Chief Robert Ring, begun January 1, 2010. In this series of blog posts, Robert is endeavoring to determine whether he can make a Star Trek fan out of himself through an exposure to a combination of episodes from Star Trek the Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Update: TNG has now been replaced with Deep Space Nine). Click here to read his introduction to the experiment.

Another below-par episode for Deep Space Nine. However, this one’s not as bad as “Babel,” and, to be fair, the first few episodes set the bar pretty high. This one examines the Prime Directive under a unique and challenging set of circumstances, but it spends too much time on stuff that just isn’t interesting. On paper, its plot sounds like the premise for a solid episode, but it wasn’t pulled off as well as it could have been.

When the first life form from the Gamma Quadrant comes through the wormhole by Deep Space Nine, O’Brien befriends the visitor, named Tosk. Or he’s a Tosk. Or the word “Tosk” describes him in some other manner. He never fully explains. Anyway, this Tosk seems a little too secretive and on-edge. His arrival is a great occasion for the Federation, but unfortunately he is uninterested in chatter and seeks only to get his ship up and running as quickly as possible. Eventually, we learn why: he comes from a culture in which his race is bred and trained for hunting by those in power, and it was during this hunt that his ship was damaged and he ended up on DS9. Though he could seek asylum on the station if he wanted to do so, he views such action as an abandonment of his life purpose. All he wants to do is continue the hunt as prey. As much as Sisko and the others don’t like the idea, the Prime Directive demands that in these conditions they allow the hunt to continue. Queue a heroic action sequence, and curtain.

Hey Tosk, do you happen to know a guy named Bossk?

While the Prime Directive bit is interesting here, it comprises a small portion of the episode. Still, it’s absolutely worth looking at. We’ve had a difficult call in The Next Generation, where following the Prime Directive would have meant allowing someone to die, but here we have to bring an entire culture’s way of life into question. No doubt, to us this custom is deplorable. However, even Tosk is fully given to the morality of the hunt. He believes he’s fulfilling his life’s goal. There hardly seems a way to justify this on the part of those who arrange the hunt system, but if everyone’s happy with it, what are we to do? Tell them they’re wrong? Good luck with that. So, because of the Prime Directive, we have to allow the culture to keep doing its thing.

I like this in part because it forces us to acknowledge a seemingly universally heinous custom as possibly morally acceptable from a certain perspective. To me what’s even more interesting about it, though, is the idea of actually finding meaning in a life in which one is bred only to serve as the prey in a hunt. It is as if these people have to create their own meaning in life, and they do so without apology and without reservation. They just need a purpose, and they’re happy to serve that purpose even if it means their death. After all, who needs life if it’s meaningless? I would like to learn more about this society. Is it totally absent of religion? Their need to create purpose in life would suggest that it is.

So, there’s some good stuff here, but I remain disappointed that so much of it consists of establishing the mystery of what Tosk is running from, why he’s in such a hurry, and, eventually, why aliens in space suits are trying to capture him. We don’t actually learn what’s going on until over halfway through the episode, as if the mystery is somehow more rewarding than the pondering of the morals of the situation. Then we learn what’s going on and get to watch the characters talk and think about the problem for about ten minutes, at which point we get an “O’Brien saves the day” escape scene that lasts pretty much the rest of the episode. Yawn.

At the least, I can say that DS9 still seems to know what it’s doing a lot more than what I’ve seen of TNG. Plus, at this point the series is still very young. Every good show has its missteps. Right now I’m just hoping these indeed are its missteps. From what I can tell based on the first three episodes, I’m still in safe territory