Star Trek Question - TNG & DS9....
 

Hello.

I got into DS9 on DVD, despite never having seen anything Star Trek before, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the first 5 seasons...and have consequently gone back to go begin with 'The Next Generation', which I've never seen. I've just watched the two hour pilot, and it's interesting, but I have one quick question...

1. In the 1st episode, they mention Ferengis and Picard implies that the Ferengi are Cannibals...now, as per Quark et al., on DS9, through the 1st 5 seasons, this has not been mentioned, implied, explained, or otherwise...Is this cleared up, or just a continuity error that went unresolved...

Also, when does TNG reach its peak? I've found that DS9 sort of keeps getting better, and I'm just getting into the Dominion War stuff...

Any other comments/discussion would also be enjoyed...

Kevin

There are inconsistencies with how TNG introduced the Ferengi and what they eventually became. In Season One, they have an episode where they say no one has ever actually seen a Ferengi and that they are paranoid about being seen. This does not really fit in with what they became in future seasons of TNG and DS9.

I think you have to really discount anything said about the Ferengi in Seasons 1 and 2 of TNG.

Many say TNG reached its peak about the end of Season 5. However, seasons 1 and 2 are considered the weakest. Seasons 6 and 7 are worthy and better than the first 2 seasons.

One of the "Crew Dossier" extras on Season 6 is for Quark and has an interview with the guy who plays Quark (who also played the first Ferengi in TNG, though that character was not Quark, but some other Ferengi). He discusses how he tried to change the image that he created in TNG.

As for TNG, it really hit it's peak around season 5, but was pretty good across the board. Admittedly, the frist 2 seasons were a little weaker, but certainly not bad.

biggest difference with DS9 and TNG is that DS9 has a backstory across all 7 seasons that is about contact and war with the dominion. TNG is just a bunch of episodes with some being based on earlier ones. I liked the middle seasons of TNG, but the later ones were almost a lack of originality. There were a few episodes in seasons 6 and 7 that were carbon copies of episodes in earlier seasons.

Well, at the beginning of TNG, no one in the Federation had ever met a Ferengi before....the RUMOR about them were that they were cannibals - but of course, that turned out not to be true. Just Star Trek's way of showing us how we often have built-in predjudice against those we haven't taken time to understand yet. Good lesson, considering the current world climate.

I still say it's just a big flub in continuity. How did the Ferengi become such huge businessmen in the galaxy by never having been seen or met by anyone in the Federation?

Simply because the Federation had never explored out that far yet...in the six years between first meeting them and DS9, they started to infiltrate Federation space. Just because no one in the Federation had seen them before doesn't mean they hadn't established themselves with others. Remember the Federation doesn't use money - the Ferengi would have no interest in initiating contact with them.

Perfectly put.

maybe they realized through a mutual contact that the federation was a bunch of socialists/anti-capitalists so they figured they didn't need contact

I believe that when the Ferengi were first introduced, they were intended to be the new, evil, super villians, like the Klingons and Romulans in TOS. However, it didn't work out that way in later episodes.

I missed the whips they used in TNG.

From what I remember, the excuse explaining the difference in the Ferengi from "The Last Outpost" and the ones on DS9 and other TNG episodes, is that some Ferengi are wilder than others. Civilized Ferengi would submit themselves to the rules of the Ferengi Commerce Agency, while other Ferengi take their race's avarice to extremes.

Of course, it's an excuse - after their debut, someone described the Ferengi as "angry gerbils". The sneaky, greedy ones are much more interesting than the wild ones.

The real continuity problem between TNG & DS9 is the difference in the Trills.

Wait until you see the TNG episode The Host. Trills looked completely different, had a different host/symbiont relationship and a completely opposite set of social rules.

The thing I want to know about the Ferengi is: why did the Grand Nagus only travel in a shuttle? The leader of an entire race travels in something that can't defend itself?

Also, we never saw anything bigger than a shuttle in DSN. Was that a further attempt to remake the Ferengi? Forget they had ships capable of defending the station/Alpha Quad?

I would like to add how awesome Andrea Martin and Wallace Shawn were as Ishka and the Grand Negus, respectively. They always upstaged everyone else in their scenes and added a lot to DS9.

I remember this as well - they were billed as a huge, new threat.

Then the first shot of them I remember is them jumping up and down on a builder like monkeys. There was no way they were going to be a Big Bad after that.

i remember that. They never explained why beverly didn't know what a trill host/symbiant was when the former ambassador to the klingons was a trill.