I recall reading a long while ago that Gene Roddenberry had planned for the Ferengi to be the main antagonists for TNG, but after a couple episodes, market testing showed that people didn’t like them, so they ended up created the Borg instead as a new nemisis.
… Imagine an alternate timeline, where the borg had not decided the ferengi were unworthy of assimilation… and the combination of the two were the main antagonist. Totalitarian hive mind ruthless capitalist.
Looking back to early seasons, I can see that direction and agree with the focus groups lol. A while later in “The Price” they’re a lot more like the Ferengi in DS9 though still kind of skulky.
Hot take: parasites are particularly insidious when they’re stationary. Mosquitoes are the worst, but they’re more analogous to pirates: hit & run buggers. Sessile boys like hydatid cysts, ticks, mites, lice, and fleas learn to subvert the local order and just cheat the system like a macroscopic disease.
DS9 basically re-invented the Ferengi and the Trekverse is all the better for it.
Trill and Bajoran cleaned up too.
Armin Shimerman played a Ferengi in their first TNG episode. He felt his responsibility on DS9 was to redeem them from that performance.
And he succeeded.
I recall reading a long while ago that Gene Roddenberry had planned for the Ferengi to be the main antagonists for TNG, but after a couple episodes, market testing showed that people didn’t like them, so they ended up created the Borg instead as a new nemisis.
… Imagine an alternate timeline, where the borg had not decided the ferengi were unworthy of assimilation… and the combination of the two were the main antagonist. Totalitarian hive mind ruthless capitalist.
Looking back to early seasons, I can see that direction and agree with the focus groups lol. A while later in “The Price” they’re a lot more like the Ferengi in DS9 though still kind of skulky.
Hot take: parasites are particularly insidious when they’re stationary. Mosquitoes are the worst, but they’re more analogous to pirates: hit & run buggers. Sessile boys like hydatid cysts, ticks, mites, lice, and fleas learn to subvert the local order and just cheat the system like a macroscopic disease.
(Rules of Acquisition: Rule 9; “The Storyteller” [DS9])
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