DS9 Flashback: Rules of Acquisition

Women's rights and equality are getting more attention today than they did in 1993, when Deep Space Nine first aired "Rules of Acquisition." And while I'd like to think that the needle has moved at least a bit in the last 25 years, there sure is a lot about this episode that still feels current.

A new Ferengi waiter is on rise at Quark's. The shrewd and creative Pel becomes a trusted confidant just as the Grand Nagus arrives to put Quark in charge of a massive business negotiation with a race from the Gamma Quadrant. What none of them knows: Pel is actually a woman, disguising herself as male so she too can pursue profit in a chauvinist society. What Pel didn't plan on: she's fallen in love with Quark.

This story was pitched by writer Hilary Bader to The Next Generation, with Riker becoming romantically entangled with Pel and Dr. Crusher being the first to figure out Pel's secret. It was quickly realized to be a better plot for Deep Space Nine, where there were more recurring Ferengi characters and a greater interest generally in their society. Staff writer Ira Steven Behr would craft the final script, and while he certainly brought Ferengi expertise to the episode (having basically cracked how to do Ferengi well in "The Nagus"), it seems like much of the empathy for Pel must have been there in Bader's original take.

There's a nice spectrum on display here for the Ferengi. We see them at their best, through the eyes of Dax. She tries to explain to Kira that they're great because they're fun, and you always know what you're going to get. Dax is also the one who sounds Quark out at the end and realizes he really did love Pel; most would think the Ferengi incapable of love in that way. We also see the Ferengi at their worst, embodied by Grand Nagus Zek and his treatment of Kira in the episode's running harassment subplot.

We also get the Ferengi in a believable middle ground, as Quark comes off in the end. There are degrees of "wokeness." Quark is able to accept that a woman could be as successful at business as a man. He's just only willing to stick his neck out so far. He stands up for Pel inasmuch as it gets him out of hot water with the Nagus, but he's not willing to give up his own life as he knows it for love or equality. Still, this is a step on the road of making a feminist out of Quark (and he will take more in future seasons).

While the episode is explicitly about sexism, it also touches briefly on LGBT issues in intriguing ways. When Dax figures out that Pel is secretly in love with Quark, her assumption is that Pel is gay -- which is clearly of no issue whatsoever to her. (When Pel reveals the real truth, Dax is floored to learn Pel is actually a woman.) There are also moments where Pel's secret plays out rather like being in the closet. For example, when Rom snidely comments on appropriate behavior for a woman (not knowing one is in his midst), it plays much like someone making a distasteful gay joke around someone they don't know is gay.

In the overall arc of Deep Space Nine, this episode is a milestone for including the first mention of the Dominion. The writers have acknowledged that this early on, they didn't know exactly what they were building to. Still, they knew they wanted to build to something specific. As Behr put it, there needed to be more than "just unexplored space" in the Gamma Quadrant. "They did three years of that on the Original Series, and seven years on The Next Generation." Plus, with Voyager then in development, and again all about meeting new aliens every week, there was a keen desire to put something unified and anti-Federation on the other side of the wormhole.

That said, the Gamma Quadrant doesn't quite get started off on the right foot here. The Karemma -- mentioned here as powerful players in the Dominion -- hardly ever show up after this. The Dosi race, who Quark tries to negotiate with here, feel like cheap Klingons: generically short-tempered and violent, but with ridiculous face makeup. There's also the redundancy that the Ferengi were trying to expand into the Gamma Quadrant in the last episode we saw about them, yet they're only now actually getting around to it.

The episode also goes a little too far over the top in moments. Pel gets up in Zek's face to an unrealistic degree, given what she has to hide. And then there's the bedroom scene between Quark and Pel, which Behr himself acknowledges went too far into "farce." It's definitely the weakest sequence in an otherwise serious episode.

Other observations:

• In another amusing use of Morn, this episode starts on him snoring, asleep on the Promenade. He doesn't seem to have a life outside of waiting for Quark's bar to open.

• The Ferengi certainly like complicated games. Tongo somehow involves dice, two sets of playing cards, a spinning roulette-like wheel, and poker-esque betting. The writers would only continue making it more opaque in future appearances.

• It's fitting that the episode "Rules of Acquisition" would establish that there are 285 of them in all.

• There's a great camera shot where Zek lowers his hand mirror, replacing his face with Quark's.

• There's an even greater makeup trick -- the moments when Pel tears off her fake male ears to reveal real (but still, you know, fake) female ones.

• Adding to the feeling of the Dosi as wannabe Klingons, the main male Dosi is played by actor Brian Thompson, recognizable for being brawny on a lot of sci-fi shows... and in particular for playing a Klingon before.

Despite a few weak elements, I think this episode plays well as a whole. And though we never got to see Pel again, this episode did set up for some good feminist Ferengi tales down the road. I give "Rules of Acquisition" a B.