Driven to the breaking point working for his brother Quark, Rom leads his fellow workers in a strike -- which soon attracts the attention of Brunt, from the Ferengi Commerce Authority. Meanwhile, Worf is reaching a breaking point too, frustrated by the chaos surrounding life on Deep Space Nine.
Two sisters, Barbara J. Lee and Jenifer A. Lee, had an opportunity to pitch story ideas to Deep Space Nine, and reportedly machine-gunned over a dozen in an hour. Their last, "Rom leads a labor strike against Quark," was the keeper; the writing staff bought that pitch and begin developing it as a possible B-plot for "Rejoined." That episode wound up with too much story to carry a B-plot, and when the writers tried (again, unsuccessfully) to relocate the idea, they began to feel that it also was being forced into too small a space. It then became the main plot of its own episode.
Armin Shimerman, who sat on the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild, was eager to depict a serious subject close to his heart -- even though the episode had a comedic tone, and even though as Quark, "I play management in the episode." But he actually has a nicely dimensional part here. Though he is the heavy, written more like stone cold, first-season Quark, he does get strong-armed by Sisko at one point, and brutally beaten by Brunt's thugs at another. (His injuries are a spectacular bit of makeup on top of makeup.)
Max Grodénchik, on the other hand, was worried that writing Rom out of the bar was the beginning of the end for his character -- that the character would change too drastically, the writers would lose interest, and he'd soon be out of a job. He need not have worried; this episode shows a leadership potential in Rom that would ultimately augur the end of the series for him. Not only does he blossom in new ways after getting out from under Quark's thumb, but the track is laid here for his romance with Leeta. (Grodénchik would later say he thought the writers responded to the Beauty and the Beast quality of Rom/Leeta. He also noted that "Dr. Bashir is the hunk of the show, and Leeta left him for me. That made me feel really good."
It's not just Quark and Rom in particular, but Ferengi in general that are built out a lot by this episode. The idea of a union is so antithetical to their culture that most Ferengi can't even bring themselves to say the word. We see all the begging, bribing, and trickery Quark tries before he'd ever consider negotiating with a union. (His holographic bartenders are a fun sight gag.) And ultimately, we get the delicious return of Jeffrey Combs as Brunt to force the situation to a conclusion. His casual misogyny and constant threats remind you that many Ferengi are a lot worse than Quark.
There's fun use of the other characters on the periphery of the story. O'Brien gets to brag about union history in his family (that didn't meet with a happy ending for that family). Odo gets to voice his frustration with the disruptive strikers, bristling at Sisko's orders to let them protest. And there's a great moment when Bashir and O'Brien's game of guessing who will cross the picket line turns into a brawl with Worf. (Sadly, off-camera -- though the cut to the three of them in a holding cell is a great laugh.)
This B-plot-turned-A-plot of a story does get saddled with a B-plot of its own, though... and it isn't an especially effective one. We've already gotten some "Worf doesn't fit in on Deep Space Nine" stories, and this feels like a retread of similar ground. Indeed, with this coming nearly two-thirds of the way into the season, it doesn't quite feel right for Worf to only now decide he'd rather live on the Defiant, sleeping on a cramped mattress-free slab. It does give an opportunity for more fun flirtation between Worf and Dax, though -- from their continuing debate over weapon choice to her "housewarming" gift of favorite Klingon operas.
Guiding the actors through this great character material in both A- and B-plot is LeVar Burton as director. He's good not only with the actor he knows well from The Next Generation, but with those he's working with for essentially the first time here. He also does some flashy things with the camera, including a complex crane shot that moves from the first floor picketers at Quark's up to a second floor conversation, and a camera that moves past a bickering Quark and Rom to show their argument (and the hallway set) from both directions. It's all directed with confidence.
Other observations:
- I mentioned the great makeup for the injured Quark. Another great makeup gag comes at the top of the episode when Rom pours a tonic in his ear. (When you stop to think of the logistics of getting that to stay in without leaking anywhere, and then getting it out again for another take without ruining the makeup, it feels like a magic trick with a secret you don't quite understand.)
- Rom speaks openly of giving himself oo-mox, which must surely be Star Trek's first (and only?) reference to masturbation.
- When Odo taunts Worf with incidents of lax security aboard the Enterprise, he references things that happened in actual episodes of The Next Generation.
- There's a great background gag of Brunt's Nausicaan thugs entertaining themselves by throwing darts at each other. Because of this joke, the performers cast were actually experts at darts, specifically chosen for their accuracy at this (and, naturally, padded up quite extensively).
- I don't know if this had registered with me before, but the badge on Brunt's necklace is itself a bar of latinum. Fitting.
1 comment:
The part of this episode that sticks with me is where Rom basically describes modern-day capitalism, when he says that Ferengi in his position don't want to do away with oppression -- their goal is to *become* the oppressors.
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