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sshbpodcast · 8 months ago

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Character Spotlight: Rom

By Ames

Among your A Star to Steer Her By hosts, Rom might be the most polarizing character from all of Star Trek. Some of us (and you all know when I’m talking about Chris) worship the ground this grand nagus walks on. And some of us (oh hello, I’m Ames) would rather throw him out an air lock. His rather offensive depiction as someone who seems to have low intelligence ends up contradicted by his otherworldly engineering skills. His actually very funny scenes get offset by how his whole character becomes a goofy punchline. His Ferengi values are deplorable and yet his character journey and love of his family are commendable. And that voice…

All that to say: this blogpost is going to be our biggest roller coaster ride yet.

So get ready to dig into a bowl of tube grubs and keep your tooth sharpener handy as we dig into the moments we adore about Quark’s lesser brother and the moments we detest about him. Read on below and listen to this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:01:34) for all the Ferengi gossip. And don’t forget to call your moogie.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

You saved your brother’s life Let’s start off with the good stuff. In “Necessary Evil” when Trazko is pillow smothering Quark, Rom screams and screams for help, foiling the assassination plot and saving his brother’s life. And you know what, it’s actually a pretty funny button when Rom screams again when he realizes that, with Quark still alive, he won’t be inheriting the bar any time soon.

I would be proud to have a son in Starfleet Even I, a bonafide Rom hater, can admit that his relationship with his son is one of the best things about his character. We see him stand up to Quark (a rarity!) and support Nog’s desire to join Starfleet in “Heart of Stone” and we’ve got to give the guy credit for wanting Nog to pursue his dreams of becoming better than his father, low bar as that may seem.

The Ferengi not-so-Benevolent Association When the Nagus’s personality has gotten rewritten in “Prophet Motive,” he somehow ends up making Rom the senior administrator of his new Ferengi Benevolent Association. And you’ve got to give Rom credit for seeing a chance to scheme that even Quark didn’t notice, as he embezzles money from the foundation before Zek turns back to normal. He’s got the lobes!

Moogie’s got the lobes for business In addition to the lovely father-son relationship with Nog, Rom’s relationship with his moogie is also extremely sweet. He eventually supports her profit-making scheme in “Family Business” even though it’s illegal for females to make money, tricks Quark into coming to terms with Ishka, and by the end of the episode is in on the plan to hide some of her profits from Brunt, FCA!

My son’s happiness is more important to me than anything, even latinum It’s worth mentioning how supportive Rom is of Nog again because in “Facets” he foils Quark’s nefarious plan to sabotage his Starfleet Academy exam, even threatening to burn the bar to the ground because he places his son’s personal journey so highly. He also goes to Garak to have Nog’s cadet uniform made personally, which is just about the cutest moment in the show.

Our union, united, will never be divided Rom proves to be a champion of the laborer in “Bar Association” when he starts up a union for Quark’s bar to fight for better pay and working conditions. Again, it’s another practice that’s illegal under Ferengi law, but that doesn’t stop Rom (even when it gets Quark attacked), who rallies his band of waiters and Dabo girls together with confidence we’ve never seen before.

Number one dads! We don’t get a lot of scenes between Sisko and Rom, the two best dads of the station (sorry Miles, but neither of these proud papas left their child to die in the woods). When Jake and Nog are quarreling over their odd-couple habits in “The Ascent”, the two fathers concoct a scheme to get them to talk out their problems and be friends again by pretending there are no other quarters available.

Do I have a reason to stay? Maybe it’s because Lewis Zimmerman comes across as such a cretin, but it feels like a victory when Rom asks Leeta out at the end of “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” and she decides to stay at the station instead of leaving to become Dr. Z’s sex object. Even though everyone already knew she’d say yes, it takes him the whole episode to muster the courage, but let’s take the win.

Self-replication. That’s the only answer. Rom’s contradictory character traits are nothing if not fascinating. Sure, he couldn’t find a cup of water if you dropped him in a lake, but he still comes up with the ingenious idea to have the cloaked minefield also be self-replicating to take on the Dominion in “Call to Arms.” Moments of sheer brilliance like this make Rom a character of simultaneous simplicity and complexity.

I walk through minefields Rom’s profound bravery is on display during season six when he works with the resistance to undermine the Dominion occupation. And it all caps off with “Sacrifice of Angels.” Rom may not have had time to prevent Damar from taking down the minefield, but he still sabotages their weapons array, giving the prophets the time they needed to save the day.

We’re not commandos, we’re negotiators What could have simply been a farcical play on The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven gets a fresh take when Rom has a rare epiphany in “The Magnificent Ferengi”. The Ferengi don’t have the chops for fighting (except for Leck, whom we love), and Rom points out that they should treat the release of Moogie as a business deal, something more in their wheelhouse.

A kinder, gentler Nagus Rom’s entirely hyperbolized character arc concludes with him becoming Grand Nagus in “The Dogs of War.” Sure, it’s definitely entirely out of nepotism because his mother had put him there, and she’s also definitely going to be the one ostensibly in charge because she can pull his strings, but what a journey! And he’s so magnanimous about it that he even gives the bar back to Quark!

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Worst moments

Not next to that human boy. I don’t want you to have anything to do with him. Onto the bad stuff! In “A Man Alone,” Rom doesn’t even have the caricatured voice yet, but does start the series with all the typical toxic Ferengi values. It takes a battle for him to agree to let Nog attend Keiko’s classroom, and even when he does, his anti-hooman racism shows when he won’t let Nog sit with Jake, just as Sisko didn’t want his son hanging out with that Ferengi trash either.

Now go to your room. And no studying. A few episodes later, Rom pulls Nog from Keiko’s school in “The Nagus” after getting criticized by Zek for allowing his son to learn from a hooman female. It’s one of Rom’s biggest faults (and Quark’s too): his preoccupation with displaying as a typical, profitable Ferengi even among people for whom their value system is hot garbage. Rom at least eventually overcomes it.

Rom’s. Nice name for a bar, don’t you think? Another case to make that point: Rom becomes the lackey of Zek’s son Krax and helps in the attempt to kill off Quark in “The Nagus.” It’s not until later that we see more brotherly love, one-sided though it may seem. But this early in the show, Rom is much more of a typical Ferengi, obsessed with amassing power, fame, and fortune above all else.

Ferengi, Romans, Countrymen: Lend me your ears We here at the podcast really rooted for Pel in “Rules of Acquisition,” a female who really has the lobes to break free of the government’s oppression of her gender. So when Rom outs her to Quark as a female (after a scene way too comically goofy of him literally looking through Pel’s socks to find incriminating evidence), we can’t help but start siding against him, the dirty rat.

You know, come to think of it, my ear’s bothering me too Like I did with the Quark post, I will call out all the uncomfortable uses of oo-mox whenever the show sinks to such a level. We see Rom trying to trick Faith Garland into giving him oo-mox in “Little Green Men” – while his son is actively getting it! – and I just find it so gross. For how much oo-mox is played up to be a sexual act in this show, this is sexual assault, plain and simple.

Too. Much. Oo-mox. And to make things grosser, we get even more oo-mox references a couple episodes later in “Bar Association” when we learn that Rom has given himself an ear infection from too much oo-mox. And it’s self-inflicted. So basically what we’ve learned from this scene is that Rom masturbates so much that he gives himself an infection, a detail I wish I never had to learn.

Even. More. Oo-mox. I’ve got one more oo-mox mention to get out of my system because I’m just so angry every time it comes up. Literally right after Rom has admitted to rubbing his ears raw to Leeta in “Bar Association” and she shows some sympathy for him, his response is to request oo-mox from her! They’re not even dating at this point! It’s disgusting. I hate it. Minus a hundred points.

The better to hear you with Speaking of Leeta, it’s exactly a season after this that Rom finally asks her out in “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” (as we mentioned above!). But! This is a) after we learn that his first wife Prinadora swindled him on their wedding extension contract like a chump, and b) after we watch him literally tuning his ear to eavesdrop on Leeta and Zimmerman’s conversation. And somehow he still never gets the hint she’s into him. Like a chump!

If you liked it then you shoulda put a Bajoran earring on it I’m just gonna lump what a shitty partner Rom is to Leeta into one screed. In “Ferengi Love Songs,” he tries to make her sign a Waiver of Property and Profit just because Jadzia and Miles were teasing him about not being very Ferengi like. This after he started wearing a Bajoran-style earring, which strikes me as on the questionable side of cultural appropriation.

Later in “Call to Arms,” we see Rom trying to suggest Leeta’s wedding dress literally be a couple handkerchiefs and a loincloth (gross) and then once they’re married, he decides she’s leaving the station before the Dominion rolls in, without her getting a single say in her own life (more gross!). Why are all the men in this show so shit at relationships!?!?

You said the reward was twenty Shockingly, Rom’s incompetence hasn’t come up as much as I expected, but his ability to ruin things through miscommunication and shenanigans is on special display in “The Magnificent Ferengi.” He blurts out that Quark is cheating the other Ferengi out of reward money, riles up the rest of the team, and thus gets Keevan killed because he can’t keep big mouth shut.

Foul ball! I’m not alone in hating on the campy mess that is “Take Me out to the Holosuite” but Rom is so disruptively, dangerously bad at playing baseball that it warrants being on this list. How he makes it as far as he does in the tryouts only speaks to how terrible Sisko is at coaching. The guy breaks Quark’s damn head. That’s how bad he is. It goes past being funny to just being idiotic.

That’s why the lady is a scamp We have space for one more bad “Rom is a nincompoop” joke that doesn’t land. In “The Siege of AR-558,” we’re tortured with Rom’s deliberately atrocious cover of “The Lady Is A Tramp” just because Ira Behr really needed to shoehorn Vic Fontaine into as many of the final episodes as possible, and it shows because it’s just another lowbrow, asinine, bottom-feeding gag. Check that off the list.

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Well, that may have gone off the rails but whenever I have to sit through oo-mox jokes, I get testy. And sadly I already know there’s going to be more of that next week with our final Ferengi spotlight on Nog! So make sure you’re following along to catch that, join us as we continue our watchthrough of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, engage in negotiations with us on Facebook and Twitter, and stop making oo-mox jokes!

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sshbpodcast · 7 months ago

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Character Spotlight: Garak

By Ames

No one here but us plain, simple tailors this week on A Star to Steer Her By. We’re finally scrutinizing fan-favorite recurring character Garak, who’s definitely more complex and nuanced than even some main characters we’ve discussed before. As we assembled our classic Best and Worst Moments lists, we found that Garak has the most moments that somehow end up in both. That’s how morally (and physically) grey this guy is.

So let’s get our measurements taken as we spotlight DS9’s resident Cardassian spy, played so stunningly by Andrew Robinson (have you read his book yet? It’s amazing). Scroll on below or decode some ciphers with us on this week’s podcast discussion (jump over to 48:23). Of all the moments we’re spotlighting, which are the best and which are the worst? My dear reader, they’re all best moments. Even the worst moments? Especially the worst moments.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Let us haggle Our very first introduction to Garak in “Past Prologue” sets him up as mysterious, sneaky, and downright sassy. It’s always nebulous just how far his covert information extends versus how much he’s ever just toying with Julian, but in this early episode, he helps the doctor uncover some shady dealings that the Bajoran terrorist Tahna Los has been engaging in. And it’s delightful.

Schemes within schemes Garak and Bashir team up again in the season two “Cardassians,” in which Garak sees through decades’ worth of Cardassian scheming (the best kind of scheming) to expose Dukat’s war orphan plot. The details are convoluted and Rube Goldbergy, but the tailor puts together all the pieces and concludes that Dukat is looking to undermine Gul Pa'Dar, some-freakin’-how.

Personally, I find this style a bit too radical Listening to Garak’s smoothtalking is always extra fun because he’s always saying more than is just on the surface. Even when he doesn’t have to! In his own way, he warns Quark that Natima Lang is in danger in “Profit and Loss.” By the end of the episode, he goes so far as to shoot Toran, saving Quark’s lady love and her students before they go “out of fashion.”

My best friend, Elim The first episode to appear on both lists is “The Wire” because it’s just so Garak. While he never tells Bashir the truth once, he’s at his most vulnerable when he’s telling his various Elim stories. In his own Cardassian way, he connects with his dear doctor and expresses things about himself that, though not empirically true, are him at his most real. And the shippers rejoice.

Major, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so ravishing We give Major Kira major props for her role in the stunning “Second Skin,” but Garak plays a large part as well. When Kira and Ghemor’s backs are up against the wall, Garak comes through for the DS9 crew. And like when he killed Toran in “Profit and Loss,” he’s able to put his Cardassian patriotism aside to kill the hell out of Entek and quip about it at the same time.

The spy who loved me It’s no wonder people ship Bashir and Garak so much when there are episodes like “Our Man Bashir” to fan the fires. And when things go awry in the holodeck, Garak is able to quip his way through the Bond-style holoprogram that they find themselves trapped in, all the while mocking what Julian seems to think the spy world is actually like. And he pulls off a tux pretty well too!

Excuse me, my dungeon awaits So many times that Garak saved the day have seemed to just be convenient for the character, but he’s especially heroic in “By Inferno’s Light.” He fights through his fears to go into the claustrophobia closet in the Jem’Hadar prison and remote into the waiting shuttle. Without Garak doing what needed to be done, surely the Jem’Hadar would have killed them all.

I promise you I will come back While the relationship between Garak and Ziyal always seemed kind of one-sided to us, we must admit that it was good for both characters to have someone whom they could relate to on the station. We see between “In Purgatory’s Shadow” and “By Inferno’s Light” that they care about each other, though sadly Garak never understands why before her untimely death.

A very messy, very bloody business Another episode that belongs on both lists is “In the Pale Moonlight.” We already gave Sisko some guff for this one, so let’s start off by being impressed by the layers of Cardassian scheming Garak does. Sure, it’s unethical and kind of monstrous, but it’s also a thing of beauty watching all the pieces of Garak’s plan come together to trick the Romulans into getting into the war. Not only can he live with it, but he sleeps like a baby.

Alan Turing, eat your heart out Garak uses some of his Obsidian Order talents to do some code breaking for the Federation in “Afterimage.” His arc in the final season of DS9 is a hell of a journey because he knows the work he’s doing for Sisko and crew will hurt the Cardassia he loves, but he also knows it’ll be for the best in the end to rid the quadrant of the Dominion so they can start rebuilding.

We might have a revolution on our hands Speaking of the Cardassia that Garak loves, he joins Damar and Kira’s little resistance in “The Dogs of War” and goes down to the planet to incite a revolution against the Dominion. When even Damar has opened his eyes to the atrocities the Founders are commiting in the Alpha Quadrant, then you know that it’s got to be something worth fighting for.

The last Weyoun In the siege of Cardassia Prime in “What You Leave Behind,” Garak gets to be the one to shoot Weyoun 8 after the two chirp at each other first. Turns out this is the last of the Weyoun clones, which Garak has firmly put to rest as the Federation ousts the Dominion forces from Cardassia. Garak’s story finally complete, his exile has ended in time to return to the ashes.

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Worst moments

Nothing to look forward to but having lunch with you We’ll also see later in the series that Garak isn’t one to prioritize his mental health, so his abuse of his feel-good wire in the titular “The Wire” portrays how bad he is at taking care of himself or getting help when he is at his lowest points. When he attacks his friend and doctor when he’s going through withdrawal, you just wanna see him get better because this isn’t healthy, Garak.

Initiating counterinsurgency program level four Though Garak apparently has access codes that no doubt Sisko revoked after “Civil Defense,” he still utterly fails to stop the station’s counterinsurgency program from locking out the Starfleet personnel. In fact, per the “Attention Bajoran Workers” protocol, he’s made things that much worse by insisting they have to shut down life support only for a laser ball to replicate in Ops.

You can’t waterboard a goo It’s hardest for us to forgive Garak from ruthlessly torturing Odo in “The Die Is Cast” just to get back in the good graces of Daddy Tain… but we’ll probably do so anyway. We see just what Garak is capable of with these glimpses into his Obsidian Order past. We can absolutely easily picture how he could torment someone with just his unblinking stare. His eyes. HIS EYES!

But have you considered… murder? I may have found it adorable for Garak and Bashir to play spies in “Our Man Bashir,” but he has no idea how holoprograms work. Garak is so fast to jump to the conclusion that they kill everyone that it leaves one’s head spinning. This isn’t real-life spying, Garak. This is Julian’s sexy adventure, so of course the answer is seduction, not murder, and you should’ve known that.

Is this a date or an assassination? Ziyal is looking for company and invites Garak to sunbathe on rocks like the lizards they are… and Garak spends the whole of “For the Cause” caught up in highschool drama of what Ziyal’s inventions are. Does she like him or LIKE him? Or does she just want to lure him in to present his head to her father later? It’s all below Garak, frankly, when he could just, I dunno, talk to her.

Something swift and painless and preferably bloodless I gave Quark most of the stink for this one, but I can’t let Garak off the hook either. It’s a complete missed opportunity for “Body Parts” to necessitate Quark asking Garak to assassinate him when instead he could have enrolled Garak into some even more nefarious scheme. Garak himself should have suggested faking Quark’s death and it would have been excellent.

They’re dead. You’re dead. Cardassia is dead. I always found Garak’s plan in “Broken Link” to be tenuous at best and contrived at worst. He tags along to the Gamma Quadrant for seemingly no reason, then it turns out he wants to ask the Founders if any of the Cardassians from “The Die Is Cast” are still alive (a possibility never alluded to before), then he straight up tries to destroy the Founders’ planet until Worf beats him into submission. Huh?

It looks like I’ve captured your last piece, Chief The pretty decent horror episode “Empok Nor” has got a lot going for it, but every single time they made the kotra metaphor more and more blatant, I started checking out. Dear writers, your metaphor stood on its own without you announcing it twenty-five times. Have a little confidence that your themes are working because it was a good one… until it wasn’t.

Do you feel lucky? Do ya, Chief? But that is far from the worst thing Garak does in “Empok Nor.” The psychotropic drug is mostly at fault here, but that doesn’t mean Garak feels completely innocent. He straight up murders the Cardassian sleeper guards AND crewman Amaro in cold blood, and then kidnaps and threatens Nog so he can get at the Chief, taunting him like a serial killer the whole time.

Star-crossed lizards The sweet friendship Garak strikes up with Ziyal belongs on our good list for sure, but frankly the romance between them never quite gelled for us. We see in “Call to Arms” that they kiss goodbye when she flees the station before the Dominion swoops in, and it just feels… unearned? Garak admits in “Sacrifice of Angels” that he doesn’t know what that was all about, and neither do we.

When the devil asks you to dance, you say yes I may have marveled at Garak’s precarious plan in “In the Pale Moonlight,” but that doesn’t mean I condone any of it. Even the writers make it clear in Sisko’s actions that he finds it reprehensible how many casualties there were to pull it off: the cold-blooded murder of Vreenak (and his innocent guards!), the assassination of Grathon Tolar, the deaths of literally all of Garak’s contacts. This one’s on Sisko’s list too of course, but he at least knows it’s wrong.

You’re not worthy of the name Dax One final episode that’s on both lists. Classic Garak, playing both sides. In this case, it’s more evidence that Garak does not seem to value his mental health because, when he’s suffering panic attacks and more claustrophobia in “Afterimage,” the first thing he does is lash out at his therapist, Ezri Dax, who certainly doesn’t deserve it! The poor thing.

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Well I hope we got in some cutting remarks about the good tailor of Deep Space Nine. Next week we’ve got another frequent guest star of the station to spotlight: Keiko O’Brien! Stay tuned for that while also tuning in every week as we venture through Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast. You can also quip with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and remember: the truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination.

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