In this episode, we finally meet the mysterious Ferengi. One of their ships stole a “T9 energy converter” from a Federation outpost, so the Enterprise has been asked to chase them down.

As they approach an unfamiliar planet, some unknown force grabs the Enterprise and holds it fast. Its power seems to increase to match whatever power the Enterprise outputs, and it’s slowly draining their systems. Confused, the crew attribute this to Ferengi technology. Tactical reports that the ship’s power is sapped and they are nearly helpless.

In an effort to figure out what the Ferengi might be thinking, Picard and Riker question Data for reports. All the android can say is that they seem analogous to “Yankee traders” of the 18th and 19th century, and they’re examples of the worst kind of “capitalists.”

I’m not making this up; this is what Data actually calls them. So the main antagonists of today’s episode… are… really mean merchants?

We’ll learn more about the Ferengi later.

It gets better. Picard has a few contemptuous words about how nations once competed with each other. The barbarism! But of course the French were wonderful back then, and their flag colors were in the right order. (Picard really likes the French).

Sun Tzu? Really?

Studying the nature of their trap, the crew come up with a bold tactic – slowly power down, then suddenly crank up the engines and go to full warp, hopefully before the Ferengi can react. They start prepping.

RIKER: “He will triumph who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

PICARD: “Glad the Academy is still teaching the strategies of Sun Tzu.”

This is nice and multicultural and all, but I’ve read The Art of War. The English translation contains a few handy strategic insights, but for the most part, Sun Tzu’s advice just doesn’t seem all that useful.

He says things like “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.” Which sounds really impressive until you start asking questions like “How, exactly, do I make myself impossible to defeat?” As any general or martial artist knows, a lot can happen in a fight; there is no such thing as “impossible to defeat.” On top of that, sometimes you take deliberate chances with your safety in order to have a better shot at the enemy.

If I may get on my soap box for a minute, I think that what makes Sun Tzu’s advice a timeless classic is the same thing that makes it largely useless in an actual fight. Namely, it fails to be specific.

Take Picard’s quote above, about knowing when to retreat. It’s good advice. A good general does need to know what sort of engagements favor them and what sort favor the enemy, the relative strengths and weaknesses of each army, etc., etc.

It’s also the kind of advice that any cadet can pick up in any military school within the first week or so. “Pick your battles” is an age-old truism and you don’t need to read Sun Tzu in order to get it.

A lot of Sun Tzu’s advice is like this. “Pick your ground so that it suits you better than the enemy!” Again, he’s not wrong, but that’s pretty basic stuff.

When he does give specific examples, they usually make a lot more sense in the context of ancient China than they do today, let alone in an era of starships. For example, he classifies “ground” into a bunch of different categories that may have been relevant in China in 500 BC, but which really aren’t all that relevant today, and which only loosely correspond to types of terrain.

Sun Tzu also makes some rather overbroad claims. One of his more famous quotes is “All warfare is based on deception.” Um, no, it isn’t. Some warfare is based on deception. If you have a big freaking army and your enemy doesn’t, you can march your big freaking army into their territory and stab them until they give up. Ancient and medieval history is full of this kind of might-based warfare. There’s no deception involved.

A good commander knows how to use and recognize deception, that’s true. A big freaking army can be ambushed, tricked, avoided, cut off, split up, starved, poisoned, and even rendered worthless by cunning diplomacy. But that’s a different and narrower claim.

Maybe I’m not giving the guy due credit. Maybe the reason a lot of his advice sounds trite and obvious is that we’ve been using and adapting his teachings about warfare for the last 2500 years, and he was actually the first to say a lot of it. Maybe he deserves credit for laying the foundation for the next few millenia of warfare.

But even if that were true, it’s still not really a good argument for generals to study Sun Tzu. We’ve advanced a lot in 2500 years, and a good teacher can usually explain a concept better than someone 2500 years dead. I’ve personally gotten more out of random YouTube videos about Total War games than I ever got from The Art of War. Modern society isn’t just better at warfare, we’re better at teaching things, too.

Movies and shows like to trot out Sun Tzu to show how sophisticated and well-versed our heroes are. But as a martial artist and someone who plays military strategy games as a hobby, I’m unimpressed. I wonder what modern military experts think on the subject?

The Art of Moving On

You might think this whole giant rant about Sun Tzu is irrelevant to the plot. In fact…you’re absolutely right. But! I promise we’re going somewhere with this. Put a pin in Sun Tzu for later, we will in fact be hearing from him again this episode.

The Enterprise attempts their sudden-jump-to-warp strategy. It fails utterly. (Gasp!)

In consultation, Yar and Worf argue for trying to shoot the Ferengi with everything they’ve got. Picard is skeptical, thinking this tactic is neither viable nor wise. At Troi’s suggestion, they contact the Ferengi vessel and ask for “terms.”

After a tense wait, the Ferengi call back. To the crew’s shock, the Ferengi seem to think not only that the Enterprise is asking them to surrender, but also that the Enterprise can back it up!

In this conversation, we get our first view of the Ferengi.

This fellow says humans are hideous and repulsive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?

The Enterprise officers, noticing they are confused, start looking for alternative hypotheses as to what might be holding them. They suspect the Ferengi are in the very same bind. Looking for sources, they launch a probe to investigate this unfamiliar planet they’re orbiting.

Data delivers the results of the probe in a briefing, but he’s interrupted when he gets himself stuck in a Chinese finger trap that (presumably) some kids left lying around.

This man has an eidetic memory and can solve differential equations in his head. Behold.

Yet another opportunity for us to laugh at Data so that we don’t feel unsettled by how competent he is. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Picard helps him solve the thing so he can get on with the plot.

Now, I’m going to share what was running through my head at this scene.

JOE: “Oooh! Ooooh! They’re drawing a parallel between the finger trap and the energy that’s holding them in place! Someone on the planet’s surface is playing the Enterprise and the Ferengi vessel against each other! The harder they push, the worse it gets! They foreshadowed this at the start when they said the opposing energy increased to match their own! If they cooperate to reduce their power at the same time, they’ll be able to escape! To get unstuck, they have to stop trying so hard! Clever!”

Was I right? We’ll see!

The newly liberated Data explains that the planet was once home to part of the Tkon Empire, which boasted a population of trillions before it went extinct long ago. Apparently the Tkon Empire was advanced enough to move stars around and make entire planets their defense systems. Also apparently, this planet is generating the forcefield that is holding the Enterprise and Ferengi vessel in place.

Side note: the Tkon Empire fell when its sun went supernova. This seems kind of silly – what, they only had one star? And normally you can see supernovas coming a long way off. Like, millions of years of warning. Maybe some Star Trekkian cosmic event caused an early supernova, and it wiped out their capital, dooming the rest of the Empire? Bit more plausible, I suppose.

Or maybe a kid from a desert planet blew up their superweapon, the Death Not a Moon, and precipitated the death of their Emperor, allowing a galactic rebellion to overthrow them.

Hey, gotta save some material for the fanfics.

Whatever really ended the Tkon Empire, it reached all the way out here, because the planet has “no life signs.” (Really? None? Not even a breed of wild space turnips? Or do they mean humanoid life signs? For that matter, why’d literally everybody die?) This gives the Enterprise crew an idea – cooperate with the Ferengi to investigate the planet, thus simultaneously learning more about the planet and finding common ground with their mysterious rivals. This is a brilliant diplomatic choice, by the way, and I approve.

Picard negotiates with the Ferengi to send a joint away team. The exchange paints the Ferengi captain as greedy, distrustful, and easily offended, but he eventually agrees.

Data points out that the Ferengi captain’s image was somehow distorted. I wonder what that’s about? The Enterprise crew are concerned by the variously suspicious behavior of their counterpart, so they decide to bring the big guns on this away team mission. That’s right: Worf is going! You don’t wanna mess with a Klingon. Right?

Riker arrives on the planet…by himself. Evidently the forcefield thingy interferes with transporters. He starts collecting the other away team members. Evidently the forcefield thingy doesn’t interfere with transporters much, because they’re all nearby.

Crystals can do anything, man.

But before the away team fully reunites, they meet the Ferengi away team, who are armed and hostile.

The encounter on the planet’s surface is our first major conflict with the Ferengi. I wonder what they’ll be like! Could they be mighty warriors like the Klingons? Proud, emotional, competent adversaries like the Romulans? Mighty beings like the Q who pose deeply philosophical problems for our heroes?

Nope.

At last, a worthy foe!

Today’s villain-of-the-week: cringing goblins wielding glowing pool noodles. Don’t let the appearance fool you, though; those pool noodles pack a wallop. The Ferengi stun the scattered Enterprise crew. Their plan is to report that the away team tried to ambush them.

The Ferengi greedily admire the golden communicator-badges worn by the officers, and they cringe when they hear thunder, which is most of the time because the planet is pretty darn stormy.

Data is flat on his back pretending to be stunned. The stiff arms are a nice touch.

Worf initiates a brief scuffle, during which the Ferengi mostly fight by jumping on the Enterprise crew and trying to bite their faces off. Worf and Data prove their worth in combat, overpowering the Ferengi…at first, anyway. Somehow, despite fighting like a pack of nine-year-olds, the Ferengi manage to get the upper hand.

Until, that is, Lieutenant Yar shows up and trains her phaser on them. Well done, Yar. She tells them to stop moving, but, being idiots, they continue to scurry around in useless circles. So she tries to stun them with her phaser, but the giant crystals absorb the phaser blasts!

(Just once I’d like to see someone bring a gun on one of these missions. Energy screwery can’t mess with a projectile.)

The Ferengi try to retaliate in kind with blasts from their pool noodles, but, surprise, surprise, that gets absorbed too. Stalemate.

In another display of competence, the Enterprise away team quickly deduce that a) something activated the crystals, b) they absorb power the same way the Enterprise itself is being drained, and c) the whole planet is a power accumulator.

We soon find out why the crystals activated. Amidst impressive peals of thunder, whirls of energy converge to form a giant, ghostly face. The Ferengi, of course, cringe.

THE GUARDIAN: “Who meets the challenge? Who will it be?”

FERENGI MOOK #1: “Him!”

The Ferengi points at Riker, like a little kid trying to get another kid in trouble.

The giant face announces it’s guarding a portal to the Tkon Empire and materializes himself, turning into an old man in a cloak. He leans on a spear-staff-thing and looks very wizardly.

Gandalf? Is that you?

THE PORTAL: “Biped. Excellent.”

Huh. Apparently the Portal’s own species may not have been humanoid. (Oh, did you think that “Guardian” was a better name for him than “Portal”? So did I, but apparently Riker disagrees.)

Riker tells this “Portal” guy that he is really, really old and his empire is dead. The Ferengi accuse Riker of lying, and offer to serve the Tkon “at no profit.” If the Portal would kindly return control of their ship, they’d happily kill the human criminals…

THE PORTAL: “You are accused of deceit and treachery. Do you give yourself up for judgment?”

RIKER: “Yes. If you believe these accusations, then you certainly should act on them.”

I grant serious kudos to Riker for a) integrity and b) standing his ground.

In a series of blatant lies, the Ferengi accuse the humans of:

• Attacking them without provocation
• Planning to loot the Tkon Empire (“but we intercepted them!”)
• General deception
• Being “destroyers of legal commerce”
• Wearing gold
• Clothing their females
• Selfishly withholding vital technology from backward worlds

Okay, I’m kinda with the Ferengi on that last one. Everything else, though, is pretty obvious bullshit.

Riker makes an honorable showing, admitting to losses that resulted from the Prime Directive. The Portal proffers him a challenge “in the fashion the Empire has always challenged savages.” Worf wants to fight, but Riker stops him.

For this last bit, I’ll quote the Portal directly, so that you know I’m not making stuff up.

THE PORTAL: “You have a single chance for life. One only. What is the answer to my challenge? I offer a thought. He will triumph who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

The Portal does an elaborate spinny-thing with his staff-spear, and brings it down within an inch of Riker’s face. Riker doesn’t flinch. This impresses the Portal, but he still wants an answer.

RIKER: “Fear is the true enemy. The only enemy.”

THE PORTAL: “Unlike these little ones who close their minds, your mind holds interesting thoughts. Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will always be victorious. Why that thought, and who is this…Sun Tzu you revere?”

Obligatory smug grin.

Apparently, this little exchange is enough to win the Portal’s trust and friendship, and he starts chatting with Riker about Sun Tzu.

The End.

Seriously, that’s it. That’s the whole episode.

Well, the Portal does point out that he was impressed by the willingness of the Enterprise to cooperate and not shoot the Ferengi. And the Ferengi make one last-ditch cartoonishly awful attempt at deception (“we gave those words to him!”). But that’s all, folks, nothing else to see. Move along.

It’s a nice warm fuzzy ending. But. Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t help but wonder…

WHAT THE FLYING HECK IS GOING ON HERE?!?!?!

Let’s review.

First, the Portal quotes Sun Tzu. (why?)

Then, Riker offers a canned, clichéd response that has nothing to do with either Sun Tzu or the actual question.

Then, the Portal quotes Sun Tzu again, with another complete non sequitur. Presumably he lifted this quote from Riker’s mind, but it’s still unrelated to everything else they’ve said.

None of these thoughts are related to each other in any coherent sense, except in that they’re all conflict-related cliches, and two of them are from Sun Tzu. And why Sun Tzu? He’s human, he existed several millenia after the Portal’s time, he’s a member of an entirely different civilization, and as far as I can remember of his works he never says anything about fear!

We do get hints that the Portal is reading Riker’s mind (which, ew) but even that doesn’t explain why their conversation is basically just a series of non sequiturs utterly divorced from each other in meaning.

At the very end, Riker asks permission to beam a box of Chinese finger puzzles over to the Ferengi ship, as a “thank-you.” Picard, of course, grants it. So the finger puzzles do make an appearance, they just turn out to be utterly irrelevant to the plot. I assume they’re supposed to be a metaphor for the not-fighting-when-you-needn’t thing, but if so, they are bad at their job.

Riddle me this, O wise screenwriters. What does a finger puzzle have in common with fear?

I found this ending especially unsatisfying. I don’t feel like Riker earned the result he got. Or rather, his behavior did, but the baffling and nonsensical exchange between Riker and the Portal deflated the climax scene like a punctured balloon. And it didn’t have to be this way! There are a million better ways for that conversation to go than “When should we fight?” “Fear!” “Know thine enemy!” 

I guess they can’t all be winners.

Oh, and the Ferengi spend the entire interaction hopping around, making faces and clawing gestures at Riker and occasionally interjecting with blatant lies. Speaking of whom…

The Ferengi: Laying It On Thick

The show tells us that Ferengi technology is on par with the Federation’s, but I find it hard to imagine how a bunch of sniveling gremlins managed to build a starship. They remind me of the Skaven in the Warhammer universe, or a particularly nasty breed of goblins. To be fair to the Skaven, they somehow do manage to build stuff.

Let’s look at what we know about the Ferengi.

• They offer their second officer’s life as part of surrender.
• They are not only ugly as sin, but they repeatedly comment on how ugly humans seem to them.
• They seem to have good hearing (must be the giant ears), but this is only relevant because it makes them cringe at loud noises.
• They are twice compared unfavorably to “Yankee traders.”
• The Ferengi captain appears greedy, distrustful, and quick to take insult.
• The Ferengi away team come up with a half-baked plan, against orders, to kidnap the Enterprise crew.
• They are fascinated by the gold communicator-badges the Federation wears. You know, because gold.
• Data says they are “stronger than they look,” which might explain how they manage to get the upper hand against Data and Worf when they have the fighting skill of toddlers.
• They are shocked and appalled that human females fight. And wear clothing. And don’t obsequiously serve the males.
• They speak Common, but badly.

I wouldn’t normally highlight the language barrier, but Star Trek seems to assume that everyone speaks perfect English or can be translated into it with a bit of computer crunching. (This is how they learned about the extinct Tkon Empire). The Ferengi are the only species we’ve encountered thus far who speak English but who do so like stereotypical Neanderthals.

The show paints the Ferengi in such a cartoonishly unpleasant light that I can’t help but feel they’re trying to make a point about capitalism.

In this episode and others, the show repeatedly emphasizes the Ferengi’s interest in “profit,” with a tone I can only classify as utterly contemptuous. The Ferengi make repeated references to “destroying value”, “business opportunities,” and “profit,” often in the same context that has them at their most cringe-worthy (like being horribly sexist).

In contrast, the show leans heavily on the idea that the Federation doesn’t use money and that they consider the concept of profit obsolete. Even the normally cosmopolitan Picard has trouble finding the right word for “trade.” Yes, really.

Aside: I struggle with this, I really do. Market economies have many, many flaws, but I struggle to imagine a civilization of independent minds managing to survive without some kind of currency. I could maybe imagine a world in which necessities and even many luxuries are free and well-distributed, but not one with literally no money. Humans have been known to come up with all sorts of proxy currencies in the absence of a state money supply – shells, grain, cigarettes, ramen noodles, packets of mackerel…

Anyway, back to the Ferengi. Now, I’m all in favor of shows making an occasional political point. In fact, Star Trek does it all the time. It can often be subtle, brilliant, and darkly funny when they do. But sometimes the hamfisted politics can get a little bit much, and I feel like the Ferengi cross that line. This episode doesn’t just show a clash of cultures highlighted by flawed characters, like the complex dynamic we saw in Code of Honor. The Ferengi are a flawed species, a  suspicious and cowardly hive of nincompoops who inexplicably have Federation-level tech. And these crass, cowardly gremlins are supposed to represent “Yankee traders,” aka “people who care about profit.” This is a little too blatantly unfair to let go.

And for the record, I am not making this point in defense of capitalism. I would be similarly annoyed if the Ferengi had been portrayed as dumb and aggressive bear-monsters who take stuff because they think they need it more. A straw man is a straw man, regardless of whether you’re using one to be unfair to capitalism, socialism, or any other idea or ideology in human conceptspace. (Like, say, the concept of logic. Grumbles in Vulcan.)

I seem to recall seeing TNG episodes that are a little kinder to the Ferengi. Perhaps the writers realized their error and toned it down.

I certainly hope so.