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Originally Posted by Glom
Definitely have the Ferengi as the good guys. But what about the sissy-isation of the Ferengi in 'The Dogs of War' [DS9]?
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Thats not a real problem. Firstly, the military capability of the Ferenghi is well established.
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TNG Season 2, Ep# 47: "Peak Performance"
BURKE: Captain, sensors picking up a Ferengi warship closing at warp five.
PICARD: Did you input that new code?
BURKE: Yes, sir!
PICARD: Mister Worf -- I didn't give you enough credit, continue the simulation. (the Ferengi ship drops out of warp and starts pounding the
Enterprise)
PICARD: Divert all power to shields!
DATA: Sever modified beams, engage phasers and target!
PICARD: Stay between the Hathaway and the Ferengi! Where are my weapons?
BURKE: Unavailable, sir! We cannot disengage the modified beams -- the connections have been fused!
DATA: Captain, the Ferengi have broken off their attack. Drop shields. Transport the away team aboard.
BURKE: Transporter functions gone, sir!
DATA: Shields reduced to one-fifth intensity. Our shields will not withstand another assault.
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This incident and the Battle of Maxia give us some interesting insights Ferengi military capability. Their ships appear to pose a serious threat to the Federation's finest warship, and Data estimates that a single salvo would be sufficient to knock out shields which are down to "one fifth" strength. It seems reasonable to extrapolate that therefore, five salvoes would eliminate the shielding of a fully functional Federation starship, which seems to place the Ferengi warship on rough parity with the state of the military art in the Alpha Quadrant. This makes sense in light of heavy Ferengi trading activities; what they couldn't invent, they probably purchased. In fact, it seems probable that actual Federation technology is built into the Ferengi warship, since Worf was able to use the same trick on their ship that he did on the Enterprise (and without knowledge of their access codes!). It seems as if there's some sort of "backdoor" into the Ferengi computer system which he was able to exploit, but this would require extensive knowledge of their system.
This derivation of military capability from economic and trading power should sound familiar. Its fundamentally how the US does business. Allowing for the painfully obvious prejudices of the Star Trek scriptwriters, it seems probable that the Ferengi are, in fact an attempted parody of Americans. (Ferengi is an indian word for westerners in general and Americans in particular; it comes from the same root as the Thai Farang). Another interesting insight is this.
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TNG Season 2, Ep# 47: "Peak Performance"
FERENGI TACTICIAN: Destroy your own rather than endure the ignominy of defeat and capture?
BRACTOR: I did not think the Federation had such iron.
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To say this is a different picture from the "cowardly Ferengi" described in DS9 is an understatement of heroic proportions. The Ferengi have apparently been the victims of a smear campaign, based on the attitude of a few cowardly individuals and precipitated by Federation hostility toward capitalism. This is a generic pattern; for example
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 1: "Encounter At Farpoint"
ZORN: Captain, the Ferengi would be very interested in a base like this.
PICARD: Fine. I hope they find you as tasty as their otherpast associates.
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First comment we have on the Ferengi showing that Star Fleet has apparently disseminated negative misinformation to its officers yet a few minutes later
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NG Season 1, Ep# 7: "The Last Outpost"
Picard VO: Captain's log, stardate 41194.6. We are in pursuit of a starship of Ferengi design. Our mission is to intercept and recover a T-9 energy converter which the Ferengi stole from an unmanned monitor post on Gamma Tauri IV; a theft which automatic scanners recorded, providing us with the long awaited opportunity to make close contact with a Ferengi vessel. If we succeed in this chase, it will be Starfleet's first look at a life form which, discounting rumor, we know almost nothing about.
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So, despite Picard's earlier slander of the Ferengi race we now discover Star Fleet has almost no knowledge of the Ferengi. Picard had fought a Ferengi vessel before, but as we later discover in "The Battle", he didn't know who they were at the time. In VOY 1 Caretaker, we discover that, by the time the Federation has familiarized itself with the Ferengi, it had already "educated" its youth with these unfavourable characterizations, as Tom Paris and Ensign Kim both demonstrated with their statements about the Academy warning all cadets about Ferengi dishonesty. Odd behaviour for a society that claims to have "evolved" beyond racism.
In fact, by the time of DS9, the scriptwriters treatment of the Ferengi has drifted away from the anti-American bias of TNG and is much closer to the Nazi propaganda treatment of jews. That is a shift that could well be used in the proposed new series as an example of the corruption of Star Fleet.