Saturday, September 8, 2012

Family Business

**** (4 stars out of 5)
The Ferengi Commerce Authority (FCA) holds Quark accountable. You see, his mother Ishka has been earning profit! They send a Liquidator to stomp on the problem. So Quark (with Rom in tow) flies home to quash their "Moogie" before the government sells her.

"My house is my house," says Quark by rote.
"As are its contents," Liquidator Brunt replies.

Moogie Ishka never got the hang of subservience, but now she's a radical. She wears clothes and everything! Quark's head still rings with childhood taunts. "Your mother won't chew your food. Your mother talks to strangers."

Quark shouts at his moogie for her insolent ways. "You're not like other females. You like to think about things. You have opinions."

Moogie wants to push her society towards enlightenment. It's got a long way to go.

(Also, I don't quite know what I'm supposed to think about Rom's use of his vibrating ear machine. Is this merely good aural hygiene?)

The three bars of latinum Ishka made from her beetle farm is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. She's got her own financial empire under multiple aliases.

"Moogie's got the lobes for business!" Rom observes.

Rom spent a decade longer in the hobbit-hole than Quark did, and he learned the truth about their father. Keldar was a good family man, but a business failure. "He couldn't hold onto latinum if you sewed it into his pants!"

I love Rom so much here; finding his voice in the family as peacemaker.

For love of her sons, Moogie "confesses" and surrenders her fortune to the FCA. (Well, a third of it. She's not the type of cash-hungry lady goblin to repent or relent.)

Star Trek magazine and I UTTERLY disagree about "Family Business". They give it one star and call it the worst of the season.  I think it's remarkable. Our first look at planet Ferenginar! Three wonderful new characters in Andrea Martin's cunning Ishka, Jeffrey Combs' blunt Brunt, and Penny Johnson's Kasidy Yates (the freighter captain selected by Jake to be his dad's new love interest.)

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