Ferengi-centric episodes are hit and miss. “The Magnificent Ferengi” is definitely a hit. The episode competes with ’The House of Quark” as my favorite Ferengi themed installment.There are two points I quibble with. One, as a movie buff, it irks me the title is a play on the classic film The Magnificent Seven, an Americanized version of Seven Samurai. The story has more in common with Ocean’s 11 than either The magnificent Seven or Seven Samurai. Two, Quark decides he and his fellow Ferengi are going to take on Dominion kidnappers themselves rather than hire mercenaries. The decision is necessary to set up the comedy, but terribly hard to believe.
Nevertheless, I enjoy the episode so much, I overlook both problems.
Quark an Rom’s mother, Moogie, is kidnapped by the Dominion as she is returning from surgery on Vulcan. She is still the grand Nagus’ main squeeze, so he offers a big reward for her rescue. Rom wants to hire the biggest, baddest aliens they can find to take the mission, but quark says no. they will recruit fellow Ferengi seen throughout the series thus far for the mission--and cheat them out of the bulk of the reward, of course.
Nog is cajoled into joining in even though he is now a Starfleet officer. He arranges for their training in a holdout, but it goes badly. Quark comes to realize is idea is not going to work, so he comes up with a better plan.
He calls in a favor from Kira, who owes him for the rescue in “Sacrifice of Angels,” to give him Keevan, the Vorta captured in “Rocks an Shoals,” to use in a prisoner exchange.
Unfortunately, the alternate plan goes south when Keevan is accidentally killed shortly before the prisoner exchange is to take place on Terok Nor. Through some morbid ingenuity, the corpse is reanimated and used anyway. It does not completely work, so a firefight breaks out. It is silly, but light years ahead of the Gungans versus the druids in The Phantom Menace. the Ferengi rescue Moogie, kill the Jem’Hadar, and capture Yelgrun, the Vorta played by none other than Iggy Pop.
Yes, that Iggy Pop.
Out of all the relatively frivolous episodes that have occurred right after the opening six episode arc, “The Magnificent Ferengi” is far and away my favorite, even with its flaws. The novelty of Iggy Pop playing the villain does not mean anything to me, by the way. I just the episode based on all aspects but his appearance.
Ratig: **** (out of 5)
