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| The Great Sages of Takar: The Ferengi! |
Voyager detects evidence of a recent wormhole in their current area of space. They scan the system and find one "M" class planet, Takar. It is a world in the Bronze Age, but the signature of an Alpha Quadrant replicator is evident.
Chakotay and Tom Paris beam down in native garb to investigate further. What they encounter is a village where seemingly everyone is looking for profit. A poet will recite one verse free, then charge if they want to hear the next verse. A merchant eyes their newly-replicated shoes with naked greed, bartering with them for "ears," a symbol that will allow them entry to the temple.
The temple is the source of the replicator signature. Inside, the Great Sages live in comfort with women and tribute, worshipped almost as gods by the natives of this primitive planet. Which explains the entire nature of this society, because the Sages are Ferengi!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: Let me get this straight. She has a valid opportunity to get the Voyager crew home. Tuvok points out that while the Ferengi exploitation of this planet is reprehensible, it is not something covered by Starfleet regulations. And, not for the first time in this series, she squanders an opportunity to serve the interests of her crew for the sake of her upset morals. I suppose we're meant to see her as admirable, but a leader's first duty is to his or her people. By that measure, her priorities here strike me as badly askew.
Chakotay/Tom: Of course, this being Voyager, Janeway only faces a token arguement with Tuvok; the crew as a whole shares her priorities. "We can't just leave the Ferengi there to continue exploiting these poor people!" Tom exclaims, with Chakotay backing him up. When exactly did these two become joined at the hip? Weren't they supposed to barely be able to tolerate each other? This episode badly needs a Seska, or even a Carey, to invoke a little pragmatic self-interest.
Neelix: And so it comes to this: An episode of Voyager in which Neelix is the highlight. Ethan Phillips' always-enthusiastic performance is well suited to the scenes in which the Talaxian disguises himself as "The Grand Proxy," the messenger of the Grand Nagus, in an attempt to persuade the Ferengi to leave on their own. These scenes have a certain flair that's missing from the rest of the episode. It's also nice to see an episode in which Neelix is actually funny and likable, rather than intrusive and irritating. Like Harry Kim, this is a character who could have worked, if only the writers had treated him better.
THOUGHTS
For anyone who wondered what ever became of the two Ferengi lost in the wormhole in TNG's The Price - Well, this one's for you!
I'll admit it: I just can't see the point. The Price was a seven-year-old episode at the point at which this aired, and it was hardly one of TNG's highlights. I suspect only a fairly small percentage of the viewing audience even remembered that episode while watching this one. Still, I'd call it a happy use of continuity, if only the result was a good episode.
False Profits is not a good episode. It's not a disastrous one, either. There are a handful of funny moments, and I genuinely enjoyed the scenes with Neelix (a statement that, sadly, I can't often make). The Ferengi behave as you would expect them to, but they resist Janeway's interference with a refreshing degree of genuine cleverness... though it helps their resistance that the Voyager crew take a collective 50% I. Q. cut for the sake of this story.
The thing I can't get past is that Janeway is given a perfect opportunity to get her crew back home. What does she do with it? She decides to make the return home a secondary priority to playing "interplanetary police" to the Ferengi. Wouldn't it make more sense to report the situation with the Ferengi to Starfleet once she's back? If Harry's trick to attract the wormhole works (and it does), then Starfleet can always send people back through. That's assuming the officials actually agree with Janeway's somewhat strained reasoning about this being the Federation's responsibility.
Instead, she decides she must handle it herself. Then she decides she must handle it in such a way that the Ferengi are seen to leave voluntarily (lest this be a 15 minute episode). Then she decides that the Ferengi don't need any proper security, and that a single extra is adequate guard for them. All of this at a critical time for the ship. Does she secretly like being in the Delta Quadrant? Is she deliberately sabotaging good chances to get home in order to stay? At this point, that's the only thing that makes any reasonable sense to me.
In any case, a watchable episode that's far from the series' worst. But Janeway's characterization is at an all-time low here, the rest of the crew's not much better, and I'm simply agog at the way the characters are made to behave stupidly in order to sabotage themselves.
Overall Rating: 4/10. And only that high because of the bits with Neelix.
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