Dear Johnny Fartpants - oops, I mean Johnny Fanboy!

I have a couple of Quark/Ferengi nit-picks for you, both of them from the fourth series of Deep Space Nine.

In the episode Little Green Men, O'Brien and Bashir give Nog a guidebook to Earth as a going-away present. However, it is written in English. We know this because the cover is in English and later on, when Nog shows Quark the page about Gabriel Bell, this is in English too. So are we to assume that the Ferengi can speak English? Er, no, because in the same episode they cannot understand the US Army people when the universal translators are on the blink.

In the episode Rejoined (the one with the famous lezzie kiss - cor!) Quark tries to get to grips with Dax's past lives and goes through a list of them with Bashir and Kira. He seems confused by the fact that the Dax creature has been passed on to so many people. Surely he already knows this since he took on one of Dax's previous personalities in the third series episode Facets?

Yours,

Simon Betts

Johnny Fanboy replies:

Thanks for your nit-picks, Mr Butts - oops, I mean Mr Betts!

The first one is pretty easy. Universal translators only work with spoken communication, not with writing. Therefore Nog must be able to read English. It seems reasonable that the Ferengi would learn how to do this, especially with there being so many human customers in Quark's bar, and with Nog wishing to join Starfleet. However, they never needed to learn to speako the lingo because of the universal translators.

On the other hand, it could be that the guidebook is actually written in Ferengi, but we the audience see the text in English because of a bit of dramatic licence.

As for Quark's confusion in Rejoined, perhaps this is due to the fact that the personality he took on in Facets, Audrid, was Dax's fourth host, rather than one of the later ones. Therefore he wouldn't necessarily have been aware of any subsequent hosts, including Torias, upon whom the conversation later focuses.

Alternatively, it could be that certain races are unable to retain memories from joining as well as Trill hosts do. For example, we never hear about any awkwardness between Commander Riker and Dr Crusher following his "possessed" canoodling in the Next Generation episode The Host. So perhaps the Ferengi are as forgetful as humans are when it comes to joining.

Return to: