Why were the Ferengi really dropped as main antagonists of TNG? They could easily have been made to be more intimidating, especially if they had been taller. I'm thinking the real reason was that the socialist Gene Roddenberry realized that it might have been a bit too brazen to have the Federation literally fighting capitalism, especially back in 1987.
Then again, it could have just been the Jews.
They're a joke, fucking look at them.
Now compare them with the Borg. I think they made the right decision.
Trek has always shit talked capitalism user
They simply too silly to be taken seriously.
It's always the jews
They looked dumb.
Agreed that the Borg were better, but if that Ferengi had been 6 feet tall and built like a Klingon, a relatively minor adjustment, they could be taken a lot more seriously.
DS9 Ferengi were best Ferengi. Roddenberry is a hypocritical hack. He talks a big game about peace and tolerance... right up until he comes across somebody with a different set of values and morals. Then they are "wrong" and need to be shown the error of their ways or go get fucked.
In DS9 you don't have to like a culture, and can even point out things you think are wrong with it, but if it isn't your culture then it isn't your responsibility to help change it unless you are specifically asked to. If Ferengi want to be hypercapitalist dickbacks that frequently do the equivalent of cock-stroking (lobe-stroking) during business negotiations then that is their perogative. Jadzia Dax could be good friends with Ferengi because she took them for what they were and acted within those reasonable expectations of their behaviour. If you never expect a person to be honest in the first place you can't be offended when they are dishonest.
she was pretty pissed when he started moving weapons
I think his main motivation was getting some of that Maquis Vulcan strange. If Jadzia knew about that part she would have been more understanding.
Also Cardassians were way better than Ferengi.
But generally Borg were the best baddies in 90's Treks. Just due to unknown factor and fact that they were very much dark mirror image of Federation.
>DS9 Ferengi were best Ferengi.
It's only show with major Ferengi characters.
The Borg also had some parallels with communism. This would have went over a lot better with late 80's/early 90's audiences than having the socialist Federation going up against the capitalist Ferengi.
So yeah, the Borg and Cardassians were bretty good, awesome actually, but I still think the Ferengi had a lot more potential as villains than what would end up being explored. All they had to do was make them bigger, meaner, and less goofy. The decision to drop them probably had a lot to do with the Star Trek creators (or at least those financing the show) not wanting to completely wear their ideology on the sleeves, so as not to alienate viewers.
This would be a much more compelling narrative if they ever did anything in tng that indicated they were trying to change the ferenghi, but they never did, in fact ds9 has more pressure for them to change and integrate, and far more change happened in to the ferenghi as a result of their interaction with the federation , so much so that the events in ds9 changed the economy/gender relations of the entire race. Pro tip that didn't happen in ds9 because they were totally cool with how the ferenghi culture was.
No, it happened because the Federation kept on keepin' on and the Ferengi Alliance had to contend with a social power that didn't want their latinum and was too big to be taken over by the future-space version of hostile buyouts and acquisition wars.
The decision to change the actions taken to change were always the Ferengi's own. The Federation never forced anything on them, they just acted as a role-model and were too big to be pushed around. Their societal model offered more to the dispossessed Ferengi, which made up more than half the population of males alone, not even counting the females still viewed as property.
DS9 should have been about a war with the Borg
There I said it
you are wrong
No
>DS9 should have been about a war with the Borg
That would have made diplomacy and politics pretty irrelevant.
The change in ds9 was due to active pressure on the ferenghi working and living on ds9, not solely due to passive role model. Quark was routinely bitched at from all the commanders and Otto, nog and what's his name got assimilated by Jake, that bar chick, and others via social pressure.
The ferenghi alliance never gave a fuck about the federation in tng, it's only in ds9 when the ferenghi on ds9 were infected that federation values started leaking into the ferenghi culture, and that's my entire point in response to the person in originally replying to.
>Federation: hey klingons, romulans, I think we have to forge an alliance to fight this evil
>Klingons: k
>Romulans: k
no, this won't work
What is interesting about a bunch of ships pew pewing in space?
>War with the borg
What war? A single borg cube wiped out the federation's first line of defense without any difficulty. The alpha quadrant was only saved from assimilation because they rescued locutus and used an exploit in the borg programming.
First contact and voyager shit the borg bed.
That happened anyway with the Dominion
yes after they fought among themselves and dragged the romulans into the war by killing their senator and blaming the dominion
there's no room for speculation with the borg and no possibility to negotiate anything, it would be fucking lame
I haven't seen voy but don't they negotiate with the borg somehow in that? Although the idea you can even negotiate with them in the first place is retarded.
my point is that the borg are basically space zombies, this is okay for a season maybe but not a whole series, especially if it revolves around a space station which would be the perfect setting for intrigues and shit which are pretty pointless when you fight for your survival against space zombies
Silly designed short arses, more concerned about money than empire building, come across as dumb, all the stupid rules about everything. Theyre better as comedy relief then anything else.
Yeah I hated the way they treated the Borg in Voyagers it just reduced them to Romulans/Kazon levels of threat. Janeway being the sole captain to figure out how to best them and fearlessly take them on in her tiny ship was just stupid.
Because the Ferengi are poltards long before 99.9% of today's denizens of shitpol were sperms in their deadbeat father's cigarrette chemical damaged scrotum. Anyone who comes across poltriggered will either retch or die laughing or both. Who can ever take then seriously.
Voyager and first contact legitimately ruined the borg.
The borg were the antithesis of the federation. And when they're first introduced they were an implacable threat that is legitimately spooky. The most powerful ship in the federation couldn't even dent the shields while the borg could slice up the enterprise with minimum effort and zero empathy.
The only way I could see it working would be ifa small Borg detachment launched an attack on DS9 only for the Dominion to turn up and give them a kicking, and announce themselves as friends and saviours, only for their subterfuge and politicking to be discovered, and then different factions emerging based on whether they wanted to ally with the new powerful empire or not.
First Contact wasn't as bad, it showed a massive fleet of ships still struggling with a small number of Borg. Though thee Borg plan wasn't particularly brilliant, it kind of made.sense.
The design of their makeup probably excluded the Ferengi from being taken seriously as a villain.
I mean seriously they have an ass on their heads. I could never stop staring at it as a kid.
>Why were the Ferengi really dropped as main antagonists of TNG?
Because sniveling Jew caricatures aren't very threatening, but they make excellent comic relief. Especially not compared to nearly unstoppable techno-zombies that are, in all honesty, a dark mirror of the protagonists.
>I'm thinking the real reason was that the socialist Gene Roddenberry realized that it might have been a bit too brazen to have the Federation literally fighting capitalism, especially back in 1987.
I feel relatively confident this is what happened. Consider that it's strongly implied that the Federation is this distributionist post-scarcity communist society. The Ferengi's defining characteristic is that they are hyper Capitalist even is a world where replicators exist and there is a proven model that works. Kind of like how the Romulans are portrayed as being capable of living in peace but deliberately choose to be not-Vulcan assholes.
That means they must go out of there way to do business for business sake with winners and losers out of cultural compulsion. That they will even sacrifice their own, or more likely, other's quality of life to make sure a market and not replicators distribute key resources. They would basically have to violently create scarcity where there need not be and then sell the solution at a for profit markup.
Delving into the alien mindset as a villain that would flesh this out pretty naturally starts getting into some severely uncomfortable political territory. Whether or not the DS9 writers were aware of what they were doing they were smart to never portray Ferengi society too deeply beyond a joke, especially in comparison to the Federation.
>it showed a massive fleet of ships still struggling with a small number of Borg.
It also showed the trick to beating them was pew pew. But really I was talking more about how the borg queen kind of ruins the borg in general.
I get what they where trying to do with having a sort of capitalistic villain that could highlight the issues with the economic recession in the early 90's and contrast the federations "socialism". Problem is that they made them into a capitalistic caricatures rather then actual threatening villains, which is why the ferengi worked much better in DS9 where they where the comedic relief.
Bit of a shame really, would have been interesting to see how they would have worked if they took them a bit more serious.
>It also showed the trick to beating them was pew pew.
The sacrifice of the Cube was intentional, the Borg told Picard where to shoot. It wasn't just happenstance that his old implants "leaked" information that would allow the Federation to "win".
>But really I was talking more about how the borg queen kind of ruins the borg in general.
The Queen is basically the same idea as Locutus. If they hadn't said she was "always" there, but rather was the new Locutus it probably would have worked better.
I watched that episode last night. They were goons. They stopped being intimidating as soon as the were revealed and only had a slight resurgence when only their dick whips worked on the surgace. Trash alien.
The difference is locutus was a drone created to act as an individual point of contact for the collective, he was still very much part of and slave to the collective. It was basically the Borg trying to assimilate the individuality of the federation into the Borg collective, which of course failed because the entire concept of the collective is antithetical to individuality.
By contrast the Borg queen was on top and apart from the collective, she essentially turned the badass race of space zombies that implacably assimilated everyone into a screwdriver, a tool to be used or left on the table according to her whims and feelings.
the ferengi in tng were fucking stupid, they were a complete joke
then ds9 introduced quark and he became one of the best side characters in all of star trek
>then ds9
a show about a shopping mall in outer space (with a "captain")
and stinky space hag
completely unwatchable, and still wondering how the franchise survived this train wreck
the dominion war was great though yeah a new series focusing on the borg exclusively (and forgetting that voyager and first contact ever existed) would be pretty great
you could essentially clone deep space nine's storyline to a degree, a several season arc about a giant war with the borg that engulfs the entire alpha quadrant, it would be pretty fucking cool and obviously pretty devastating - a lot more devastating than the dominion war thats for sure
but please, no fucking borg queen, thats just fucking stupid
>I haven't seen voy but don't they negotiate with the borg somehow in that? Although the idea you can even negotiate with them in the first place is retarded.
Only because even bigger threat, species 8472 was wiping out the Borg. Borg don't negotiate at will, they were forced to find unusual solutions.
This.
Fucking Borg queen. Suddenly we have a leader in leaderless collective. It could have been just a Locutus like Borg ambassador to give a villain for plebs, maybe some established character from TNG. Some captain or admiral of week.
>It also showed the trick to beating them was pew pew. But really I was talking more about how the borg queen kind of ruins the borg in general.
Pew pew is minor sin compared to adding queen into collective. Some stuff about Borg in Voyager was IMHO pretty interesting like the collective subconsious. Final episode was just too fucking much. Voyager should have made out only barely alive and maybe make a dent to transwarp network containing Borg into Delta quadrant for a while.
fucking pleb
here's your (You)
you could combine the borg with some dominion structure
let's just say that the borg actually develop a leaderless collective after the borg queen dies but elect some sort of representative with some degree of freedom like the vorta to make shenanigans and shit
Replied :^)
you don't understand, introducing a 'queen' (essentially a single minded ruler/leader) to a species that was touted as being 'a single consciousness' / hivemind completely contradicts the concept of the borg
the people who wrote the storyline for st: first contact should be fucking executed for writing such awful drivel and ruining one of the most interesting species/villains in all of sci fi
>Q
>various other 'God' entities
>Pah Wraith
>Borg
>Dominion
>other various factions either of the same strength or exponentially more powerful than the Federation
>Federation somehow survives all of this
What
Shalom.
Clearly it's the Sup Forumsacks that are triggered and not people like you that derail threads with unrelated issues.
I'm think I'm trolling you in antoehr thread. I said that single mothers are shunned in all cultures. You told me to stop replying to you and your wife's son
XD
>I'm thinking the real reason was that the socialist Gene Roddenberry realized that it might have been a bit too brazen to have the Federation literally fighting capitalism, especially back in 1987.
No, I think he realized how absurd and lame it would have been to try to make space jew rats into some looming great big bad. They're annoying and a constant pain in the ass type of threat. Not doomsday bad guys.
Friendly reminder that Dukat did nothing wrong.
>Then again, it could have just been the Jews.
>Because the Ferengi are poltards long before 99.9% of today's denizens of shitpol were sperms in their deadbeat father's cigarrette chemical damaged scrotum. Anyone who comes across poltriggered will either retch or die laughing or both. Who can ever take then seriously.
>Clearly it's the Sup Forumsacks that are triggered
There are actually people who argue that he did?
>Friendly reminder that Dukat did nothing wrong.
He lost.
Godlike beings dont care.
Otherwise you get Warhammer 40k. Where they do care.
I admit that thinking that ds9 is representative of trek is kind of a pseudo-progressive pseudo-forced bit of nonsense, the show was pure political propaganda, with subtlety in short supply
but it did an ok job being a tv show, I think people just mainly like the fact that it wasnt the same as the others
and because dukat was given plausible motivation, these same 'fans' can fool themselves into believing that it conforms with their values
>It was basically the Borg trying to assimilate the individuality of the federation into the Borg collective, which of course failed because the entire concept of the collective is antithetical to individuality
wow... really makes you think...
The gods are benevolent/uncaring and the powerful factions are far away.
Other than the height issue you raised, I agree.
It would have been great seeing the Federation fighting against tyrannical capitalism and losing.
I thought it was more "assimilation might go smoother if we have a face they can recognise and relate to, telling them they will be assimilated and resistance is futile" rather than wanting picard as an individual. They definitely wanted his knowledge of federation capabilities.
Locutus and the Queen were highly out of character for the Borg as a whole and should never have been conceived. They are the embodiment of jumping the shark.
>leather jacket while fucking water skiing
Is there anything Fonzie couldn't do?
>Turns into cartoon space hitler
>Bangs kai wynn
I can think of a few.
Yes, that's what it was, but from the Borg perspective they were like "this guy has a name and he talks directly to people, it's an individual!" Because they don't really get what that means, they are like a hive of sophisticated ants trying to figure out how this thing called individuality that they see as a prominent facet of the federation could be used to better the collective. It is completely counter to the nature of the Borg, so they just don't get it and it comes off as creepy and scary to the federation people.
Is user speaking in tongues?
Moogieee...
this thread
10/10 post
this
I think they made the Borg to technologically superior to realistically depict a war with them. They're best used for special occasions and had the Borg conquered enough space to be viable in that many quadrants a war would be redundant because with that amount of resources and coverage they would be unstoppable at that point. The best uses of them in Voyager and TNG was when they were a logical puzzle the crew had to circumnavigate to get back to safety. When we started seeing Borg cubes bite it by the hundreds to those insect fuckers they just became ridiculous.
The real problem with the dominion was that we saw them all the time but we had no real way of understanding or sympathizing with them as people because we always interacted with their mostly sterile and emotionless creations. Actors like Jeffrey Combs did their damnedest to make them interesting but the problem was there was no potential ambiguity in their motives for 95% percent of the encounters the federation had with them. It was always the same situations and the same motives so thee stories with them always felt routine and redundant.
>Why were the Ferengi really dropped as main antagonists of TNG?
>implying they ever were a main antagonist.
If the Ferengi were written realistically, they would be the most powerful race in Star Trek by a factor of 100.
Here are a few reasons off the top of my head,
>Since the prime directive is non-existant for them, they would be able to enter into trade agreements with primitive humanoid races. They would be able to trade technology for resources/labor.
>History has proven that Capitalism is 100x better at motivating a people to work than force, and communism just induces laziness. This would mean only about 20% of the federation population would actually be motivated to have jobs. If the Ferengi is anything like modern day America, their number of employed would be around 80%.
>It doesn't make sense for them to be as conniving as they are in the show. The potential for profit is much greater when there is a degree of trust between two businesses or entities.
t. Captain America