Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Business as Usual

**** (4 stars out of 5)
Quark's murderous cousin Gaila talks the destitute bartender into selling weapons. Odo is so livid that he's swallowed his lips! No, sorry, that's his normal face.

It's off to jail... oh, wait, not so fast! Weapons Sales are only illegal if you're not a close, personal friend of the Bajoran Government. And Hagath's Cut-Rate Weapons helped free Bajor.

Hagath the Horrible is a crazy rich sadist who fires any minions who cross him. Fires them out of airlocks. For some reason, Gaila plans to retire and let Quark hang around with Hagath from now on.

Adding to Quark's woes, it turns out the Federation types who bailed him out when he was censured by the FCA are all peaceniks. Dax especially drops Quark's friendship like a hot, smoking plasma rifle mowing down millions of innocents with very expensive bullets.

Troubled by friendlessness and dreams of the dead, is it possible the Ferengi has grown a rudimentary conscience? How will Quark get out of this one? Which mad genocidal despot will disintegrate him first?

"Business as Usual" is great but raises some questions.Where, pray tell, does the Federation get its many fine phasers and photon torpedoes? People MAKE them, right? Does Dax think THOSE people are unclean? Are bat'leth manufacturers subject to such ostracism? Laser distributors? The guys who install the energy arrays that keep our quaint little space station safe from Invading Space Lizards?

How is gun salesman worse than Quark's regular job- pouring addictive poison?

Dax's shunning of Quark seems hypocritical coming from someone who engages in vengeance killing with her Klingon pals like a hobby. But I guess she's holding Quark up to his personal standards instead of his cultural ones. He IS a self-professed "people person", after all.

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