“What is a… zu-wop?”
“The Last Outpost” would be a great episode of Star Trek if it weren’t for the Ferengi. The Ferengi remain generally regarded as one of The Next Generation’s most spectacular early-run blunders, which isn’t entirely fair — taken in their full measure, the Ferengi were a fairly solid idea for a villain species, and the elasticity with which the “Yankee trader” concept eventually stretched around the further development of the Ferengi race (somewhat on TNG, but to a much greater and more successful extent on Deep Space Nine) demonstrates that Roddenberry wasn’t entirely out to lunch when he envisioned a group of bad guys based on human capitalism run amuck. (Fine-tuned further, the Ferengi would be essential to any modern incarnation of Star Trek — the Goldman-Sachs of the 24th Century!)
“The Last Outpost” begins with an almost submarine-like tension as the Enterprise matches wits with a Ferengi vessel (the Ferengi, at this point, have never been directly encountered by Starfleet before), and we get a strong sense of the inter-personal architecture that will become the series’ paradigm (Picard calls executive officer conferences twice in the first fifteen minutes, to gather opinions, assess options, and rely on each of his team members’ key strengths). But as soon as the viewscreen light’s up with Star Trek’s first glimpse at a Ferengi face, you can hear the air rush out of the room with the same whoosh-pop that greeted our ears when the Tsiolkovsky blew the emergency hatch in “The Naked Now.” The Ferengi are key contenders for the most completely misdesigned creature in the history of science fiction. The gigantic mouse-ears wrapping around the head would be one thing, but the Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel buck-teeth are what really seal the deal (and singlehandedly eliminate any Ferengi actor’s ability to deliver a single line of dialogue straight). The Ferengi can never be in any way menacing, because they just look so indescribably stupid.
Armin Shimerman is in the episode, which is charming, only in that he goes on to give the definitive Ferengi performance on DS9, and it’s nice to see him get a piece of the thing early on. But (alongside Tracey Walter, shortly to become Bob the Goon in Batman!), Shimerman has no fucking idea what to do with the makeup job or the costume or the downright hysterical laser-whips that the Ferengi get saddled with here. I miss the whips, only because I’m so inextricably into goofy concepts; these things look like unfolded pool noodles and actually succeed in making the Ferengi less menacing than they were, even five minutes ago, when they were just a stupid-looking face on a video screen. And meanwhile, arms are flailing, legs are coiling, screams are issuing forth, and mouths are gaping open for no reason other than that those prosthetic teeth must have really hurt. As full-body creatures, the Ferengi in this episode are like a pack of jumping monkeys, and any of the finer points of “The Last Outpost” as a piece of storytelling (character dynamics, a solid space combat story, and a marginally successful away team adventure) evaporate under the villain’s crushing bulk.
Like the tribal Africans in “Code of Honor,” the Ferengi (and, to be sure, the T’Kon planet and its Guardian as well) in “The Last Outpost” smack so ringingly of the original Star Trek that one wonders if Roddenberry simply approved them because they were the kind of Star Trek he was used to. Next Gen figured out pretty quickly that a far more modern sensibility was required – but when the away team beams down to a soundstage planet with backlit purple skies, I can’t help but smile.
Nice asides in the episode itself begin to give a sense of life on the new, Galaxy-class starship Enterprise: kids underfoot in the briefing room; Data’s finger puzzle conundrum; and the omnipresent physical reliability of Worf. In four episodes, Star Trek: The Next Generation has gone from concept to community.
One further aside: I’m deeply fond of my Ferengi action figure from Playmates’ first Star Trek: The Next Generation line. I bought it at the gift shop at Universal Studios Hollywood in 1993, and it (inexplicably!) captures the “Last Outpost” design of the species, complete with fur cloak and laser whip. Retro-newschool awesomeness.
Update: For dumbass likeability I’m giving “The Last Outpost” three Enterprises out of five.
My first presence on the internet was a Geocities site back in 1997, and having nothing better to do with it, I blogged about the new episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager that aired each week. Blogging The Next Generation is like that – for Star Trek: The Next Generation, every single episode, on blu-ray.