4.16 — “Bar Association”

4.16 — “Bar Association”

Plot: A dispute between brothers inspires Rom to organize the workers at Quark’s Bar into a union, to the extreme dismay of Quark and the Ferengi Commerce Authority. Meanwhile, Worf moves his quarters onto the Defiant to escape the chaos of DS9.

Thoughts: This episode has the veneer of comic diversion, but it is of deepest significance for Rom, Quark, and Worf. Comedy is serious business! It is strange to reflect that, thanks to teleplay writers Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Ira Steven Behr, the Ferengi episodes are now among my favorites. That’s just about as weird as when the Lwaxana Troi episodes became favorites on TNG.

It’s brave to show what a character looks like under his mask, when he isn’t putting on a public show for others. Armin Shimerman has never been better, revealing Quark as cruel and peremptory, but finding the limits of his conscience. Fine acting abounds everywhere on this episode; which exceeds the standard set on TNG where only a few characters were exceptional.

Is the episode more about Nog, or Quark? We have rarely seen character development done this well on any Star Trek series, not even TOS, which was a different type of show.

I enjoyed the many callbacks to TNG, overt and subtle. Appropriately, the episode was directed by LeVar Burton.

And labor organizing is a topic well worthy of Star Trek! I guess it didn’t fit into TOS or TNG, where this kind of unrest would be out of place–no one was ever exploited. I’m so happy I’m watching this series.

4.5 out of 5 industrial actions.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bar_Association_(episode)