Parth Ferengi's Heart Place

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Parth Ferengi's Heart Place)

Not a bad episode, but at the same time one of the bigger disappointments of the season, and now that I've seen it a second time I've come to realise why: we never get to see Rom and Leeta. Oh, I know we get both of them here with the original actors voicing their characters after a quarter of a century (leaving aside Chase Masterson's reprising Leeta for 'Star Trek Online,' which doesn't count in Trek continuity), something I'd really looked forward to. Not as much as the visit to DS9 last season, but the changing of the guard on Ferenginar with Rom becoming Grand Nagus and planning to radically change their way of life was just one of so many aspects of late-24th Century life in the Alpha Quadrant that 'DS9' left us wondering about and which 'Voyager' never satisfied, nor did 'Nemesis,' and as the final 24th Century-set productions there were many questions like this that made the time period ripe for exploration and continuation. Sadly, 'Picard' let us down greatly on that score, even its final season didn't go into detail on the state of the various races and planets, and even then it was decades later so we'd missed that immediate aftermath of the next few years, one reason 'LD' is pleasantly situated: to explore what things are like at this time.

We can debate how successfully or not they've done that - like all modern Treks they've tended to shy away from the political details and culture building as if with so many different time periods being produced at once they're shy of stepping on anyone's toes and contradicting what other series' are doing, a major stumbling block and good reason not to have so many different people working on so many different productions. But they have at least given us occasional updates and glimpses of the familiar, only this one was only partially successful. I said we didn't get to see Rom and Leeta, and I meant we don't see anything other than their public personas as negotiators for entry into the Federation. That they're trying to fleece our heroes, or at least try them out and see how much they can get away with at least shows that Rom's new Ferenginar isn't too far from the old and that he hasn't lost his yen for profit, although, actually, he never made a very good Ferengi - that was the point of putting him in power at the end of 'DS9,' so he could lead a gentler, fairer empire, as envisioned by his own Moogie, and with Leeta as his right hand (she's given the title 'First Clerk'), you'd think his reforms would have changed things much more radically than they seemed to have done. Instead he comes across as a bit of simpleminded buffoon, though that was always (well, almost always), an act on 'DS9' to disguise the fact he was actually pretty cunning in his own way when it came to what he really cared about.

I didn't buy that Leeta had become this hard-nosed negotiator, she was always soft and uninterested in such things generally, and we never saw them together in a domestic setting where they might be discussing the talks and whether the Starfleet delegation were falling for their tricks. And obviously no mention of Nog or the wider Ferengi family, so I felt a real disconnect as if we weren't being afforded the chance to really get to know them again and hear what's been going on in their lives and how they've adapted to life in such powerful positions. It's the usual problem of putting mysteries or twists ahead of actual drama and character in modern Trek (or in general!), and I felt sad such a major opportunity was misspent like a Latinum chocolate teapot. We're left on the outside so Freeman can get her clever trick off and get the contract back on track. It's also somewhat disappointing that they didn't pull the trigger on a Ferenginar that's part of the Federation (though we see Ferengi in Starfleet in the 32nd Century of 'DSC'). Perhaps it was a sort of inside joke about the fact 'DS9' took seven years of ostensibly bringing Bajor to the point where they joined, and yet never did, but I think it just as likely they didn't want to do anything too drastic in an animated series that would affect all that came after. They've tended to shy away from any big developments and concentrated on smaller races like the Pakleds which hadn't been all that developed in the first place.

At least they got the general Ferengi culture right, whether it was the rain coming down (as it should), the garish signs and lights, the rounded, opulent architecture, it was true to the impression we'd had. Monuments to lost profit that are awarded equal status with Dominion War Memorials, Dabo and other gambling filling the library, even down to the detail of Rom having a Hupyrian servant (female!), was a nice touch, not to mention the machine that charges you to pay for the various hotel facilities! And they weren't shy about the Trekferences - not that they ever are, but despite it being mostly set on Ferenginar they squeeze in all kinds of things, like Quark's Federation Experience Bar and Grill (he's obviously got a good deal from Rom since he also has Uncle Quark's Youth Casino, too!), featuring various connections and backdrops to, mainly 'TOS,' but also 'TNG,' or Mariner's fiddling about with one of the famous self-sealing stem bolts from 'DS9.' At the same time there was a weird insistence on having Earth culture be so prevalent, whether it be the Federation Experience or the Ferengi 'biker gang' that Mariner starts a fight with when out with her old friend Quimp (from 'Envoys' in Season 1), and especially the TV shows Boimler becomes addicted to (like Neelix in 'Future's End') where all the characters wear 20th Century Earth clothing - I could understand if they were making more of a comment on human culture, but it just seemed a bit too lazy (in much the way all our characters speak in such contemporary lingo), unless... I could believe the programmed content was specially selected to most appeal to the viewer, and as Boimler is from Earth everything was chosen to hook him?

Those Ferengi are the masters of manipulation when it comes to garnering a profit, and lest we assume our Starfleet characters wouldn't have come with Latinum, Mariner even states that Starfleet will 'foot the bill' for their activities on Ferenginar. Ordinarily I'd be finding fault with such a statement, but this is the home of the Ferengi, after all, where everything costs, so it was highly probable! There are other improbables such as Starfleet assigning officers to create travel guides, since surely that would be a bit beneath the duty of a Starfleet officer. Then there was the reveal from Ransom that there are no married couples on the Cerritos. At all! That's very farfetched unless they're saying only the sad and lonely get assigned to the California-class (in which case you can also say these second-class vessels would be more likely to be responsible for low-level assignments such as travel guide duty...), or it may just be the series reflecting our current times where less and less people make that formal commitment? But still, on a ship that size and with that many crewmembers... The real reason was to give Tendi and Rutherford a situation where they have to pretend to be husband and wife while masking their true feelings that they are rather more fond of each other than they'd ordinarily like to admit, with much embarrassment ensuing (shouldn't Tendi blush green?), some of which stemmed from things becoming a little too crude and inappropriate, but in general it was a nice, sweet subplot to play around with and I wonder if it's one that will develop further.

Boimler doesn't really have a subplot, TV addiction keeping him out of play (though he does get the best gag of the piece when he laughs at the absurdity that even the crime drama he's watching has adverts within it, then we notice the picture on the wall above his head in the shape of the Paramount mountain with stars above it that suddenly twinkle!). We find out a little more about Mariner (and a little more than she wants to know about herself, it would seem!), when Quimp challenges her when she says he's changed, with the good line about change being what happens when you aren't stuck in a perpetual state of immature rebellion - if even a Ferengi can recognise the state she's in it makes you wonder! We hear she's been a Lieutenant, JG before, but was demoted after crashing an Oberth-class ship, so that must be an interesting story, pray tell? She's not at her best, drinking too much, throwing up, being rowdy, and Quimp's right, if she doesn't change she's going to be in this unregenerate state all her life and that's not really going to make for very good Trek where the point of the characters is that they solve problems, including their own, not languish in the doldrums like Raffi. It's not good to see her failing so badly, but at least it does lead to that personal understanding, even if Quimp somewhat regrets being so truthful. The downside was that she doesn't get any punishment at all, Ransom has almost nothing to say on the matter when it should have been a diplomatic incident, at best a personal one, bringing Starfleet into disrepute - she should have been given a dressing down, but it seems the makers of current Trek think all kinds of irresponsible behaviour is fine and dandy these days, discipline being a major missing piece in general (even while 'LD' is a little better at it than the others).

The idea that Ferengi are banned from arms sales is an early reminder of the kind of changes Rom was going to bring into his society, and they do at least tie the ongoing arc of various ships being attacked into the main story, but it is a little tenuous: would Rom really be 'desperate' for Federation resources because of one little ship 'disrupting' trade routes? I find it hard to believe it would make much difference, it can't be in all places at all times and it really seems to have had a very low impact across the season other than an ongoing linking threat. I also didn't feel Rom would come across so incompetent and childlike, almost a parody of what the writers think he was like, but I have to put it down to being an act on his behalf in order to hoodwink Starfleet. And it was a good twist that Freeman was able to trick them into signing with the caveat they had to bring the Klingons into the Federation, too! Although, why did Rom scrawl his name across a PADD like he's signing for a contemporary delivery rather than the usual form of a thumb scan (which I think even takes a tiny blood sample to seal the deal, if I'm not mistaken), as seen many times on 'DS9.' It's just another of those little niggles where you wonder if the writers knew their Trek all that well... And while I'm griping, I don't like modern Trek's insistence on Genesis devices being a common weapon or piece of technology. They've done it before in this series, I think, and they had one in 'Picard,' too, I just feel like the research for that was abandoned after the shocking events of the Trek films which showed its matrix was unstable and was too dangerous for its potential use as a weapon anyway.

The reference to Rom being the next 'Lonz' I thought at first was talking about Quark's action figures, but he was called Lorg Latinum I believe, so Lonz was a mystery to me, maybe that was intentional? But Moab IV was a good Trekference (made by Admiral Vassery in his third appearance after 'Moist Vessel' and 'Crisis Point' - I don't think Fred Tatasciore's Shaxs had any lines this time), though I had to look it up in the Encyclopedia since it'd been a long time since I'd last watched 'The Masterpiece Society' on 'TNG.' However you look at it, Rom and Leeta's return was always going to be the key part of the episode, and as much as it was lovely to see such important 'DS9' characters brought back it wasn't in the way I'd have preferred. Like other Trek actors reprising their roles as voice-only I felt Chase didn't sound much like Leeta at all, not that she had any Leeta lines to bring her back to it. At one time it would have been enough for me to simply have the joy of much-loved characters returning no matter whether they were used well or not, but I'm not so easily pleased these days and we've seen too many old characters abused or mischaracterised, or simply changed, even recast as they can't allow any to simply end now that Trek is more like malleable comic book fare than quality science fiction drama with a 'real' history. I suppose on balance I'm in favour of these appearances since time is running out before we'll be losing all these older actors, but please, give them something worthy of their legacy, don't merely slap an idea together for the sake of it. Not that that's likely to be much of a problem as we go from huge Trek to minuscule Trek now the wheels have fallen off the money train, and if this is the last we ever see of Rom and Leeta perhaps this will come to carry more meaning. Perhaps.

**