4x25 Body Parts

[7.2/10] A funny comment circulated its way around the Trekkie faithful recently. It pointed out that to his Enterprise shipmates, Spock is seen as a stiff, stoic, strictly logical stick in the mud much of the time. But to his Vulcan counterparts, he’s viewed as comparatively wild and rebellious given how much time he spends with humans and how many of their practices he indulges in, even briefly. (Star Trek: Enterprise would replicate the dynamic with T’Pol.) One culture’s serene and reserved colleague is the other’s out-of-control wildman, and it’s good to remember the difference in perspective.

What I like about “Body Parts” is that it does the same sort of thing for Quark. To his Starfleet counterparts, and to the audience, he’s a venal, mercenary, often outright deceitful individual given how far he strays from the values we hold dear. But to the Ferengi, he’s a bleeding-heart, hyoo-mahn sympathizing “philanthropist.” Quark believing his death is imminent, and reckoning with his sense of being a “loser”, of having failed as a Ferengi, of having [gasp] no assets, is a fantastic throughline for an episode of Deep Space Nine.

I just don’t know why it has to be a comedy episode. I’m not above injecting a bit of levity into the proceedings, especially given the inherently humorous state of the Ferengi most of the time. But “Body Parts” is all over the place tonally, and can't strike the right balance to make the serious parts feel impactful at the same time it wants to make the ridiculous parts seem hilarious.

It might help, though, if the comedic interludes were actually hilarious. Quark lamenting the fact that he didn’t make more money in life is amusing as a concept, but it’s played to the cheap seats. Him hiring Garak to kill him in a way that will be gentle yet unexpected could be decent, but it’s all but turned into a Looney Tunes short. And Quark having a dream where his brother plays the original Grand Nagus and Brunt taunts him in a garish vision of the afterlife that fits Donald Trump’s design sensibilities is likewise too cartoony and over-the-top to really work. There’s nothing wrong with Star Trek going for laughs sometimes, but the material here is so broad that it both fails on its own merits and detracts from the interesting ideas the episode’s apt to explore.

The same is true for the B-story, which sees the O’briens’ fetus transferred into Kira’s womb after a runabout accident. That sort of thing is a little weird, to be sure, but could work if you took the consequences seriously. And “Body Parts” sort of does...sometimes. In its abbreviated runtime, it explores what it would be like for Miles and Keiko to have someone outside of their family carrying their child. There’s a nice gray area between being grateful at someone for doing such a kindness while also being a little upset that they’re now responsible for it in a way that makes it tricky for you to place any expectations upon them under the circumstances. You could do a lot with that!

Unfortunately, DS9 mostly treats it like an opportunity to do a few series of sitcom style scenes where everyone is awkward and silly. They frequently play it more like someone babysat your dog while you were on vacation and the dog decided it wanted to stay with them rather than something as serious as a friend suddenly and unexpectedly becoming a surrogate.

That said, it still lands in a sweet place, with Kira accepting the O’Briens’ offer to stay with them until the baby’s born and becoming “Aunt Narys”. Is it a dose of treacle? Undoubtedly. But it helps the medicine go down.

The same is true for the A-story. Amongst the silly shenanigans, there’s some really interesting dynamics at play here. Quark worries about his legacy, with his supposedly impending death giving him a chance to reflect on his life and worry that he’s a nobody with nothing and no one. It is, as these Ferengi episodes often are, a brotherly story, with Rom trying to cheer up his brother and reassure him about the life he led, as the angel on Quark’s shoulder. And Brunt is the devil on the other, taunting Quark for the small acts of grace and kindness he’s indulged in over the course of the series, decrying them as acts of weakness and, worse yet, anti-Ferengi behavior.

Frankly, I’d like it better without a death sentence hanging over Quark’s head. Brunt wanting to excommunicate Quark for his human-like sympathies makes sense. But him wanting to see Quark dead in order to collect on his contract to buy the bartender’s remains feels like a silly excuse to set up the stakes of the episode, where Quark has to decide whether to die as an honorable Ferengi who’d never break a contract no matter the cost, or to instead hang onto his life at the cost of his standing (and accounts) in Ferengi society.

Surely there’s a way to tease out a similar choice without the ridiculousness of the setup. Still, I like the theme of the vision that spurs Quark to make a decision, even though the scene itself is even sillier. Quark’s vision of the original Nagus tells him that Rules of Acquisition are just suggestions, not ironclad strictures, and that the people who offered them just made them up. In an era when we’re still grappling with rules from ages ago that may stand in the way of progress, it’s a nice reminder not to put those sorts of limits on a pedestal, and to acknowledge the human frailties and failings of the people behind them. The message that your life, at a minimum, is worth more than some societal code that stops you from growing or changing, is a laudable one.

So Quark bites the bullet (figuratively of course). He repays Brunt rathert han fulfilling the terms of their contract and, like Worf before him, accepts excommunication from Ferengi life. As silly as the dilemma may be, there’s something to the dea of Quark’s small act of rebellion, accepting the consequences to the life he built and his claim to being a proud Ferengi in good standing because he realizes there are more important things in life that living up to those goofy and, from our perspective at least, wrong-headed standards.

And yet, in the end, Quark gets his It’s a Wonderful Life moment. Just when he thinks a life of following human mores, becoming the Federation’s favorite Ferengi, has left him with nothing, his friends show up to put him back on his feet. Julian pops up with some brandy. Jadia with some glassware. And Sisko with an entire cargo bay’s worth of furniture (with an assist from odo no less). Though he is poor in funds, Quark is rich in spirit (and eventually spirits again), because those human connections he made are paying off in ways he might not have expected.

That's as lovely a sentiment here as when it was brought to bear with Jimmy Stewart. I wish “Body Parts” could stick with a tone, and find better humor when it does go for the comic relief. But the core of this one is a good story about one of Star Trek’s favorite chestnuts that goes back to the days of Spock -- the alien in our midst, caught between two worlds, realizing that the human way of doing things isn’t so terrible after all.