5x18 Business as Usual

[6.5/10] How much is Quark’s soul worth? At least 10 million bars of gold-pressed latinum, apparently. Or maybe 28 million lives. Either way, it’s a lot.

I love the idea of “Business as Usual”, a referendum on just how venal our favorite Ferengi might be. He is down on his luck, his debts overtaking his assets, threatening to leave him in ruins. So he’s willing to bend his morals, even if they’re Ferengi morals to stay solvent. He takes up a job with his murderous cousin Gaila, helping to sell weapons, something he’s generally stayed out of before. And he ends up in the employ of Hagath, an arms-dealing gangster with a gregarious bent and a short temper.

What I like about that setup is that it’s a test of Quark’s mettle. He’s in a unique position on the station. He is of Deep Space Nine, but he’s an outsider. He’s not Federation, not Bajoran, not even Cardassian. Maybe that’s why he and Odo secretly get along so famously, because they’re both stalwart denizens of DS9 from as far back as when it was Terok Nor, but neither one of them fit in there exactly.

The most interesting part of “Business as Usual” is that it’s basically Quark’s Kira-esque episode. So many of her stories, especially in the early days of the show, centered on whether Kira was still the authority-floating Bajoran rebel she’d always been, or if she’d come to see the value of the Federation’s premise, and maybe even adopted some of its values as her own. Despite DS9 being known as the darkest Star Trek series, we generally know the answer to that question, but it’s the how and the why they end up choosing to side with our Starfleet chums that matters.

So what’s fascinating, then, about Quark’s situation is that he’s not choosing between being a rebel or a joiner. He’s choosing between being a rich Ferengi or a noble associate of the Federation. He’s choosing between the more mercenary of Ferengi values that say money is all that matters, or if he has a place on the station for thinking that there’s something that matters more than all the latinum in the world.

I’m being a bit grandiose when I characterize the episode as a battle for Quark’s soul, but genuinely, the thought experiment of whether someone would accept wealth beyond their wildest dreams at the cost of others’ lives is a fair test for whether any conscience or decency has purchase within you. Lucky for us, Quark passes the test.

Oh, and while that’s going on, Chief O’Brien can’t put his son down or else he’ll start crying and never stop. Sigh.

Look, on the one hand, I’m glad to see the show acknowledging Kirayoshi and building a storyline around him. Deep Space Nine has a way of pretending that families, and kids in particular, don’t exist. (Check out Memory Alpha and note how often the phrase “Cirroc Lofton did not appear in this episode” shows up.) So doing a story about Miles being a father and taking care of his kid is a good thing, in principle.

But why does it have to be some cheesy, sitcom-esque story about how the baby won’t stop crying unless Miles is holding him, with all sorts of wacky schemes to keep it up while Miles tries to do his job? I practically expected them to introduce a laugh track. I get wanting to have some comic relief with a theoretically heavier A-story, but why does the show feel the need to go so cornball with this type of thing?

That is, frankly, my problem with A-story as well. Quark bending his own personal ethics because he’s in a desperate situation is a fascinating idea! But Gaila is a goofy character whose threats and insinuations are hard to take seriously. Likewise, the legendary Steven Berkoff is magnetic as Hagath. Every minute he’s on the screen is engaging from his performance alone. But he too is an over-the-top character who would make more sense in a zany Ferengi farce than a plot the show wants the audience to take as a serious tale of life and death.

It isn’t bad, exactly. Just heavy-handed, without the sort of truth or humanity that elevates the best DS9 installments. The idea is solid, and the character work is superb, but the loony execution of the concept sucks all of the zing out of it.

That said, I appreciate the main conceit at play. On the one hand, you have Gaila saying, “I want you to replace me, step into a line of work you’ve previously shied away from, and give into the most mercenary form of Ferengi commerce there is.” On the other, you have the Federation contingent effectively saying, “Legally, we can’t go after you for arms-dealing.” (And the holographic weapon workaround is legitimately clever.) “But we want nothing to do with you, and are basically excommunicating you.”

So this isn’t a choice of practicality. No one’s forcing Quark to do the right thing beyond some social ostracism. If anything, he has every incentive in the world to do the wrong thing. With his cousin’s offer, his money problems would go away. He would stop being a small-time crook, as Odo once put it. He might even be able to afford his own moon. But it would mean sacrificing his principles, such as they are.

Those principles are worth saving twenty-eight million lives. I like how Quark tries to self-justify getting into his cousin’s dirty business. He’s not technically breaking any laws! These weapons are being sold for self-defense! He needs to do it or he’ll go under! He can excuse himself, allowing him to sleep at night, even if his friends and associates are disgusted with him.

But when the rubber hits the road, and a nearby warlord (Lawrence freakin’ Tierney!) wants biological weapons to wipe out tens of millions of people, he can’t pretend any longer. And he can’t live with himself, even for all the money in the world.

Quark’s plan to get the two rival warlords in a room and make it seem like Hagath and Gaila are selling to both sides of the war is a moderately clever way to get him out of this trap. The show sets up the perils of dealing with both sides, so it has a sense of payoff, even if things end pretty conveniently for him. But the important thing is that whatever his schemes, Quark is willing to go broke, even die, if it means sparing the millions of people who’d otherwise suffer for his largesse. There are lines that even our resident rule-bending Ferengi won’t cross.

That’s reassuring, in its way. The show uses his friendship with Dax to represent his worry, rejection, and acceptance for living up to the principles that most of our characters on the station share. Quark has long been a fly in the ointment. He had to be strongarmed into sticking around by Sisko. He gripes constantly about his nephew and his brother being corrupted by these “hyoo-mans.”

Yet, however much he may complain, Quark has internalized the same quiet sense of decency and respect for the Federation’s morals that Kira has. “Business as Usual” isn’t the world’s greatest rendition of the idea, but it is an affirmation that Quark’s soul remains intact even under the most trying of circumstances, and that right when he was about to be run off, he’s firmly proven that he belongs on this station, humans and all.