The Ferengi Were Supposed to Be the New Klingons. Here's the Memo.

On 22 June 1987, four months before "The Last Outpost" aired, D. C. Fontana sent Gene Roddenberry a two-page memo: "Further notes on the Ferengi." Six notes. Three of them can be traced through the finished episode — one was followed, one was ignored, and one was never built. The episode that came out the other end is the one where Star Trek's terrifying new villains turned into a joke in forty-five minutes. Armin Shimerman, who played one of the four Ferengi here and later spent seven years as Quark, has said it plainly: they were going to be the new Klingons. This is the story of how that plan died on a fog-covered planet set — the disaster-movie half on the Enterprise nobody remembers, the whips, the finger puzzle, the "Merde," the six-hundred- thousand-year-old guardian who asks Riker who Sun Tzu is — and the lawyer who was rewriting scripts before the writers saw them. It ends six years later, in 1993, with a DS9 episode called "The Nagus" and a teleplay credit that closes the loop. CHAPTERS 0:00 The memo 0:27 The chase 4:52 Note one — the one that landed 5:40 Note two — the one they ignored 11:05 The ship 12:25 Portal 14:36 The lawyer 15:57 Note three — the one that was never built 17:13 Six years later 19:29 Wet cement 20:02 Next time SOURCES D. C. Fontana to Gene Roddenberry, "Further notes on the Ferengi," 22 June 1987 — two pages; cc: Wright, Lewin, Hurley, Dawkins, Maizlish, Justman, Berman. Released with The Trek Files 3-18 (Roddenberry Entertainment); scan via Memory Alpha. Transcribed in full for this video. Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers'/Directors' Guide (1987), p.11 — the "no Klingons, no Romulans, no Vulcans" rule, quoted in full. Armin Shimerman: GameSpot, 21 March 2018 ("the new Klingons"; "eradicate that original performance"); IGN, 4 August 2003; and the "wet cement" interview on the TNG Season 1 DVD bonus features (own disc). Ira Steven Behr, interviewed by TrekCore, 13 May 2013. D. C. Fontana on Leonard Maizlish, in Gross & Altman, The Fifty-Year Mission (2016), pp.74–75 — her account, presented as her account. Richard Colla and Maurice Hurley, quoted in Gross & Altman, Captains' Logs — attributed where they appear. Larry Nemecek, The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion (2nd ed.), p.38 on the Marauder design and p.41/86 on what happened to the Ferengi afterwards. Michael Westmore and Joe Nazzaro, Star Trek: The Next Generation Make-Up FX Journal, pp.15–16 on the Probert design. Episode dialogue verbatim from the DVD captions, cross-checked against the chakoteya.net transcript. FOOTAGE AND STILLS Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Last Outpost" (1987) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "The Nagus" (1993) © Paramount. Short excerpts used for commentary and criticism. Star Trek: Resurgence (2023) © Dramatic Labs — own capture. Music on the end card is an original composition. Next time: "Where No One Has Gone Before" — the Enterprise gets thrown out of the galaxy, and Wesley Crusher turns out to be the most important person on the ship. #StarTrek #TNG #StarTrekTheNextGeneration