SDS9 – S4E25: "Body Parts" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on September 19, 2024.

Sam and Scott recap "Body Parts" and discuss colonial capitalist debt and death.

SDS9 seasons 1, 2, and 3 can be found wherever you stream Southpaw. Season 4 is only available to paid subscribers.

You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app

(Note: Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-check. There are also other ways to watch DS9 that we're sure you internet space explorers can figure out. Otherwise, since Scott does such an excellent job with the play-by-play, you don't have to watch the episodes to enjoy our breakdowns.)

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine season four. If you don't know what SDS9 is, it's Southpaw's completionist DS9 watch-along show, where we watch every episode, recap it, and analyze it. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. Today we are discussing body parts. Scott, can you recap this episode?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Miles is worried about Keiko, who is on a gamma space plant trip with Kira and Bashir. Miles worries that Keiko isn't taking the pregnancy serious, and Jadzia chides Miles for being reductive and not taking into the consideration of the pregnant experience. Jadzia having lived many lives, Miles living one as a non-birth-giving body.

Quark is happy to see Rom, which is a little strange, and pours him a snail juice for free. They are celebrating. Quark was away for two weeks in Ferengenar. Quark is being strangely nice. Quark saw Mugi, their mother, enclose some deals, made a pilgrimage to the great marketplace, and found out he's dying.

In Quark fashion, he's being quite dramatic. Quark seems to have the incurable Doric syndrome and has days to live, six to be exact. He had an insurance physical. He learned from his doctor Orpax, who must be a good doctor because he's super expensive, that he has the most rarest disease and says Bashir is a bad doctor.

He's not going to tell me what's going on because he doesn't charge. Rom is understandably upset. So Quark needs to settle his situation, pay off his debts. Paying Ferengi debt is most important, because paying non-Ferengi debt is less important, and obviously settle their mother Mugi's affairs. All must be done before he dies.

Ram suggests that he pawn Quark's remains. for a Ferengi stock market, but Quark is worried about his legacy and saddened that the Ferengi make jokes of him. He is a small-time operator, which is bad. Rom insists that Quark put his remains on Ferengi eBay. Apparently, remains of famous dead Ferengi is a thing.

The desiccated remains of a Ferengi are put onto 52 disks. The vulga, which carries Kira and Keiko and Bashir, arrive from the wormhole. The baby is fine, except it is inside Kira. Kira is somehow a surrogate. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that Nana Visitor was pregnant with

child with Alexander Bashir Sadiq at the time. I'm sure it's all for the aid of story. There was meteor action on the Volga. Keiko was injured, so Bashir stabilized her and transported the baby into Kira. Bashir did science, and Kira is able to hold Miles' son.

Because of the quick, short nature of Bajoran parental biology, Kira will have to hold the baby to turn. Their gestation is different, and Already they've created a profound birth relationship. So Kira will be the third in this situation. Rom and Quark meet, and Quark gets one bid for his body less than 18 strips of latinum,

which just so happens to be Rom's life savings. Rom is nothing if not sentimental. Quark derides his life as a whole mistake. Deep Space Nine, Quark's bar, all it all. But then out of nowhere, there is a million-slip bid for Quark's body, 500-some latinum bars for 52 desiccated discs of Quark. Who could it be?

And Quark sells to this mysterious bidder. Quark will die a winner. Keiko and Kira meet up. Keiko is overwhelmed, but Kira makes a bunch of jokes about weight. and Keiko is very appreciative for the bond that they're about to share. At Quark's bar, Quark now has enough money to pay everything off, make funeral arrangements,

and have a for-sale, hollow-sweet funeral. Bashir informs Quark that Orpax is wrong, and Quark will live, and Quark is kind of happy because he will sue the doctor for malpractice. In the middle of the night, nonstop ringing at his door, he opens up and is brunt. We remember him from previous episodes.

He's essentially part of the Ferengi IRS, and he's not a nice man, and he does not like Quark or his family. He has paid for Quark's disk and has come to collect them. He has six days, but he will collect. Brunt doesn't care that Quark isn't dying. He looks forward to defiling his corpse.

Quark offers a refund, extra latinum, but Brunt doesn't care. Brunt recommends Quark get someone to kill him. A contract is a contract is a contract. And as Quark tries to remind them that they are Ferengi, not Klingon, but Brunt doesn't care. Brunt is disgusted and sees Quark as a threat to Ferengi society for his un-Ferengi behavior,

like protecting his mother, settling a strike quietly, selling medicine to the Bajoran refugees, and accuses Quark of being generous and adopting Starfleet values, being part of assimilating and tarnishing the Ferengi image. Quark asks for a solution, and Brunt offers that he could break the contract. It would confiscate his family's funds. He would be excommunicado.

His movie would be homeless. And Brunt wouldn't really be bothered by this anyway, as Quark is a disease to Ferengenar, and Brunt wishes to cut him off. Miles and Keiko do PTOT. Keiko and Miles realize that they would like Kira to come over for dinner.

Then they realize they would like her to come over for dinner every night. They don't want to have to make appointments to meet their baby. They have thoughts. And Rom continues to try to convince Quark to go back on the contract. To the point that Quark tries to hire Garak as an assassin to kill him.

Of course, Garak plays the whole, I'm not an assassin, sort of thing. He asks for it to be painless and surprising. See, for Quark, business is the most important thing. Quark is a businessman. Not a businessman, not a businessman, not a businessman. That's the Jay-Z line. There's a specific set of rules, the rules of acquisition.

Even when inconvenient, Quark must accept so that in Ferengi capitalist heaven, he must be able to bribe himself in. At the O'Briens, Kira is over for dinner. She's feeling pregnancy pain and little kicks and little bumps. And Kira and Keiko talk about the different physiology of pregnancy. And again, Keiko and Miles are developing an idea. Quark,

we see a visage of Quark enjoying his last meal, and then we realize that it is a LARP of Quark dying through a neck snap. Garak has been practicing killing Quark. All of Garak's ideas aren't working. For a man that wants to die, he surely wants to live.

Quark wants to wake up in the divine treasury and not know how. Garrick agrees to make it a surprise. However, this makes Quark paranoid and scared. Quark wakes up in a golden world, the Divine Treasury. Quark is dead. Or is he? Psyche, it's a dream.

He's in a gilded, tacky world where the Dream Negus says Quark must break the contract. And then Dream Brunt reminds that they are Dream Buddy just reminds him that they are dumb, made-up rules. And this guy looks a lot like Rom. There is this idea that faith can be a marketing ploy.

Quark points out his whole life has been about the rules. To quote Fleetwood Mac, I am afraid of changes because I built my life around you. Quark believes he may be able to spin having a hallucination about rule-breaking and that he will be respected, but Dream Brunt points out the futility. Quark wakes up sweaty.

Quark goes to see Brunt, returns Brunt's latinum, and decides that he will break the contract. He wants to live. Brunt insults Quark. Brunt points out that no Ferengi will work with Quark. He is excommunicated. Quark closes his bar until further notice. Pardon? And all of his stuff will be repossessed.

Then we see that Kira agrees to live with the O'Briens until their son is born. At Quark's, everything is bare. Even his shirt is expected to be returned. He has nothing. But in a beautiful moment, all of Deep Space Nine come through with glasses and drinks and table and furniture under a ruse that will basically restock Quark's.

Rom explains that he isn't broke. He has friends. And Quark is literally left speechless.

So the first line that struck me was when Quark said, Bashir doesn't charge for medical care. So how good could he be?

Yeah.

Right? Exactly. Yeah. Despite this being in jest, lots of Americans, including the Democrats, believe this. The belief is if medicine were free or quote unquote socialized, the quality of care will get worse. So it's not just conservatives, but liberal capitalists have a Ferengi bias.

There's also an allegory to be made about medical debt and also one about how capitalism values life. Much like in the Ferengi culture, you sometimes are more valuable dead than alive. Not just because of some potential payout or benefit, but also because of the lack of debt.

Capitalism still places a monetary value on you because capitalism has its roots in enslavement where people were valued as property. capitalism makes everything property of varying worth. Another way to think about debt is how often it can be a death sentence.

It's often struck me how debt and death sound similar because they are similar, at least to the poor. To the rich, debt is a way to get even richer. It's funny how debt works. It's a completely different obligation based on who's getting it. For the rich, debt is a matter of choice. For the poor, it's involuntary.

It's under duress or often dressed upon them. This goes back to colonial debt as well, foisting debt on people you conquered. There were lots of criticisms here in this episode about Ferengis that you could draw allegories for. like how people take institutional rules, whether religious, economic, or political, so seriously when they're things people just made up,

and it is okay for us to think better of them. The ending was very, it's a wonderful life, where the message was, real value is in your community. It was an example of mutual aid. Brunt, in this case, was effectively the bank. Since the episode is about the Ferengi, it's safer to make some radical messages.

You're not making one about humans. I think that's why we enjoy Ferengi episodes so much. That they could go further and make more biting criticisms or just play with more ideas. Then there was the subplot about Kira becoming an emergency surrogate mother, which feels less like a thought experiment and more like what you just brought up.

a convenient way to tell a story and way to work in Nana Visitor's real-life pregnancy, but it also ended up being convenient long-term storytelling where we get to learn more about Bajorans and their biology. But it also gives a storyline for Keiko and Kira, who recently haven't had much going on.

There was also some commentary about how society expects mothers and expectant mothers to lose autonomy because People don't perceive it as a question of autonomy, but they should. It's still their body and it's still theirs to do with. But thematically, I think the surrogate story fits nicely with the greater story about found families and communities.

It also shows more sides to Kira because the whole reason she was a rebel was for community. It's not just to cause damage for the sake of damage. So it makes sense to me we see this community-centered side of her, at least in this episode. Also, Odo pretending not to care about Quark,

but actually caring about him is a nice foreshadow of the next episode. And this being a light episode complements the next episode well. Garak is also important in this episode like the next one. You see more of how twisted he is and how he really is a serial killer, a funny, charming one.

In this episode, it's played as comedy. In the next, it'll be tragedy. Scott, what did you think about this episode?

So I've grown to love Ferengi episodes, especially when, as the show starts to get darker and deeper and the standalone episodes become less and less you just start being like ooh a Ferengi episode but there have been like three Ferengi episodes this season so it's pretty nice again we've talked many times about how the

structure of of television is was very different as compared to prestige television of now, where even the most popular shows... would be quite you know to have 13 episodes would be quite a bit now most prestige television has 10 10 episodes a season and the idea of 20 21 22 or in this season

24 25 is just a different sort of thing but When you have that many episodes, you have the ability to have two or three episodes where you're just talking about the Ferengi characters. At season four, you're like, hey, let's learn more about Garak. Let's have standalone episodes. Let's delve deep into the lore.

So now I've been quite excited about Ferengi episodes. Now, don't worry. Eventually, there will be a Ferengi episode so gross that we'll have to call in experts to work with us on it. But we're not there yet. And right now, I'm just happy for a little bit of respite and a little calm before the storm to

have a Ferengi episode. So I enjoyed it. I don't have a lot of praxis to talk about in this episode. We already have spoken much about how The Ferenginar are capitalist death priests and honor money and commerce more so than anything. So we don't actually need to go deep into what it is.

I disagree of the nefarious analogs that the Ferenginar have gotten. It's lazy and it's just not what I'm trying to entertain. We've already talked about it ad nauseum at this point. The Ferengis are foils. They are an idea of what unchecked greed can look like and what it looks like in a

universe where there actually is no need for greed anymore, theoretically. But again, I'm happy to just take a little break and have... the Ferengi brothers beat each other's throats for a turn. Three stars.

I also want to mention, because I don't know if we've mentioned it before, but the actor who plays Rom, he's fantastic. That's all I wanted to say. Yeah. I think we want to give him some shine because he really, especially in this episode, because we got to see him play somebody else too. Like, the guy's good.

Trust me. Other people agree.

Okay, good, good. And I think we've mentioned before the Rom with his own son story is also very touching. And actually in a lot of ways, at least as far as more textured or has been more textured because at least with the Ferengi, because they're so stereotypical,

it's easier to do a character growth with them because they start out as cartoons and then they become fleshed out. So Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

I could. Odo is having feelings.

Until then...