SDS9 – S3E16: "Prophet Motive" (Audio + Transcript) (Patreon)

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Southpaw: Deep Space Nine is back from hiatus!

This episode was recorded months before the Hollywood Writer's Strike, which began in May 2023. But in solidarity with the writers, we stopped releasing new episodes of Southpaw: Deep Space Nine. However, since the increased genocide of Palestinians, Hollywood has lost all of the goodwill it garnered during the strikes. Palestine has been a lens we used for Deep Space Nine since episode one of our watch-along series, but now that it's in everyone's consciousness, it's a great time to bring this series back from hiatus and record new episodes with Palestine in mind. Keep thinking and talking about Palestine.

Episode Description:

In this episode of Southpaw: Deep Space Nine, Sam and Scott delve into "Prophet Motive," where Grand Nagus Zek comes to the station to present Quark with a revised copy of the Rules of Acquisition, which is now a guide for generosity and equality.

Find seasons 1 and 2 on the Southpaw podcast stream. Find the rest of season 3 on Patreon.

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.]

This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 3, where we analyze Deep Space Nine and Star Trek from a political and historical lens episode by episode.

I'm watching DS9 with fresh eyes, and Scott is our veteran Trek fan.

We are discussing Season 3 of DS9, Episode 16, Prophet Motive, which I should explain is a play on words between Prophet with an F

Making money and profit with a PH, which is like the last episode, the person who makes prophecies.

It's like a double entendre, Sam.

You know we love those on this show.

Scott, tell us about this episode.

We open in Quark is receiving an ear massage and as you know that for the Ferengis the ear is a incredibly erogenous zone so ear massages are very pleasant for them and conversely like when someone pulls on their ear or screams in their ear or stabs their ear it is incredibly painful.

He's getting it from a young person named Emmy, not like too young, but just like younger, talking about his wares.

They're making a trade for stem bolts for her family.

When the Grand Negus Zek, the leader of the Ferengi people, arrives with his servant, Maihardu, to live at Quark's

We see that Ben asks Bashir up to go see some people, but it is a secret party.

He has been nominated for a Carrington Award for his biomedical work.

It is the most prestigious federation award for medicine.

He is the youngest nominee of all time.

It turns out that Dax secretly put his name in because, you know, Dax has lived for like seven generations, so everybody knows everybody.

Bashir is visibly affected and leaves the room.

Bashir doesn't want to make a big deal about it.

Also, Carrington awards are usually for lifetime doctors, usually much, much older.

Most of the other people are a hundred years old or more.

Bashir feels he won't win.

Dax is actually surprised by his seeming modesty.

Back to Ram's quarters.

The space is a mess.

Quark is staying there with him while Zek is at Quark's house.

Quark notices that a bunch of his stuff is in Ram's place.

Ram has been stealing from him, which Quark is both impressed and disgusted by.

Quark insists Ram cleans the house, and Ram refuses and says, this is my house, my rules, if you want it clean, clean it.

So Ram and Quark go to see Zek, and Zek is just very uncharacteristic of how we know him to be.

Instead of

angry and duplicitous and annoyed.

He's happy to see them.

He has gotten rid of Cork's furniture.

He has written a book.

He is in great spirits.

He's rewritten the rules of acquisition for modern Ferengi.

And as they're looking at the new rules, they are antithetical to usual Ferengi beliefs.

It's all about placing relationships over money, charity, doing good deeds, being kind.

Quark and Rom cannot wrap their heads around it.

Quark believes it is a test, a code.

Quark believes it must be a bigger picture thing.

But so far the math is not mathing.

At Quark's, Zek buys everyone a drink.

Zek says making others happy is his thing.

It's what he loves.

He doesn't even like to sniff beetle sniff anymore because it hurts beetles.

That's the sort of, one of the things he enjoys.

Zach also reveals that he messed up Cork's sale with Emmy, saying that he saw that Cork was really overcharging her for the stem bolts, so he told her where she could get stem bolts wholesale.

What is going on?

Miles and Bashir are playing darts.

Miles is talking about Carrington Awards.

Miles points out that Bashir doesn't stand a chance, and that no one is talking about Bashir, and that is sort of messing up Bashir's game.

So Bashir gets annoyed, and he makes a note about Keiko being gone for a long time, and that makes Miles mess up at the darts.

Okay.

Meanwhile, Rahm is now helping Zach build the Ferengi Benevolent Association.

Zek wants Ferengis to move beyond greed.

Greed is dead.

Ram is going to support Zek as they change the Ferengi way.

Quark and Ram will be side by side and part of the society and they're going to go with him to Ferenginar to tell all the new ways.

Quark believes that this is going to get them killed.

So Quark has Zek looked at by Bashir.

There is no medical malady.

He is fine.

Quark makes a diss at Bashir not being even good enough to win a Carrington.

Zek even tries to tip Bashir.

This is just a very different Zek that we are used to.

The next day we find out that Zek is going to give a gift to the Bajoran people.

Mahardu shows to Raman Naga that Zek has one of the missing Bajoran orbs.

Quark believes that it is the orbs that have changed Zek's behavior.

Qwark opens the orb and is taken into a new dimension where a version of Zek is there and he is taunting Qwark, says mysteries sometimes answer themselves, and inside the orb is a vision.

He is just confused.

But Qwark believes that the prophets, which are the aliens inside the wormhole, which they created the new rules.

So what he's able to find, what Quark is able to find, is that the logs show Zack got from the orbs from Cardassia, went to the wormhole, and then came to Deep Space Nine.

Odo goes to see Bashir, that he heard from someone who heard from someone that heard from someone who knew somebody who dated somebody, that the big prospect for the Carrington Award, Dr. Wade, would not be winning the award.

So, and then he realizes that Bashir had actually written an acceptance speech.

Not as humble as you think.

Quark and the squad kidnapped Zek.

But Zek is humming and jovial and being like, I forgive you, this is fine.

Quark is going to take Zek to the wormhole to try to figure it out.

Zek says the wormhole aliens are delightful.

So when inside the wormhole, Qwark opens the orb and talks to the Prophets, which represent themselves as many of the people on Deep Space Nine, and they ask if the Sisqo sent him.

They said Zek came to learn of the

The future outside of linear time, an explained game and prophet.

They found prophet dangerous and disadvantageous, threatening and unnecessary.

They found that Ferengi used to actually be subtle and kinder and restored Zek to an earlier form of Ferengi.

They find Quark and his friends to be adversarial.

The prophets offer to switch Quark back.

Quark has a monologue that greed is good and that without greed the world would suck, people would not be fed, people would be unclothed.

Quark points out that if they change him back to a different person, more and more Ferengis are going to come and see the prophets and annoy them.

And the prophets are kind of annoyed by this, so they do their prophet thing and

Cork and Zek wake up.

Zek is back to his normal self and is like, give the orbs to the Bajorans.

I'm going to sell the orbs to the Bajorans.

So he's back to just being who we know him to be.

Then we go see that the Carrington Awards are given to Henri Roger.

He wins the Carrington.

Bashir admits that he is hurt and what are you going to do?

But he has a long time to work on his stuff.

Scott, first off, do you like the revised rules of acquisition?

I love the revised rules of acquisition.

Of course I do.

Then the Enlightened, right when Quark meets them is basically saying capitalism is evil we also see how Ferengi used to be so it's basically saying capitalism changes people and the culture for worse

Right, and I loved this episode for that.

You'll ask me my rating later, but

This episode was really fun because they weren't afraid to say some things that really resonate with me, that our purpose is kindness, our purpose is to help others.

Greed is dead, you know, and that even the prophets were like, when we look at linearity, this is adversarial and this is bad.

Your way of life is bad.

To me, it wasn't saying the whole race is bad because

You know, this whole stuff is complex, but just saying that a life that exists on winning, losing, fortune, greed is bad.

So, yeah, I loved it.

Yeah, seemed like they were

using comedy to hide a lot of their most subversive messages because we've talked about how in previous DS9 episodes they were getting hate mail about even approaching things from a centrist lens like when they were in San Francisco in 2024 and just approaching it more from a centrist view a lot of fans were still mad even about that that it was too

I don't know what the word they used back then, but it was too liberal, they said.

Now, this episode seems tangentially related to the last episode about scripture and different interpretations.

And there's always modern, revised versions of Bibles and such, and this seems to be plain to that.

Prophet and profit, the two similar-sounding words, seem to indicate that capitalism itself is a religion.

which is something we explored a little bit in the last episode as well.

And how capitalism is his own religious bias.

And in this episode, Zech goes from conservative capitalist Jesus

to Socialist Jesus, which we later find out is how Ferengi used to be until somebody put it in their heads about the prophet motive.

Right.

And that changed everything.

It's like how whenever capitalism comes to a country, it destroys that country.

So this episode with Socialist Jesus Zek, this is the luxury space communism we've been waiting for because if they chose to,

Money doesn't have to exist because now they have replicators.

In your first watch, Scott, or this time through, did you like that flipping of the script to see a socialist Grand Nagus?

Like when you first saw it, did you just see this as a throwaway middle episode and do you see things differently now watching it with your current eyes?

So yeah, this is an episode that I skipped in my previous re-watch, but I didn't skip it in my re-watch before my previous re-watch, so this is the third time I've watched this episode.

And I always thought it was a funny episode, but my politics weren't nearly as, like, capitalism evil as they are now.

So I just thought it was a funny episode where this episode, this version, this time I'm like, oh, he's spitting.

Yeah.

He's saying like, I'm like, oh, I like this guy.

There's some biting critiques about capitalism here where it's not all just expository.

It's also just in the way it's written.

Now, when we get to the wormhole with Quark and Zek, we find out Zek has reached a state of enlightenment.

Much like Buddha, right?

Who was once rich as fuck and also royalty, then thought better of it.

But of course, since this is episodic, we have to return things back to normal.

Like Bashir didn't win any award either.

So Scott, then what was the point of this episode?

Because we just went back to the way it was.

There was no point of this episode.

This episode is a filler episode.

We learn nothing about anybody.

We could think of it as fan service, right?

Some candy for the socialists.

Yes, it's fan service for socialists.

We get to see the prophets a little bit, which is fun.

We get to see that prophets are canonically anti-capitalism.

So for that, I give this episode a 4 out of 5.

But from a mythology standpoint, the episode is almost completely useless.

But it also maybe inadvertently agrees with a lot of what modern anthropologists and socialist anthropologists have been saying, which is that, no, capitalism is not a fixture of the universe.

It's not something that's always existed.

It is not human nature.

So a lot of what we consider is quote unquote human nature is learned and also a byproduct of the material conditions.

Yeah.

But did this episode prove to you that DS9 can do comedy?

Because DS9 up until this point has had comedic scenes, comedic episodes, whereas this episode seems just straight up a comedy.

Oh, well, to me, I think that DS9 has always had a good comedy bone.

But then again, I realized that I'm not watching everything wise, so you haven't seen it.

But oh, yeah, DS9 has jokes.

Everybody says after Season 3, after DS9 gets the beard, it gets better.

Is part of getting better meaning also they get funnier?

Yes, there are Laugh Out Loud episodes, though many of them involve Ferengi.

Which is a good segue to my last point, because you told me Ferengi were first introduced to be a prominent baddie, but now it seems their role is more as comic relief, which I like.

But I do disagree that they represent modern capitalists because Ferengi are more like cartoons.

They're incompetent capitalists, which is why they're funny.

But capitalists in real life, they're not funny.

Like the Grand Nagus in real life would be scary as fuck and probably would be the mastermind of countless genocides and overthrows throughout Latin America.

Or he'd run for office and be Nixon or Reagan.

I mean, Scott, do powerful capitalists in real life scare you?

Yes.

Especially with all the tech capitalists.

I know you have some thoughts about this.

Give me your thoughts about the tech acceleration of capitalism.

Well, the tech acceleration is what is going to kill us all.

And it's really... Maybe I should have asked you.

It's really very scary.

It's about the tech acceleration of AI is about to

create some problems in the music world that that no one is prepared for.

Can you explain that?

Sure.

So last week, if well, so if you're listening, this is we're recording in April of 2023.

So in April of 2023, a song was released

featuring Drake and someone else saying some really controversial stuff.

And then it was found out that it was completely created by artificial intelligence.

Did people think it was really them?

People thought it was really them.

People were making think pieces about it.

People were trying to get it taken off the radio.

People were like, because because not only was it them, they thought it was them.

They were saying some like controversial stuff.

And

It took like a lot of people to realize that it wasn't.

So even experts couldn't tell, not just because the sound of their voice sounded real, but the production must have sounded good enough where they're like, no, this is not just like a satire song.

This is like a high production song.

Yeah.

And you can do it all now with artificial intelligence because artificial intelligence is going so fast.

Scott, do you remember like maybe five years ago or six years ago where we first heard like the first attempts at AI written songs and music?

Like there was like a couple of songs written in the style of like the Beatles or the Beach Boys and it was like cute, right?

We weren't scared yet, right?

Do you remember this?

We weren't scared because it was just like, oh, it sounds like, you know, something like a five-year-old would write, but it was interesting enough for you to find it amusing, right?

So, fast forward, we went from that, where it sounded obviously made by AI, wasn't very good, but at best it was amusing, to where it's enough to trick insiders.

Yeah.

Remember our first conversations about AI?

Like, just,

Four months ago, we were just talking about, have you seen these things where they're generating art?

And, oh, did you see this thing?

And then a month after that, we were like, hey, did you see this thing?

You could chat with it online.

Right.

So I'm just saying it's happening very fast.

It's happening fast to the point where we're like some of these Star Trek shows are becoming a little anachronistic because they're not taking into consideration

how AI would fit into these things, but whatever.

I'd like to change the subject to be honest.

So the main takeaway is capitalism is very scary.

Yeah.

Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

Next episode is called Visionary and Miles is seeing some things.

Okay.

Until then.