10 Times Star Trek Showed Us That There Is A Chance At A Progressive Future

10. The Way I See It, You Hew-Mons Used To Be A Lot Like Ferengi: Greedy, Acquisitive...We're A Reminder

When Star Trek Deep Space Nine wanted to make a point, it often went straight for jugular. In the second season finale, The Jem'hadar, Sisko is taken prisoner along with Quark. Up to this point, Sisko and Quark have shared very little time together - there's really not much cause for the station's commander and the station's barkeep to converse much!

This, in part, has fed into the prejudice that Sisko has about Ferengi, something that Quark sees through quickly. While the viewers sympathies may be set up to side with Sisko, in a scene later in the episode, Quark manages to take Sisko to task.

He questions Sisko on what his opinion of Ferengi is, and Sisko dodges the question. He asks how he would feel if Jake were to bring a Ferengi woman home, to which Sisko says he hasn't thought about it. Quark grimly points out that this proves it, that the 'hew-mon' view of Ferengi is one of distain, because of a) how alike they are and b) the fact that hew-mons have committed far worse atrocities in their history than the Ferengi have.

Quark finishes with the point that the greedy, misogynistic, profit-driven Ferengi may not be like hew-mons after all.

They're better than them.