10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: The Next Generation

The Next Generation debuted in 1987, at the tail end of the Reagan administration and all the capitalist excess that came with it. That same year saw the release of Wall Street, a sharp indictment of the American financial sector co-written and directed by Oliver Stone. The film’s chief villain, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), completely lacks a moral compass and famously declares during a shareholder meeting that, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” 

Also showing in theaters that year was Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop, a biting satire set in a near future dystopia where executives at the nefarious OCP corporation are ready and willing to disregard human lives in order to maximize the company’s profits. (As the meme about the film’s title character goes, “Dude died, but they made him go to work anyway.”)

TNG attempted its own critique of 1980s capitalism with the Ferengi, an alien race driven by an insatiable pursuit of profit, but compared to Wall Street or Robocop, it's a critique that comes off as not only dumb, but toothless, too.

From their first appearance in “The Last Outpost,” the Ferengi were never intimidating enough to fulfill their intended role as the show’s primary antagonists. In later years, actor Armin Shimerman would complain that director Richard A. Colla instructed the Ferengi performers to “jump up and down like crazed gerbils,” but even without this bizarre direction the Ferengi were often written with the same intellectual capacity as Baldrick from Blackadder. By the time the Ferengi are given a chance to take over the Enterprise in “Rascals,” it’s a scenario completely played for laughs. Gordon Gekko the Ferengi are decidedly not.