May 10th, 1993, "Progress"
No fiver
The Episode
QUARK: (coming down the stairs with a waiter) I thought I told you to cancel that order. Now what am I supposed to do with five thousand wrappages of Cardassian yamok sauce. They're the only ones who could stomach that swill.
Actually our heroes use yamok sauce as a condiment quite a few times in the series. My question is what a "wrappage" is in this context.
Incidentally, if you want to know the ketchup/mustard counterpart to yamok sauce, it's kamoy syrup. It makes an appearance in one of the novels where Quark tries to unload it by feeding it to some Horta. It doesn't end well.
TORAN: Forgive my bureaucratic nitpicking, Major, but we're counting on Jeraddo's energy to heat a few hundred thousand Bajoran homes this winter.
I'm confused about how they intend to get the energy from a moon back to Bajor in an economical fashion.
Furthermore, "winter" is meaningless in a planetary context without more clarification. After all, winter in the northern hemisphere is summer in the south and vice-versa.
(After the titles, we meet an older man in his doorway - played by Brian Keith, great actor)
Yes, he is. I of course know him best from his role in The Parent Trap, but he did a lot of other stuff as well. And the Amazing Thing That I Learned Today is that he also voiced
Uncle Ben in Spider-Man TAS.
KIRA: Mullibok, they begin tapping the core of this moon in seven days.
MULLIBOK: I know.
KIRA: You are only three people. This project is going to benefit thousands, hundreds of thousands.
Oh boy, is this a loaded issue. Personal autonomy versus the needs of the state and all that. I don't care to write a screed on this topic, given how depressing it is. My biggest problem with this particular situation is similar to my problem with the Maquis-this is not land that's belonged to your people for generations. It's been a couple decades, and the big bad government is willing to relocate you at no cost to a living situation that will be better than what you have now.
MULLIBOK: No. I told you, my life's here. If I leave, I'll die. So I'd rather die here.
Why is your life here? This needed more clarification.
MULLIBOK: I stowed away on a Cardassian survey vessel which was making stops all through the Bajoran system. They were looking for possible mining sites. Anyway, when we got here to Jeraddo, I overpowered the crew and I stole whatever I'd need to start building my life here.
So you admit to being a criminal who committed trespassing, assault, and theft. And you don't even have the excuse that you were with the Resistance and the supplies would be used to fight back against your oppressors. Why am I supposed to like you?
MULLIBOK: Well, it was mind over matter. Every twenty-six hours I'd just tightened up my waist-belt another notch, and that way my belly didn't know that it was shrinking.
I don't like this reference. I always got the impression that a Bajoran day was 26
Earth hours long. People actually on Bajor should still be using their own time measurement system unless they do business with the station.
MULLIBOK: Obviously I was going to have to plant and harvest a crop. So I did what any person would do who had to build an entire world for himself. First I rolled back and forth on the ground til it surrendered. Then I went down on my hands and knees and I started to plow using nothing but my fingernails, mind you. I plowed every last furrow in that field straight as a plumb line.
You didn't even bother to tie a rock to a stick to do the plowing for you? What an idiot.
MULLIBOK: If I came across a deposit of mineralised clay, what I'd do is just grind it up in my teeth.
Or you could smash it between two rocks and save your teeth, you senile geezer.
KIRA: You know what the Cardassians were like, what weapons they had. We didn't stand a chance against them.
MULLIBOK: How'd you beat them, then?
KIRA: We beat them because, because we hung on like fanatics.
Technically you didn't "beat" the Cardassians. At best you were one of three major factors that made the Cardassian Empire decide to give you up. The other two being the losses from the war with the Federation that left them without the ability to hold onto Bajoran space and the fact that the planet had already been bled dry and there wasn't enough left to make further losses viable. And personally I'd put the Resistance firmly in third place.
MULLIBOK: The Cardassians probably told you you didn't stand a chance, either. Did you surrender?
KIRA: No.
MULLIBOK: Why would you expect me to act any different than you?
The scenarios aren't parallel, Mullibok! It's been made abundantly clear that in a matter of days the planet will be rendered uninhabitable and you will die. Period. There isn't enough time for a resistance to do any good, and frankly you don't have the weaponry or technology to put up much of a fight anyway. The Resistance had a chance, you don't!
(Nog is inspecting their merchandise, a small device that springs out two rods when pressed.)
JAKE: So that's a stem bolt.
NOG: A self-sealing stem bolt. There's a difference.
JAKE: You're sure about that?
I don't think anyone was ever really sure about that. All we know about these things is that you can use them to make reverse-ratcheting routing planers.
NOG: What's important is that it's top grade merchandise. You can't get a better stem bolt in this sector.
JAKE: And we have a hundred gross of them.
NOG: That's a lot of stem bolts.
Why would anyone measure anything in gross (a dozen dozen i.e. 144) this far away from Earth? For that matter, I'd assume everyone on Earth uses the metric system by the 24th century except the hardcore traditional freaks.
(And given that the French invented the metric system I'd image that even Robert Picard uses metric!)
TORAN: I don't understand. There were forty-seven other people living on that moon. They all left willingly.
I'm not fond of straight, unmodified 47s at this point. You gotta reverse it to 74 or extend it to 447 or whatever to be clever.