Business as Usual (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

"Business as Usual" is an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the eighteenth episode of the fifth season. It has an average fan rating of 4/5 on the official Star Trek website as of September, 2009.

Plot

Quark and Jadzia Dax are playing Tongo in the bar, but the Ferengi's heart isn't in it. His debts are mounting and he will soon have to sell his establishment. Quark's cousin Gaila enters the bar and offers to help him out of his predicament. Quark knows immediately what the enterprise is - selling weapons. Gaila tells him that no weapons will be brought to Deep Space Nine, as Odo would stop them. Instead, Quark will use his skills with customers to display holographic versions of the weapons in the holosuites. The weapons will be supplied by the suavely sinister Hagath. Gaila claims the money will help him pay off his debt, help renew his business license and enable him to buy his moon.

The scheme quickly alienates Quark's former friends, particularly Jadzia. To make matters worse, Hagath and Gaila want to engage in the particularly risky manoeuvre of selling weapons to both sides in a conflict. Soon Quark realizes his new clients will kill him if he messes up, and also want to buy many weapons which will kill millions of innocent people.

Quark realizes he must find a way to escape with his life and avoid being part of a genocide program. He arranges for representatives of the two sides - the Regent of Palamar, and General Nassuc - to encounter each other at the station. A firefight ensues, and they leave the station in pursuit of the double-crossing Gaila and Hagath.

Quark's friendship with Jadzia is renewed, but his financial woes are not over: Sisko makes him pay for damage ensuing from the firefight.

Miscellany

• The characters make reference to a powerful Breen weapon called the 'CRM-114'. The CRM-114 is the nomenclature of the Strategic Air Command decryption device aboard the B-52 Stratofortress in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick has used this designation in other films as well.

• The speech that Gaila gives to Quark when the latter is having a crisis of conscience is a reference to the one Harry Lime gives to Holly Martins in The Third Man.

• This storyline is continued in the story "GREED: Reservoir Ferengi", part of the Star Trek Seven Deadly Sins book

External links

• Business as Ususal at the Internet Movie Database
• "Business as Ususal" at TV.com
• Business as Usual at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• Business as Usual at StarTrek.com