{"id":1077,"date":"2025-04-20T16:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T20:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpgquartermaster.net\/?p=1077"},"modified":"2025-11-11T23:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T23:26:04","slug":"ds9-the-nagus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/?p=1077","title":{"rendered":"DS9 “The Nagus”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Okay, so just last week I was watching DS9’s “The Nagus” episode. I love DS9 but it’s been years since I’ve watched much of it. My family is doing a watch through from the beginning and when I can, I sit down with them to enjoy it. So many wonderful little things stand out to me now.

As a parent, Sisko’s conundrum in guiding and understanding Jake without putting him off strikes so much more to the core now. I’m not even sure I heard this lesson from his perspective when the show was airing and I watched in my parents’ living room. I probably only heard the part where you should trust your kid. Completely missing the part where you have to trust the values you instilled in your kid to take hold and guide him too. It’s a nuance, but it matters. Seeing him realize that overreacting with his own authority will force Jake to choose between his father or his friend is so real to me now. I have entire parenting mantras in my head developed to keep myself from overreacting.

The Ferengi really rule this episode though, as the title implies, and getting Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride<\/em> Vizzini fame for this role made it eminently enjoyable and truly elevates the Ferengi as an entire species, epitomizing the cultural character of the race. It’s hilarious and yet demands to be taken seriously for what it is at the same time. Brilliant casting.

As I’ve had my head in the Stellar Cartography effort for a year now, The name dropping of all of the Ferengi worlds perked my ears: Balancar, Volchok, Tarahong, Clarus, Lappa, Thalos…. they’re all dropped in one scene around a conference table as the Grand Negus addresses his loyal trade members.

But that’s not all. Oh no. In a supporting subplot, Miles O’Brian is the substitute teacher standing in for his wife Keiko. Over his shoulder on the display board is a wacky alien creature with a noodle mouth and a fish tail and it has an anatomical diagram as well. “What is that?” I asked my husband repeatedly as we watched. I was sure someone online must have a name for it.

But before I even got around to trying to search for it, I was incidentally browsing old trek sites looking for more maps to reference or share and came across a fan site called Collecting Trek<\/em> (https:\/\/collectingtrek.ca\/<\/a>). In it, the collector has an article (https:\/\/collectingtrek.ca\/2023\/02\/15\/medical-reference\/<\/a>) visiting the Starfleet Medical Reference Manual and how it came into being. It’s a very fun read. And I learned that in the end, DS9’s set creators grabbed the previously non-canon creature reference from the Medical Manual, putting it on screen and thereby canonizing it! It brings a smile to my face.

You may recognize some of the images from other scans taken from it- the tribble anatomy chart in particular has made the rounds.

And now I have another book I’m going to have to get a hold on for my personal collection, because a medical chart is essentially another kind of map, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so just last week I was watching DS9’s “The Nagus” episode. I love DS9 but it’s been years since I’ve watched much of it. My family is doing a watch through from the beginning and when I can, I sit down with them to enjoy it. So many wonderful little things stand out to … Continue reading DS9 “The Nagus”<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,6],"tags":[44,45,43,38,46,32,31],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-logbook","tag-aliens","tag-biology","tag-ds9","tag-opinion","tag-resources","tag-review","tag-star-trek"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/naguscreatures.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}