Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Kol and Arridor, two Ferengi recurring characters who appeared in TNG and Voyager.
Kol and Arridor are the type of Ferengi who add some comic relief by finding a way to mess their own plans up. We first see them serving aboard DaiMon Goss's marauder ship in the TNG episode The Price. Arridor is a physician and Kol is one of the consuls on the ship. In this episode, the Ferengi and the Federation are negotiating over a wormhole that had been discovered to lead to the Gamma Quadrant.
This Barzan wormhole ends up being unstable, however. So when a shuttle from Enterprise and a Ferengi shuttle carrying Kol and Arridor end up in the Delta Quadrant instead of the Gamma Quadrant, the Ferengi ignore these warnings to go back through the wormhole quickly and they end up stranded in the Delta Quadrant when the wormhole moves its terminus back between the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants. Picard's Enterprise must just move on without the Ferengi. Oh well.
But as you might suspect, this made for a perfect opportunity for these Ferengi to reappear in Voyager, as that stranded ship made its way through the Delta Quadrant. Voyager discovers in the episode False Profits that Kol and Arridor set up shop on the Takarian homeworld, having passed themselves off as Great Sages or deities under the local legends and beliefs. The Ferengi demanded tribute and taxes from the Takarians and had built up significant wealth, as you would expect from conniving Ferengi.
Of course, Voyager couldn't let this scheme stand. Neelix poses as an agent of the Grand Nagus and then as a Holy Pilgrim of Takarian legends to fool the Ferengi into being captured by Voyager and removed from the planet. Of course, the Ferengi are smarter than that, so they escape Voyager on their shuttle and intend to return to the planet. Sadly for them, they ran too close to the same Barzan wormhole which had again shifted to the Delta Quadrant, and they get sucked in, making the wormhole even more erratic and unstable. Nobody knows what happened to the Ferengi from there. Oh well.
INSERT FERENGI WORMHOLE
Kol was played by J.R. Quinonez in TNG and by Leslie Jordan in Voyager. Quinonez is a background and stand in who often stood in for the EMH character on Voyager. Jordan is best known for his role as Beverley Leslie, the millionaire rival of Megan Mullally's character on the TV show Will & Grace. Dan Shor played Arridor in both appearances, and he has spent the last 20 years in New York City as an acting and screenwriting teacher, as well as the director in residence for the Diversified Theater Company.
----
Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment