Ethan Phillips To Play 'Enterprise' Ferengi... SPOILERS

[Neo]

Ethan Phillips, the man behind Star Trek: Voyager's Neelix, will return to the franchise for a guest role in an upcoming Enterprise episode.

Phillips will once again don heavy make-up, as this time around he'll be playing a Ferengi. Dominic Keating (Malcolm Reed) let the secret slip during his appearance at a convention in Portland, Oregon last weekend.

According to a report by Linda Burnett and Gayle Stever at The Edge of the Frontier, Keating said Phillips will be in the next episode filmed and had dropped by the set the previous week.

The large-lobed race will rate their first Enterprise mention in next week's 'Dear Doctor' when one of the aliens mentions they have been visited by the Ferengi, who are not known even to the Vulcans.

In a recent interview, actress Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) said the cast and crew were filming this season's nineteenth episode. Judging by this, Phillips's appearance should air in a couple of months.

Phillips is no stranger to the race of greedy aliens, as he made his first appearance in Trek in the Next Generation episode 'Menage A Troi' as the Ferengi Dr. Farek. He also popped up in a short uncredited role in the movie 'Star Trek: First Contact' in one of the holodeck scenes. Phillips provided the voice of Neelix in the video game 'Voyager Elite Force' and appeared in Voyager crewmate Robert Duncan McNeill's (Tom Paris) short film '9mm of Love.'

 

[Dave]

AND IT BEGINS...

The Ferengi are first mentioned in 'Star Trek' in' Encounter at Farpoint' TNG when Groppler Zorn, a member of the Bandi race, slyly suggests that the Ferengi might be interested in the Starbase at Deneb IV if the Federation are not.

We later learn that nine years earlier, Picard himself engaged and destroyed a Ferengi ship. But it is made clear that although ships had come in contact, no one at this time had ever seen a Ferengi. Not until 'The Last Outpost' TNG does Starfleet meet Ferengi aliens.

Their home planet Ferengar seems to be either in the Beta Quadrant, or else on the far edge of the Alpha Quadrant, since they border Klingon Space. And although Q'oNos seems to be fairly close to Earth ('Fight or Flight' ENT) if it is that close, wouldn't we have seen the Ferengi in TOS?

I knew that it wouldn't be long before they began rewriting Trek lore. 'Retconning' is one thing, but changing previously established facts is not on, whether it's because they don't know, or because they don't care!

 

[Neo]

About time we saw more of the real Ferengi's....

I did not like the way they were portrayed on DS9...