Stardate 4525.3

Stardate 4525.3

Captains Log, Stardate 4525.3,
We’ve once again met the Ferengi,
Now they’re united with an old foe,
Harcourt Mudd, he doesn’t move slow.

The Ferengi have large ears,
Live for over one hundred years,
With a four lobed brain, teeth like a spike,
At first glance, there’s not much to like.

This guy Harcourt goes by Harry for his name,
There is much for which he’s to blame.
I’m sure his life became one of hell,
With the reprogramming, of his android Stell’.

He escaped that android planet, what a tale!
With Stella’s love around him, all else paled.
She never stopped talking when told to “Shut up!”
Her love for Harry overflowed her cup.

Now in this Mudd and Ferengi alliance
There’s not much freedom, no defiance.
Sell high, buy low, a motto they live by,
And Harry?  No Ferengi, just an ordinary guy.

Harry’s selling Quadrilobiscar Krems,
The Ferengi love these, crave to have them.
This is unusual, it’s like a drug to their senses,
Exposed to it, they lose their defenses.

The Ferengi’s have many Pucadimnisc’s
A weakness for Harry, he’ll take the risk.
Double cross the Ferengi, to get one step ahead,
If he’s not careful, he’ll end up dead.

The Ferengi saw right through this plot,
Confronted him about it, things got hot.
Harry escaped, with Stella by his side,
To doublecross the Ferengi, he had tried.

Now the Ferengi had no Quadrilobiscar Krems,
But had one tiny seed, from which grew a stem.
Harry’s Pucadimnisc was larger than most,
He had a tale, of which he would often boast.

How he cheated the Ferengi of their treasure,
Walked away free after taking his pleasure.
The Ferengi thought they had the better deal,
Quadrilobiscar Krem made a delicious meal.

It’s said there was no winner, in this business affair,
That neither of them robbed the other bare.
No one knew there was a third party to this deal
I swindled them both, hear my laughter peal.

Jim Dorrell
8/3/11

Author Notes about The Ferengi, and Harry Mudd:

The Ferengi (English pronunciation: /fəˈrɛŋɡi/) are a fictitious extraterrestrial race from the Star Trek universe. They and their culture are characterized by a mercantile obsession with profit and trade and their constant efforts to swindle people into bad deals. They are also known for their business acumen and for exploiting females.
 
On stardate 4513.3, the USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, is hijacked by an android who has been posing as Mr. Norman, a recently assigned crewman. The android seals off engineering and redirects the ship to an unknown planet at Warp 7. The planet is discovered to be populated with other androids built to serve humans.

When the crew arrives at the planet, Captain Kirk discovers Harcourt Fenton Mudd, an outlaw whom Kirk has encountered previously, is the apparent "leader" of the androids. Having previously escaped incarceration for his crimes, Mudd explains that he crashed his (stolen) spaceship on the planet, and the androids took him in. He says that they are very accommodating, but refuse to let him go. During his stay on the world, Mudd has acquired thousands of android women as servants (in groups of 500 identical units), and an android version of his wife Stella, although the difference is that the robot Stella does not constantly nag him, and shuts up when she is told.

The Enterprise crew manages to shutdown the leader of the androids, and reprogram them all.  Mudd is officially and indefinitely paroled to the android population, which he finds acceptable until he realizes, to Kirk and his crew's amusement, that not only has the nagging android Stella been reprogrammed not to respond to the command "Shut up!" but there are now at least 500 copies of her.