#044 - She Quarks Hard For The Money
Here’s the big ol’ volleyball-game-winning spike that Troi bumped and set in the last two strips, starting with that apparent non-sequitur redirect to Quark’s place. Damn indeed; daaaaaaaamn, girl.
Never forget: this is a woman who has access to, and actively maintains, extensive psychological profiles for all of these people.
So, yes: it’s kind of an odd thing, trying to write a twist into the story of this made-up game scenario when the game mostly pretty tightly tracks the event of the actual show, because if you remember your DS9 pilot well enough then of course the duffel bag is Odo, and of course letting the Cardassians have a good run at the table and then having Kira throw them out is a calculated gambit to get Odo aboard the Cardassian ship. The scene plays straight-faced in the show and you’re all like oh man, Quark must be pissed at Kira for shutting his bar down, and then bazamm! it was all a clever reverse heist, go team. I guess this is mostly a proper twist for folks who haven’t watched the pilot recently or ever.
But it seemed worth a little bit of work in the setup here to have Deanna basically orchestrate the whole thing single-handedly (with a wink and a nod to Wes, who I’m going to assume she passed a note to on the sly — we can never see their hands, what’s that about, etc) while Data just stays reliably in character and Picard and Riker grump around cluelessly. They’re all new to this game, but some of ‘em are definitely picking it up faster than others. Troi’s been fairly quiet so far, but it turns out that’s because she was watching, scheming, waiting for her moment.
The small figure of Troi in the distance, staring at the camera as we step-zoom in: SOON.
tk
I probably get around to addressing it in one of the original blog posts, but calling out my own little world-building running gag here in frequent references to the Ventrusians, a macguffin species I invented just to be able to make canon-lore-flavored jokes without having to actually worry about canonicity all the time. Probably any other reference I make to an alien species etc. is something dug up from Memory Alpha or whatnot. I honestly don't recall how much more or more often Ventrusian's get name-checked over the course of the strip, guess we'll see!
This is one of the things I really loved about Lower Decks -- the constant plumbing the depths of Star Trek canon/lore for stuff to reference, without making a big show out of the references. Just loving little asides snuck into a random conversation, calling out stuff that was just an odd little moment or forgotten detail of like the TOS animated series, that the watcher can take or leave. It's not a Family Guy bit, it's not stuff that grabs you by the shoulders and insists that you Engage The Fan Service, Do You Get It, Do You Get This Reference We're Making. Just, hey, while we're at it, here's some breadcrumbs to all these odd corners of the franchise history.