Movies - TV
Armin Shimerman 'Begged' Star Trek's Writers To Make Up Their Minds About Quark's IQ
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Armin Shimerman, who played DS9's shrewd bar owner and freelance criminal element Quark appeared at the 2022 Fanboy Expo in Knoxville, Tennessee, and talked about wanting to return as Quark and the nature of his character. He also revealed that DS9's writers played a little too fast and loose with Quark, leading to Shimerman's constant questions as to how smart Quark really was.
Shimerman said, "We could not change lines. We could make suggestions, which were rarely followed. I know that three times a year I would take the writers out to lunch and make some suggestions. I remember begging them many times, 'Just tell me what his IQ is. Just tell me because sometimes he's smart and sometimes he's not. Just tell me what his IQ is.'"
Because Quark's values differ from the Starfleet characters, the show's writers were constantly tempted to give him comedy lines about amusingly exploiting his workers while pooh-poohing Gene Roddenberry's post-capitalist sci-fi utopia. The push-and-pull of Quark is that he is a smart businessman, but also something of a buffoon, a dichotomy Shimerman did not appreciate.