The Inappropriate Joke Hidden In Plain Sight In Classic Star Trek Episode
For the most part, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a pretty tame show…it may have constantly put Marina Sirtis in skimpy outfits, but this is the last series where you might expect a character to make a vulgar sexual joke. Nevertheless, one such joke is hidden inside one of the show’s most important episodes. In “The Price,” a Ferengi uses his hands to tell a hapless ensign about how large his penis is in a moment that seems wildly out of place in this Star Trek spinoff.
If it’s been a hot minute since you watched “The Price,” here’s a quick recap: in this Star Trek adventure, different governments negotiate for the rights to what is supposedly a stable wormhole to the other side of the galaxy. Some of the representatives at these negotiations are Ferengi, a race known for their greed and general misogyny toward women. The latter quality is on full display in a scene where the Ferengi Goss makes a hand gesture toward Ensign Bailey; later, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion confirmed he was referencing the size of his “sex organ.”
This vulgar display is a real “blink and you miss it” moment…one that, in fact, most Star Trek fans missed entirely. But why is this moment in the episode at all? While we can only speculate, it’s entirely possible that director Robert Scheerer included this as a reference to another thing most fans don’t know about: Gene Roddenberry’s weird fascination with the Ferengi having huge penises.
Years before “The Price” aired, Roddenberry helped create the Ferengi as a new villain for our heroes to face, one that would function like the Klingons did in Star Trek: The Original Series. In a 1987 memo, the Trek creator described the Ferengi as having “prodigious sexual appetites”, and TNG producer Herb Wright later claimed that the Ferengi were manifestations of Roddenberry’s own “sex fetish.” Wright claims that Roddenberry wanted “wanted to put a gigantic codpiece on the Ferengi” as a way of confirming for audiences that these aliens were very well-endowed.
Continuing, Wright said that Roddenberry “spent 25 minutes explaining to me all the sexual positions the Ferengi could go through.” Eventually, the producer shut down all of this weird sex talk by telling the franchise creator that they couldn’t have all of this spicy content because “this is a family show, on at 7:00 on Saturdays.” Roddenberry agreed, and Ferengi penis size is not confirmed onscreen, though these misogynistic aliens retained their outsized sexual appetites as originally conceived by the Trek guru.
It’s entirely possible that having a Ferengi brag about his penis size in “The Price” is a way of honoring the Star Trek creator’s original vision for these aliens. It’s also possible, of course, that this is simply a fun visual gag about a minor character bragging about his anatomy in a memorably vulgar way. These aliens are often portrayed as crude caricatures of modern capitalists, so having one of them focused on the size of his stick of latinum would be perfectly in line with their other onscreen portrayals.
As for us, we like to think that “The Price” is a way of honoring Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s wildly horny vision for these avaricious aliens. However, we may never know if Goss (presuming he was telling the truth) is uniquely endowed or if the Ferengi are collectively rocking a very thick endowment (presumably from the Great Material Continuum). The latter might finally answer the question we’ve been asking for decades: why the heck Leeta ends up marrying Rom on Deep Space Nine.
