WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard season 3, episode 2, "Disengage."The introduction of Ferengi gangster Sneed (Aaron Stanford) in Star Trek: Picard season 3 finally pays off the original vision that Gene Roddenberry had for Star Trek: The Next Generation's villains. The Ferengi were created by Gene Roddenberry and Herbert J. Wright as new antagonists for the crew of TNG's new USS Enterprise-D. As the Cold War came to an end toward the end of the 1980s, it was felt that TNG should have a new conflict to replace the tensions between the Federation and the Klingon Empire which had defined Star Trek: The Original Series.
To conceive the Ferengi, Wright took inspiration from the "greed is good" philosophy of Ronald Reagan's America in the 1980s. The idea of capitalist barbarians in space felt like a logical choice of antagonist for Gene Roddenberry's egalitarian utopia. Unfortunately, the Ferengi didn't work as Klingon replacements because they came off as too comical to be taken seriously as a threat. The Ferengi were redefined thanks to Quark (Armin Shimerman) and the other Ferengi characters in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but Star Trek: Picard's Sneed is the closest that Star Trek has come to realizing the potential of the Ferengi as serious villains.
