Top 20 Episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine #7: Who Mourns for Morn

I’ve been looking forward to this one since the Countdown began, but before we get to the episode itself, let’s talk for a little bit about Morn. More of a running joke than an actual character, Morn was a frequent patron of Quark’s bar, originally conceived as an homage to Norm from Cheers. The joke with Morn was that while on camera he never speaks and rarely gets up from his bar stool, off screen it’s implied that he’s actually quite a chatterbox and an active, well-liked member of the Deep Space Nine community. However, the beauty of Deep Space Nine is that no character is insignificant, and even a glorified extra like Morn can get an episode dedicated to him.

Our episode starts with Sisko informing Quark that Morn was killed in a shuttle crash. Now, me personally, I believe that Quark did actually care about Morn, or at least saw him as a friend and valued customer, but, being a Ferengi, Quark’s not one to let grief get in the way of an opportunity to make some money. To that end, Quark holds a memorial service and charges admission to everyone who knew Morn, which is apparently most of the station. After delivering a comically insincere eulogy, Quark learns that Morn left everything he owns to Quark in his will which includes, several crates of rotting beats, a tub full of mud, a virtually worthless painting of a matador, and 1,000 bricks of gold pressed latinum. To contextualize, that’s the rough equivalent of 10,000,000 U.S. dollars. So, as you can imagine, after inheriting that much cash, Quark is on cloud nine. However, it seems that Quark’s inheritance may not exactly be one hundred percent on the up and up as several shady characters start coming out of the woodwork to lay claim to it, my favorites among them being a pair of lizard-like alien brothers who one day decided to have a contest to see who can do the best Jack Nicholson impression and are locked in an eternal stalemate. As things keep going from bad to worse for Quark, all the poor Ferengi can do is pray that he gets through this with both his money and his life.

Of all the episodes I’ve covered since this countdown started, this is hands down the funniest and the one I’ve watched the most. As I’ve said, multiple times, Quark is my favorite character and Armin Shimmerman my favorite actor, and I feel that this episode alone more than justifies those two statements. The man has incredible comedic timing both in the over the top moments, like the eulogy, and in the more subtle moments, like his sarcastic reactions to all the craziness happening around him.

However, even more so than Quark, the real MVP of this episode is Odo. As a law man, Odo is Quark’s nemesis and Armin Shimmerman and Rene Auberjonois always had phenomenal on screen chemistry in every single scene they shared. In this episode, Auberjonois gives what I personally believe to be his best, or at least most entertaining performance in the entire series as Odo is clearly aware of what’s going on with Quark, but chooses to sit back and enjoy the show, not intervening until it’s absolutely necessary. I can barely contain my laughter at the twisted pleasure he takes in every single one of Quarks misfortunes. The performances from both Auberjonois and Shimmerman make this a great comedy episode and one of the most fun episodes in the series as a whole. Not bad for an episode about a glorified extra.

In our next article, we cover one of DS9’s most noteworthy episodes as a familiar face is brought in to deal with a problem with the Klingons.