When launching Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, Gene Roddenberry and the show's writers decided to introduce a new alien species to serve as antagonists for the crew of the USS Enterprise-D.

The writers decided that the Ferengi ultimately failed to appear sufficiently menacing, instead replacing them with the Romulans and Borg as primary antagonists.

While preparing scripts for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the idea of the Ferengi was devised by Gene Roddenberry and Herbert Wright.

[2] The new alien species initially appeared in the first season's fourth episode, "The Last Outpost", which was based on a story by Richard Krzemien and a teleplay by Wright.

[2] The Ferengi ship featured in the episode was designed by Andy Probert, who used a horseshoe crab on Wright's desk as inspiration, with the model then being constructed by Greg Jein.

[2] The Ferengi were reused for the season's ninth episode, "The Battle", based on a story by Larry Forrester that Wright converted into a teleplay.

[7] For the second-season episode "Peak Performance", written by David Kemper and directed by Robert Scheerer, the Enterprise is depicted encountering a hostile Ferengi ship while engaging in a practice exercise.

[9] The season three episode "The Price", which was written by Hannah Louise Shearer, directed by Robert Scheerer, and first aired in November 1989, also included Ferengi characters.

[12] The show's creators developed the character of Quark, a Ferengi bartender who would, according to Piller, be "a constant thorn in the side of law and order, but who has a sense of humor about it.

Episodes of the series portray the Ferengi's hyper-capitalistic emphasis on profit and sexist social norms (at the beginning of the series, Ferengi females are not permitted to earn profit or even wear clothing), and the society's gradual evolution away from those norms as, for example, Quark's mother becomes a respected businesswoman and Quark comes to tolerate his employees forming a union.

In the third season of Deep Space Nine, Quark's nephew Nog becomes the first Ferengi to join Starfleet, the military and exploration arm of the United Federation of Planets.

By 2381, the progressive reforms of Grand Nagus Rom and his wife First Clerk Leeta had taken root in Ferengi society with the arms trade being discouraged with the greater longer-term economic benefits of more benign industries, such as hospitality, being encouraged.

Violations of economic norms such as abrogating contracts between fellow Ferengi or fraudulently taking advantage of business discounts are considered serious offences and subject to harsh punishments.

A long-running plot thread on DS9 features Ferengi society's gradual evolution away from these practices, especially as Quark's mother Ishka establishes herself as a respected businesswoman and financial advisor.

Evidently, the fact that granting full societal and economic rights to females would mean a dramatic expansion of business and investment opportunities proved persuasive to the Ferengi government.

Given that one customer's money is as valuable as the next's, it makes no sense to Ferengi to refuse to interact with those different from them: even Quark of all people feels the discrimination Odo faces for being a changeling is repugnant.

While they have hired mercenaries for private contracts, the Ferengi Alliance as a whole has never fought a major interstellar war - instead preferring to apply economic pressure on their rivals until they're willing to negotiate.

[25][26] During the 1990s, this issue was discussed on electronic mailing lists devoted to the franchise, with some commentators arguing that there were parallels and others objecting to the comparison.

[27] In his 2007 critique of The Next Generation for the National Review, the commentator Jonah Goldberg described the Ferengi as "runaway capitalists with bullwhips who looked like a mix between Nazi caricatures of Jews and the original Nosferatu.