T's Trek Trivia Tuesday: “The Best Is Yet To Combs”

The many faces of Jeffrey Combs

APRIL 5, 2022 - Jeffrey Combs is a familiar face to Star Trek fans. Even under the makeup of different races, his expressive eyes and recognizable voice give him away whenever he’s on screen. If you only count Weyoun and Brunt once (ignoring all the clones, illusions, Mirror Universe counterparts, etc.), he’s played 10 characters in the Trek universe over four Star Trek series and one video game, and has made his name as a fan-favorite franchise guest star. But while you may enjoy his performances, how much do you know about the different characters he’s portrayed? Let’s find out…

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Combs made his Star Trek debut as Tiron in the Deep Space Nine third season episode, “Meridian.” In the episode, Tiron drove the “B plot,” pursuing Kira’s affections and eventually paying Quark to create a holosuite program featuring her. While the character’s stalkerish tendencies are off-putting, to say the least, the actor beneath the makeup made a lasting impression. But he might not have been in the episode had it not been for director Jonathan Frakes.

Where had Frakes met Jeffrey Combs before?

Quark (Armin Shimerman) and Tiron (Jeffrey Combs) come to an agreement in "Meridian"

Frakes remembered Combs from about eight years earlier, when he had auditioned for the role of First Officer on a new sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Combs lost the role to Frakes, but clearly left an impression on the future director.

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Later that same season, in an episode directed by DS9’s own Rene Auberjonois, Combs returned to the station as Ferengi Liquidator Brunt, come to audit Quark’s bar. It seems Quark and Rom’s mother, Ishka, has been illegally earning profit, even though she’s a female. The character later returned in the fourth season episode “Bar Association” (directed by LeVar Burton) to investigate a union strike at Quark’s. Over the course of these two episodes, the Liquidator truly came to hate Quark and returned once again later that season (in an episode directed by Avery Brooks) to have the pleasure of seizing our favorite Ferengi’s assets and expelling him from the business world.

What provoked Brunt to do such a thing? (Other than his general dislike of Quark.)

Jeffrey Combs in his first Ferengi role, that of Liquidator Brunt

In the DS9 episode “Body Parts,” Quark finds out that he has Dorek Syndrome, a Ferengi disease both rare and deadly. In the Ferengi tradition, Quark prepares to sell his bodily remains, in vacuum-sealed discs suitable for display. An anonymous bidder offers to pay five hundred bars of platinum for the entire lot of 52 discs. Quark, overjoyed at the prospect, accepts without a second thought.

Of course, things never go as planned for Quark. Doctor Bashir informs him that his Ferengi doctor has misdiagnosed him and he is not going to die, which should be good news, except that Brunt arrives on the station, revealing that he is the bidder, and demands his merchandise. He won’t accept a refund or the increasingly large amounts of latinum Quark offers him, but by the end he simply revokes Quark’s business license and takes away all of his assets. With the exception, of course, of the friendship of many of the space station’s inhabitants, which, to paraphrase the 109th Rule of Acquisition, “that and an empty sack is worth the sack,” at least as far as a Ferengi is concerned. But still, Quark is left overwhelmed and speechless by the show of support.

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The same year that Brunt stripped Quark of all that he owned, we met the Vorta Weyoun, also played by Jeffrey Combs. In the episode “To The Death,” he joined our intrepid heroes in a hunt for a group of renegade Jem’Hadar. The episode didn’t end so well for the Vorta, who was killed at the end of the episode. Too bad, since Weyoun was a great character and Combs’ performance was excellent.

Oh, but wait. This is science fiction, and we’ve already established that the Vorta are genetically-engineered. So it was later established that every time a Weyoun died, a clone was created to take its place, leading to frequent Weyoun appearances by Combs. The Vorta were bred to have absolute loyalty to the Founders, but one of the Weyoun clones was defective.

Which iteration of Weyoun did not live up to his programming, and how was he defective?

Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs) and the Cardassian Damar (Casey Biggs) had a barely-contained contempt for each other throughout the series

In “Treachery, Faith and the Great River,” we meet the sixth incarnation of Weyoun. While he still venerates the Founders, he strongly felt that the Dominion War was a mistake, thereby being declared “defective,” as far as his masters were concerned. In his case, he was replaced with Weyoun 7 before he died and when his successor found him, he activated his termination implant in order to save Odo’s life.

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All good things come to an end, as the saying goes, and so, too, did DS9. In total, Combs made thirty-one appearances on the series, even playing Brunt and Weyoun in the same episode once! But the end of DS9 didn’t signal the end of Combs’ Trek appearances. in Star Trek Voyager, he crossed paths with the titular starship and got on the crew’s bad side as the alien Penk.

How exactly does Penk earn Janeway’s ire?

According to the "Star Trek Adventures - Gamma Quadrant" sourcebook, Penk's full name was Penk pal gal Throoma Shorn

Penk was a career kidnapper, stealing aliens for the bloodsport Tsunkatse. He messed with the wrong people this time, though, when he kidnapped Seven of Nine and Tuvok, forcing the ex-B to fight in the games. He didn’t get away with it in the end, but it did give The Rock a chance to appear as a fighter in a UPN crossover between VOY and WWF SmackDown!

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Combs’ appearance as Penk was his only one in VOY, but he played two characters in Star Trek: Enterprise. One was the Ferengi Krem. The less we say about that episode, the better. But the other character became a fan favorite.

Thy’lek Shran was introduced in the first season of ENT. An Andorian commander of the Imperial Guard, he took control of a Vulcan temple in an attempt to prove that their neighbors, the Vulcans were committing a treaty violation by spying on them. When Captain Archer helped them acquire the proof, Shran’s honor wouldn’t let him sleep until he returned the favor. This runner defined their relationship throughout the series, with each one looking for opportunities to repay the others’ kindness. From such relationships, alliances are born.

In season 4, Shran was in a romantic relationship with his tactical officer, Talas, when she was killed by the Tellarite Ambassador’s assistant, Nag. The death of his beloved demanded a particular response from Shran leading Archer to step in and resolve the dispute.

What did Shran’s code of honor demand, and how did Archer stop him?

Tala's death is making Shran feel a little blue in Star Trek: Enterprise's "United"

“When in doubt, fight it out.” Much like the Vulcan Kal-if-fee, the Andorians used the Ushaan to decide such disputes. The ritual saw the two combatants chained to each other and wielding an ice mining tool known as the ushaan-tor. The tool was sharp and deadly, the idea being that the last combatant alive was the victor. Archer, in an attempt to keep a diplomatic peace, volunteered to take the Tellarite’s place. If the heartbroken Shran won, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, but he was determined to see it through.

Luckily for everyone involved, Mayweather and Sato find a loophole in the combat’s rules: when a combatant is left defenseless, the battle is called off. It turns out that Andorian antennae aren’t vital appendages, but they do help them with their sense of balance. Archer ends the battle by chopping off one of Shran’s antennae, but we are relieved to learn that it will grow back by the next time he appears in the series.

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The series finale of ENT was, to date, Jeffrey Combs’ last appearance. But, wait! There’s more Star Trek happening these days than ever before, including an animated series called Star Trek: Lower Decks. In the second season of the series (and please, if you haven’t watched the season yet, BEWARE SPOILERS), Combs voiced the evil supercomputer AGIMUS. Boimler and Mariner were assigned to take the crafty computer to the Daystrom Institute. After their shuttlecraft crashed, it tricked the pair into arguing with each other with the goal of getting one of them to help it escape.

Did either Boimler or Mariner figure out the machine’s nefarious plot, and if so, how was AGIMUS thwarted???

Bradward Boimler (voiced by Jack Quaid) and Beckett Mariner (voiced by Tawny Newsome) are set against each other by AGIMUS (voiced by Jeffrey Combs)

Boimler argued to Mariner that AGIMUS should be allowed to help them reactivate a derelict starship they find, eventually stunning Mariner so she wouldn’t stand in his way. He then connects the wayward machine to the ship’s navigation console, allowing it to take control of the vessel and use it to build a fleet of murder drones.

Except you have to wake up pretty early in the morning to put one over on Ensign Bradward Boimler. All he had done was connect AGIMUS to a dimmer switch and then accessed the evil mechanism’s power cell in order to broadcast a distress signal. Boimler and Mariner were rescued, and AGIMUS was taken to a place where he couldn’t cause any more harm: the Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage room at Daystrom.