IDW's forthcoming comic series Star Trek: Zero Point has introduced a character positioned as the franchise's successor to Quark, the beloved Ferengi bartender from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His name is Derrill Zaf, and unlike Quark, he isn't Ferengi at all — he's a Caitian who was raised by Ferengi, according to details revealed for the series.
In Zero Point, Captain Raffi Musiker commands her own vessel, the Endeavour, tasked with using an advanced AI to predict threats to the Federation and neutralize them before they escalate. Her crew skews heavily non-human, including a disgraced Tzenkethi and Zaf himself.
Zaf takes center stage in Star Trek: Zero Point #3, written by Charlie Jane Anders and drawn by Isaac Sánchez González. According to IDW's solicitation for the issue, the Endeavour orbits Orridior IV, an M-class planet with a single massive continent surrounded by a toxic ocean. The Orridiorans, distrustful of humanoids, desperately need their deflector replaced before a devastating storm strikes. It falls to Zaf and the ship's other nonhuman crew members to resolve the crisis diplomatically. In a parallel storyline, Tendi follows Musiker into her growing dependence on answers supplied by the AI superintelligence Sybil, raising the question of what it would mean to never make a mistake again. IDW has also released the issue's covers, including one by artist Niclas Mortensen featuring Zaf.
Quark, played by Armin Shimmerman, was one of the first regular non-Starfleet characters in Star Trek history when Deep Space Nine premiered in 1993. Over seven seasons, his story — alongside his brother Rom and nephew Nog — unfolded against the buildup to the war with the Dominion. Shimmerman had previously played other Ferengi characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the Ferengi were originally introduced as replacements for the Klingons as the franchise's antagonists, only to be sidelined by the show's third season once the Borg emerged as the new primary threat.
Caitians first appeared in Star Trek: The Animated Series, including the character M'Ress, and later showed up in the background of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and as Doctor T'Ana in Lower Decks. Zaf joins a lineage of mixed-heritage Star Trek characters such as the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock and Counselor Deanna Troi, though his situation more closely echoes Worf, the Klingon raised by adoptive parents after a massacre killed his family. How Zaf came to be raised by the Ferengi has not yet been revealed, though issue three may provide those answers.
Photo: Beth Madison, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
