Quark (TV Series) - Characters

Characters

• Adam Quark (Richard Benjamin) is a Commander who longs for a glamorous, important assignment and ends up collecting trash instead. Nonetheless he is skilled and competent, albeit extraordinarily unlucky.
• Betty I and Betty II (aka The Bettys) (Cyb and Patricia Barnstable) are the navigators and pilots of the ship. They are completely identical, complete with identical red-hot passions for Quark. One of them is a clone of the other, but when asked which is the clone, each points to the other and says "She is!" They have a tendency to speak in perfect unison and have exactly the same thought at exactly the same time. Quark, when describing his crew, explains that he is in love with Betty, but he's not sure which one of the Bettys he's in love with—this no doubt is the reason for the refusal of the clone to identify herself.
• Gene/Jean (Tim Thomerson) is a "transmute", a humanoid being with a complete set of both male and female chromosomes. He/she serves as the ship's engineer. The gender confusion manifests in a split personality — when Gene's macho male side is in control, he is gung-ho, angry and violent with a pathological hatred of the Klingon-like "Gorgons", while the much more mild-mannered Jean personality is stereotypically feminine and demure, pacifistic and a bit of a coward. He/she will frequently switch personalities with no warning.
• Ficus Pandorata (Richard Kelton) is Quark's Spock-like science officer and is a "Vegeton", a member of a race of sentient plant life (Ficus pandorata or pandurata is better known as Ficus lyrata, the fiddle-leaf fig). He is of completely human appearance although he tends to shrivel up when he gets dehydrated. While he is extremely intelligent, observant and always calmly rational, he is incapable of any sort of human emotion, including both fear and tact. He frequently finds the behavior of the rest of the crew difficult to understand, his curiosity leading him to have philosophical debates about the human condition with Quark, usually at the most inopportune moments. In real life, Kelton died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning on November 27, 1978, only seven months after the series was cancelled.
• Andy (Bobby Porter) is a not-at-all-human-looking robot, made from spare parts, with a cowardly and neurotic personality ("This mission is no place for cowards -- TAKE ME HOME!").
• Otto Palindrome (Conrad Janis) is in charge of Perma One, and gives Commander Quark his assignments. He is a stereotypical bureaucrat who gives new definition to the word "petty" — a nightmare tyrant to his underlings and a quivering toady towards his superiors. Palindrome seems to take a special delight in making Quark's life miserable, although deep down he does seem to have a certain well-hidden affection for Adam. (His first name, "Otto", is a palindrome, as is his middle name, "Bob.")
• Dink is a diminutive and very hairy alien aide to Palindrome who resembles a curly blond version of Cousin Itt. His voice is a xylophone-like electronic warble. He often provides a foil for Palindrome's concerns about his job and about Quark, both of whom he comes to for dating advice. There is another member of his species on Perma 1 called either Doot or Doop whose masses of long hair resemble brown and red wool.
• The Head (Alan Caillou) is the being to whom Palindrome answers. He is usually seen as a disembodied head with an enormous cranium. He is detached from day-to-day events, has a low tolerance for failure, and a tendency to come up with bizarre tasks for Quark to accomplish — usually at the worst possible time. His trademark sign-off: "The galaxy, ad infinitum!"
• Interface (Misty Rowe) A four-armed alien woman who functioned as an operator for all interstellar calls. The perfect example of a communications bureaucrat, she is more concerned about correct charges for lasergrams than about saving the Galaxy. Appeared only in the pilot but is mentioned in at least one later episode.
• Ergo A multi-eyed little blob that was Quark's pet, paralleling Pinback and the Alien from the movie Dark Star. In the pilot, the colorless and translucent Ergo seemed intent on killing Quark, but in the final episode when he appeared again he was much more subdued and pea soup green in color.