Saw the sad news this morning on IMDB and a couple Twitter accounts of Star Trek actors. I had no idea he was around my age but then again, he was rather short like all the people cast to play Ferengi. To his credit, I didn’t mind his role as Nog, Rom’s son. He and Armin Shimmerman contributed heavily toward making the failed ST:NG nemesis (see “The Last Outpost”) more than comic relief and two dimensional. It’s not a spoiler alert after a couple decades; Nog becoming the first Ferengi applicant to Starfleet Academy was a nice touch too. As the writers got more adept at finding a place for these commerce-obsessed aliens, it was good to see examples of them not being con artists, merchants, smugglers, etc. Now if they ever get around to doing this with Klingons, I’ll be impressed because even their society must have an economy to pay for all those battle cruisers.
Aron also appeared at least once on Voyager as a Kazon (sic?) of sorts. Sadly, Voyager never did find a way to utilize these aliens well.
Farewell Aron. Thanks for all your work and enduring hours on end wearing an appliance and dentures to fix an idea Roddenberry hadn’t thought through. We owe you all a debt for making the Ferengi more than cartoonish buffoons obsessed with gold.