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 is of completely human appearance although he tends to shrivel up when he gets dehydrated. 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/she will frequently switch personalities with no warning, and usually at the worst possible time. 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. Gene/Jean ( Tim Thomerson) is a "transmute", a humanoid being with a complete set of both male and female chromosomes.Quark, when describing his crew, explains that he is in love with Betty, but he is not sure which one. They have a tendency to speak in perfect unison and have exactly the same thought at exactly the same time. One of them is a clone of the other, but each claims the other one is the clone. They are completely identical, with identical red-hot passions for Quark. The Bettys (Cyb and Patricia Barnstable) are the navigators and pilots of the ship. He is skilled and competent, but extraordinarily unlucky. Adam Quark ( Richard Benjamin) is a Commander who longs for a glamorous, important assignment and ends up collecting trash instead.
![captain quark captain quark](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/zn/c0o0zhth0h3l.jpg)
Three of the episodes were direct parodies of Star Trek episodes. In its short run, Quark satirized such science fiction as Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lost in Space, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon. Adam Quark, the main character, works to clean up trash in space by collecting "space baggies" with his trusted and highly unusual crew. The show was set on a United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol Cruiser, an interstellar garbage scow operating out of United Galaxies Space Station Perma One in the year 2226.