“Acquisition”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Maria Jacquemetton & André Jacquemetton
Directed by James Whitmore Jr.
Season 1, Episode 19
Production episode 019
Original air date: March 27, 2002
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. A Ferengi ship (which is never identified as such) docks with Enterprise, the crew having been rendered unconscious by gas. The Ferengi, who only speak in their language (the captions identify it as “CONVERSATION IN FERENGI,” which is the only use of that word in the entire episode), board the ship in gas masks, checking the place out. They are less than impressed with humans’ ears, though one of them, Krem, is intrigued by T’Pol’s ears, as well as the rest of her.
While the Ferengi gad about the ship, looting it of everything from weapons to chairs, Tucker sits in decon, wondering why Phlox hasn’t let him out. He jimmies the door and goes out into the corridors in his underwear, seeing the entire crew unconscious. Tucker observes the Ferengi on a security monitor in engineering. They take Archer and several of the ship’s female personnel to the launch bay. Using a hypo, they revive Archer and then point a translator at him until they all understand each other.
The Ferengi want to know where the vault is. Archer has no flipping clue what they’re talking about—they don’t have a vault. The Ferengi don’t believe him. After they casually mention bringing the women to a slave market on Stameris, Archer decides to play along with the notion that they have a vault. But when he tries to negotiate with them to keep some of the gold in the vault, the Ferengi decide to try to find the vault themselves, leaving Krem to load their spoils onto their ship. When Krem complains about having to do all the manual labor, Ulis, the leader, says to make Archer do it.
So Archer hauls his own ship’s stuff onto the Ferengi vessel at gunpoint under Krem’s direction. Archer gets to know Krem, learning more about the Ferengi (though, again, that word is never used), including some of the Rules of Acquisition. After moving several bits of contraband, Archer says he’s thirsty, and Krem handcuffs Archer to a bulkhead and heads to mess hall to fetch some water.
As soon as Krem’s gone, Tucker comes out of hiding and talks to Archer, telling him that sickbay and the armory have been looted, so he can’t revive the crew or get weapons to fight back. Archer says the hypo the Ferengi used to revive Archer is still in the launch bay. Tucker heads there and uses the hypo to revive T’Pol, but that uses up all that’s left in it, so he can’t revive anyone else.
Between them, T’Pol and Tucker figure out what happened. Tucker did a survey on a moon, and brought an artifact back. Tucker was sent into decon while T’Pol examined the artifact—which was probably put there by the Ferengi, as it emitted a gas.
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Until the Last of Me
When Krem and Archer return to the launch bay, Tucker hides, and T’Pol feigns unconsciousness. Krem is again drawn to T’Pol, and Archer assures him that Vulcans are more trouble than their worth—no sense of humor, and always complaining. Krem is not swayed.
When the Ferengi are on the bridge, T’Pol observes from nearby, noticing that they’re squabbling over how to divide the spoils. She remotely activates a very loud comm signal that hurts the Ferengi’s sensitive ears. While they’re distracted, she removes three scanners one Ferengi had claimed, and then puts two of them in another Ferengi’s bag. This causes more dissension in the ranks.
They try Archer’s quarters, hoping the vault might be there—after all, that’s where Ulis keeps his vault—and also try the medical scanner in sickbay, to no avail.
Muk spots Tucker and hits him with an energy whip. He brings him to the launch bay, where Archer is still acting as Krem’s pack horse. When Ulis says to load the women onto the ship, Tucker says he’ll show them where the vault is if they leave the women behind, claiming that Sato is his wife. To help sell it, Archer upbraids Tucker, saying that he can always get another wife, but he’d better not give away Archer’s gold.
Ulis, Muk, and Grish go with Tucker while Krem is told to keep loading the ship with Archer. Krem actually stands up to Ulis for a second before backing down. Archer then fakes a water polo injury, leaving Krem to load the ship by himself. While doing so, T’Pol plays on Krem’s attraction to her to get close enough to hit him with a neck pinch. Then she grabs a phase pistol, as well as the keys to Archer’s cuffs.
Tucker leads the other three on a merry chase throughout the ship before tricking them into entering the bio-matter resequencing section, where T’Pol calmly stuns the three of them.
After T’Pol frees Archer, the crew is revived, and the Ferengi have to give everything back at phase-pistol-point. Ulis, Grish, and Muk are manacled to chairs on their ship, leaving Krem in charge. The latter promises to give this area of space a wide berth and he goes off, now in charge.
The gazelle speech. Archer spends the entire episode working Krem, trying to get him to betray his cousin and actually think for himself. This eventually works out…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol doesn’t free Archer from his cuffs until (a) she gives him a hard time about his line to Krem about how Vulcans are so much trouble and have no sense of humor and such, and (b) Archer, completely unapologetic about what he did while captive, ordering her to free him, for crying out loud.
Florida Man. Florida Man Must Try To Help His Crewmates In His Underwear.
Good boy, Porthos! The Ferengi try to interrogate Porthos, assuming him to be intelligent because he has such large ears. They are initially confused by the fact that the translator can’t do anything with his barking. They then take Porthos as part of their spoils (but, of course, give him back in the end).
Rules of Acquisition. Krem states that there are 173 Rules of Acquistion, which means that 112 more will be coined between the twenty-second and twenty-fourth centuries. We get a new one in #23: “Nothing is more important than your health—except your money.” In addition #6 is stated to be “Never allow family to stand in the way of profit,” where it was stated in DS9’s “The Nagus” as “..in the way of opportunity,” but the Rule could easily have evolved over two hundred years.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Krem is completely smitten with T’Pol, and asks her for oo-mox. To be clear, he explicitly asks a woman he’s just met for a hand-job.
I’ve got faith…
“What species is she?”
“She’s a Vulcan.”
“Vulcan…”
“They’re not really all that interesting once you get to know them.”
“I’d like to get to know this one. Maybe I won’t sell her—not right away.”
“Trust me, she’s got no sense of humor, she’s always complaining…”
–Krem taking an interest in T’Pol, and Archer trying and failing to deflect him.
Welcome aboard. The only guests are the four Ferengi, three of whom are played by familiar faces (or, at least, familiar names, given the makeup…). We’ve got Clint Howard, who played the physical form of Balok in the original series’ “The Corbomite Maneuver” and Grady in DS9’s “Past Tense, Part II,” and who will play an Orion in Discovery’s “Will You Take My Hand?” We’ve got Ethan Phillips, whose first Trek role was as a Ferengi in TNG’s “Ménàge à Troi,” and who was Neelix on Voyager, as well as a holographic maître d’ in First Contact. And we’ve got Jeffrey Combs, who had the recurring role of Brunt on DS9 (and also played Brunt’s Mirror Universe iteration), as well as recurring roles of Weyoun on DS9 and Shran on Enterprise, and who has had one-off roles in DS9’s “Meridian” and “Far Beyond the Stars,” Voyager’s “Tsunkatse,” and Lower Decks’ “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie.”
The fourth Ferengi is played by Matt Malloy, who will also provide the voice of Omag in the game Elite Force II.
Trivial matters: Matt Malloy was cast in this as a make-good after he was unable to play the role of Kov in “Fusion.”
Muk’s energy whip is the first time that Ferengi weapon has been seen since the species’ debut in TNG’s “The Last Outpost” (unless you count the accessories for the Marauder Mo action figure Quark was playing with in DS9’s “Ferengi Love Songs”).
One of Quark’s holosuite programs was called Vulcan Love Slave, and the DS9 novel This Gray Spirit by Heather Jarman claims that Krem was one of the authors of the original novel on which the program was based, no doubt inspired by his meeting T’Pol in this episode.
Muk asks if he looks like a Menk. It was established in “Dear Doctor” that the Valakians and the Menk had had encounters with the Ferengi.
It’s been a long road… “Everybody knows you’d steal the wax out of your own mother’s ears.” To call this episode a trash fire is being incredibly mean and unfair to hot flaming garbage.
I don’t understand the logic behind even doing this episode. Some of the worst hours of Star Trek have been aggressively unfunny Ferengi episodes, from TNG’s “Ménàge à Troi,” Rascals,” and “The Perfect Mate” to DS9’s “Profit and Lace” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak” to Voyager’s “False Profits.” And while there are good Ferengi episodes, the bad ones all have one thing in common: the Ferengi are portrayed in the most caricatured manner possible, as cackling morons with the brains of a flea.
In other words, the bad Ferengi episodes all fail to take the Ferengi as a concept in the least bit seriously, focused more on what will get the most cheap laughs rather than what will make a good story or on considering that the Ferengi are a space-faring species and that the Ferengi Alliance has a considerable amount of territory in the Alpha Quadrant.
The Ferengi in this episode are so dumb that I find it impossible to credit that they ever even learned how to operate their ship, much less fly it through space safely and sneak gas grenades onto Starfleet vessels.
The entire plot of “Acquisition” is predicated on Ulis and the gang falling for the oldest trick in the book, succumbing to bog-obvious ploys by Archer, Tucker, and T’Pol that wouldn’t fool a not-too-bright teenager, and not understanding—despite the fact that they’ve had contact with plenty of other non-Ferengi—that not everyone’s going to have a vault.
Honestly, that’s the thing that got me more than anything. Why do they assume that everyone has a vault? Everything they do in the episode comes back to that, and it just doesn’t make sense.
And then there’s the appalling scene between Krem and T’Pol. T’Pol has snuck onto the Ferengi ship unnoticed. In fact, she’s done a great job of avoiding the Ferengi all episode. Why does she have to then pretend to seduce Krem to neck pinch him when she can grab one of the phase pistols while Krem is busy unloading and just shoot him? The answer, depressingly, is so that we can have Krem request a hand-job, and T’Pol actually feign giving one before neck-pinching him, and then I have to pause the episode so I can go take a shower to wash the oogy off me…
I haven’t even touched on the biggest complaint about this episode—first made when the fact that Enterprise was doing a Ferengi episode was announced in advance of the release of this episode in 2002—which is that TNG’s “The Last Outpost” was established as the first contact between humans and Ferengi, an episode that (a) aired fifteen years earlier and (b) took place two centuries later. Because of that, the Jacquemettons have to twist the story into a pretzel to keep the word “Ferengi” from being spoken and to have Ulis, Krem, Grish, and Muk leave without consequence with a lame “we’ll warn people about you even though we don’t know who you are because we have to stick with continuity.”
Goodness knows, there are plenty of discontinuities in Star Trek, and sometimes it’s worth it for the right story. Just as an example, the Generations prelude had Scotty believing that Jim Kirk was dead in the Nexus in 2293, even though in the TNG episode “Relics” (produced two years earlier), Scotty spoke as if Kirk was still alive when Scotty was haring off to retirement. The logic there was that it wasn’t worth not having James Doohan in Generations just because of one line of dialogue—and that was the correct notion.
But this? Is having a dumb Ferengi comedy episode really worth the discontinuity?
Obviously, I don’t think it is. And it’s really too bad, because if you’re going to have an episode with Ethan Phillips, Clint Howard, and Jeffrey Combs playing your antagonists, you should really come up with something better.
I was tempted to give this monstrosity a 0 rating, but three things lifted the ranking all the way to 1. First is that there were several moments where I did laugh out loud. (For example, T’Pol giving Archer shit about his comments before uncuffing him, and Archer ordering her to uncuff him already.) Second is that I loved the touch that two centuries prior to DS9 there were only 173 Rules of Acquisition, which is in keeping with the notion that the Ferengi would regularly revise and update the Rules in order to sell more copies of the revised editions of the Rules.
And third, Combs totally sold me on Krem. I actually felt sorry for him, and was happy for him when he got to take over in the end, despite him being only slightly less of a jackass than his three crewmates, and that’s entirely on the back of Combs giving a more nuanced performance than, frankly, this episode deserved…
Warp factor rating: 1
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written the Ferengi many times, most notably the short novel Satisfaction Is Not Guaranteed in Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Volume 3, in which he coined a few Rules of Acquisition, including #20: “He who dives under the table today lives to profit tomorrow,” #25: “You pay for it, it’s your idea,” and #88: “It ain’t over till it’s over,” among others.
You are correct that this is an absolute dumpster fire. The middle episode in Enterprise’s “Axis of Evil” – with “Rogue Planet” and “Oasis”. That being said, it’s not the worst Ferengi episode I’ve ever seen by a long shot, but as you wrote, the implausibilities of this episode in terms of continuity are not worth it. Was anyone really clamoring for another Ferengi episode?
I was re-watching the episode myself before reading this, and I wondered how you would react. Goofy, sexist, but I enjoyed it. Warp Factor 5 or 6?
OK, so the Enterprise finds an alien artefact and they bring it to the engine room? Not the decon chamber? Don’t they have any labs?
As you point out, the Ferengi have been over-acting their stupidity. A plate with gooey cake goes into the bag? But then their stupidity was their downfall.
Neat how Archer completely missed the Latinum part in the gold. How would the Ferengi have reacted if somebody had given them actual gold bars?
I actually really enjoyed this episode, besides the oo-mox part (I have always disliked whenever the writers insert it into any plot; it feels completely unnecessary). Ethen Philips and Jeffery Combs are incredibly entertaining to watch. What really raised the bar was that for the entire first act the Ferengi speak their own language amongst themselves and there is an actual communication problem, which is often glossed over in most other plots and would be in reality a major obstacle to interacting with aliens. It’s a shame we didn’t get stuff like that more often – the entire point of Hoshi is to deal with instances where the universal translator doesn’t work, which should be all first contact situations. I know we have to deal with the limitations of television, but this is a show theoretically dedicated to contacting new species. There should be frequent communication issues!
The Ferengi act stupid because they are blinded by greed. When you are as selfish as they are, you assume everyone else is too. As for not being able to fly their ship, isn’t it established that Ferengi bought warp tech from another species? Considering their relative advancement in TNG era Trek, it would make sense for them to have recently acquired warp ships and still be figuring out how to navigate both the literal equipment and diplomatic relations with their celestial neighbors.
As far as the continuity issue goes, I don’t really care. It made for a fun episode. Even with all the grievances KRAD gave it, I would at least give it a 3 – two for the extremely entertaining guest stars and one for the times it made him laugh.
Something of a tangent, but I find it a little odd, given the Ferengi’s traditions as raiders and pirates, that Quark had so much trouble rounding up a crew with any combat experience in The Magnificent Ferengi.
This isn’t a great episode, but I find it reasonably entertaining. Like #3, I love it that the producers made the bold choice to do the entire first act in alien language without subtitles. I could do without the references to sex slavery, but otherwise it’s harmless fun.
I have zero problem with the idea that a random encounter with Ferengi happened two centuries before official first contact. After all, the same thing has happened in real life. The Vikings established the Vinland colony in North America in 1000 CE and interacted with the Native Americans, but the colony failed and was forgotten, and so it was assumed for centuries that “first contact” between Europe and the Americas didn’t happen until 492 years later. Sometimes the contact that history remembers is the last first contact, not the only one.
I also have no problem with this crew being dumber than the Ferengi as a whole. After all, no species should be stereotyped as all being the same. These aren’t Ferengi military, they’re just one ship of traders and privateers. And they’re presumably wandering well beyond normal Ferengi trading territory, given that their ships and the Federation’s don’t intersect again for another couple of centuries. So they may be outliers from a cultural perspective as well, not a prominent group but just some random bunch of nobodies. Maybe they came this far out because they weren’t smart enough to compete effectively in more established Ferengi trading territory.
Heck, maybe they don’t even call themselves Ferengi, which is why Archer’s crew never came across the name. Maybe “Ferengi” is the name of one nation or subculture that became dominant in the subsequent 200 years, and these guys are from a different nation or subculture (though evidently one that speaks the same language and follows the same belief system).
I enjoyed seeing the energy whip again. I know that fan consensus is that it’s ridiculous, but it was made to seem legitimately menacing in one of the DC comics. Aside from that, I have nothing kind to say about this episode.
@@.-@. That might have more to do with Quark’s questionable reputation, even among the Ferengi.
I agree; I did appreciate the risk taken in doing a whole sequence with no understandable dialogue. Was it the entire first act? It’s been a while since I’ve seen this episode. Another thing that I found interesting is that John Billingsly, Dominic Keating, Linda Park, and Anthony Montgomery had no dialogue the whole episode, and weren’t their characters actually unconscious the whole time? An easy week’s work for them.
bgsu98: The Ferengi speak in their language through all of the teaser and Act 1 as well as part of Act 2.
Ecthelion: I’d have been more impressed if the language barrier didn’t disintegrate the instant they interacted with one of the main cast.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@4/benjamin: “Something of a tangent, but I find it a little odd, given the Ferengi’s traditions as raiders and pirates, that Quark had so much trouble rounding up a crew with any combat experience in The Magnificent Ferengi.”
These particular raiders used a trick to drug the crew before raiding their ship. That doesn’t imply they’d be any good at open combat.
@9/krad: I don’t care about the language barrier with the characters — what I appreciate is that the producers trusted the audience to be able to keep up without knowing the language. Plus there’s the challenge to the actors of playing scenes convincingly when speaking gibberish.
I’m not really hung up on the Ferengi wanting to know the location of the ship’s vault. As privateers and raiders, most ships they come across most like have some sort of secure cargo area for valuable/dangerous items. Heck, I would assume that even ECS Freighters have an area better secured/protected than the cargo modules. We’re dealing with the Universal Translator and the best translation it had for the “Ferengi” term for Secure Storage Area was vault.
As far as taking the Artifact to Engineering, don’t forget that while Enterprise is an exploration vessel, it’s not a dedicated science ship. My guess is that prior to Enterprise, most first contact (at least with sentient species) was for those species to encounter Humanity either directly or via the Vulcans. Lab facilities on Enterprise were most likely rudimentary short of Sickbay and Astrometrics (and there it was most likely remote observation.
I get that Humans had not encountered the Ferengi (possibly). There is ZERO possibility that the Vulcans were not aware of another race that had claim over a fairly large area of space. Therefore TPol should have at least knowledge of the name and species and basic attitudes.
Gotta agree with CLB that this was an entertaining episode. But then I tend to enjoy all the silly Ferengi episodes. I also enjoy Jar Jar Binks. Sue me.
@10: Christopher
That’s why it’s something of a tangent. The Ferengi here aren’t exactly swinging over with knives in their teeth, but taking it as a piece with their appearances in TNG, it seems odd that Quark couldn’t round up a crew of pirates (or at least give it a shot).
I understand why- Deep Space Nine had a rather different view of the Ferengi and how they operated than TNG, especially early TNG, where, or so I’ve read, the Ferengi were initially intended to be major recurring antagonists, Still, I wouldn’t have minded a vision of the Ferengi that had room for both unscrupulous merchants with the occasional heart of gold-pressed latinum and ruthless deep space raiders.
@12/J Linder: “There is ZERO possibility that the Vulcans were not aware of another race that had claim over a fairly large area of space.”
Except that “space” is huge. Even in TOS’s time, the Federation had charted less than 5 percent of the galaxy. By TNG it was supposed to be something like 12 percent, and even they only knew the Ferengi from rumors. So their territories must be quite far apart (despite how Star Trek Star Charts depicts it). It must be kept in mind that NX-01 is probing deep into uncharted space, well beyond even what the Federation’s borders will be in a century or more. It’s like the SS Beagle sailing halfway around the world from England to survey the Galapagos. Explorers’ routes reach far, far beyond their nations’ territorial limits; that’s the whole point of what they do. Presumably these Ferengi were probing well beyond their own nation’s borders as well, and they both met in the wide swath of unclaimed territory between the two powers.
In terms of Krem/personal anecdotes about skeevy, sexist behavior—we’ve all got them, sadly, but maybe let’s leave it at that.
My big problem about the episode (aside from the oo-mox, obviously) was the magical gas that distributed throughout the ship from a cargo bay and caused completely unknown species to be unconscious for an exact amount of time. Seems a little too plot-convenient to me.
“Who we are is unimportant.”
Ah yes, the Ferengi episode. The episode just about gets away with having Archer run into them over two hundred years before Picard: It was implied back in “The Last Outpost” that the Ferengi had heard stories about what humans look like, so having them learn the names of humans and Vulcans without the crew learning their name fits. But was it worth it? Well…in a sense. Imagine replacing the Ferengi with some generic rubber-foreheaded aliens and you’re left with a very dull episode. Grab a couple of Star Trek veterans, stick them in familiar make-up and drop in a few references to the Rules of Acquisition…and it’s elevated from very dull to just dull.
Because even with that, the Ferengi are just generic space pirates who even the characters don’t really see as a serious threat. Archer seems bored of them within seconds of waking up but we have to sit through a long game of Archer trying to turn Krem against his fellows which never quite comes off, T’Pol subtly turning them against each other which also never quite comes off, and the Ferengi bumbling around on a wild goose chase which just ends with a simple “Bang, you’re not dead.” Even the gimmick of the Ferengi only speaking their own language until they start talking to Archer gets a bit wearing after a while.
There’s a few comedy moments that work: Grish interrogating Porthos, Archer offering to pay Tucker compensation for losing his wife (Tucker’s incredulity seems genuine and Archer just raises the price!) and him then offering T’Pol gold to make up for the insult. But that’s about it. Archer leaving the other Ferengi in Krem’s custody kind of works but he doesn’t seem any more moral than them (he’s quite happy to sell crewmembers as slaves), he’s just the biggest loser.
All the regulars appear but only Archer, T’Pol and Tucker appear conscious. (The only other crewmembers that don’t spend all their screen-time spark out are a couple of non-speaking security guards.) Jeffrey Combs’ second Enterprise role is oddly low key in terms of personality if not screen-time. Ethan Phillips not only previously played a Ferengi in “Menage a Troi” but also wore the make-up as Neelix-disguised-as-a-Ferengi in “False Profits”. Tucker finally thinks to put on a uniform in the second half of the episode, meaning he spends a decent amount of the episode in blue department colours. He also pretends Hoshi is his wife: Wishful thinking or is she the only woman on board whose name he knows aside from T’Pol? So that’s another group of Ferengi who think gold is worth something (cf Quark in “Who Mourns for Morn?”).
@19,
Still, there was Connor running around the ship in his underwear.
Heh, tee-hee! ;)
@19/garreth: “I find it implausible that a race like theirs with vast territory and influence just happened to stay off the Federation’s radar for another two [hundred] years”
If Europeans and Native Americans could make contact in 1000 CE and then forget about each other for nearly another 500 years, I don’t see why this isn’t possible too. Space is a hell of a lot bigger than Earth, and different nations are a hell of a lot farther apart. It’s easy for space travelers to miss each other.
We’re led astray by the kind of maps we use, maps that condition us to see territories as big, fully filled-in blobs that directly abut each other. Territory in space would be more like inhabited star systems and the space lanes connecting them, a set of branching lines and dots with vast amounts of empty space between them. Different networks of lanes and star systems could interpenetrate extensively for a long time without directly intersecting.
And really, who says the Ferengi have a “vast territory and influence?” They travel far as traders, yes, but that’s not the same thing as political territory. It’s more like, say, Marco Polo traveling to China, or, heck, Cyrano Jones traveling to the Klingon planet he got the glommer from.
Besides, there’s no reason to assume Ferengi space was as expansive in the 2150s as it was 200-odd years later. I mean, look at Earth. In the TNG era, they’re the capital of a vast, far-reaching Federation, but here, they’re just one obscure little world. Why assume the Ferengi must be astropolitically static over such a span of time when humans aren’t?
Haha, I am looking at these review scores, and to think they blamed us for tuning out because of the theme song.
@22/CLB: Okay, but space as depicted in Star Trek really isn’t so vast with Klingons, U.S. space probes, and Amelia Earhart all showing up in the Delta Quadrant where Voyager just happens to be. So space is either vast or not vast to the convenience of the writers of the franchise.
And I still feel it’s implausible that the Ferengi, who meddle in anything and everything where profit is concerned, have a one-off appearance in the 22nd century and then have no other encounters with the Federation/humans until 200 some years later and then they’re often popping up at that point.
And even though the Ferengi aren’t named in this episode, their appearance should be logged by the Enterprise–NX computer/database so that when they showed up again in “The Last Outpost” then Picard and company have a positive match in their computer and at least have some further background to whom they’re dealing with.
@20/cap-mjb: “It was implied back in “The Last Outpost” that the Ferengi had heard stories about what humans look like, so having them learn the names of humans and Vulcans without the crew learning their name fits.”
Well, the Federation had heard stories about Ferengi by that point too, as established in “Encounter at Farpoint” as well as “Outpost.” The two powers were aware of each other indirectly, presumably through intermediate contacts with other species; they just hadn’t met directly yet. That’s a more likely source for the Ferengi’s knowledge than a single random encounter over 200 years earlier, which would probably just be an obscure factoid that hardly anyone knew about, if it was even known at all (since there’s no guarantee this small band of idiots would keep good records or transmit them to any kind of central authority).
I found this one more entertaining than the reviewer apparently did, more of a mostly harmless episode rather than insultingly bad. My only issue (well, outside of the sexist leering and oo-mox stuff) was when T’Pol was giving Archer a hard time about what he said about her and he was being all apologetic. I mean, it was kind of funny, but given it was rather obvious what he was trying to do when he said that stuff, his reaction when she confronted him should have been more along the lines of: “Gee, sorry Commander. Next time we’re being held hostage by folks who want to sell you off into slavery, I promise that rather than trying to discourage them, I will be very complimentary and sing your praises so they can get a really high price. Satisfied?” But maybe that’s just me.
@26/northman: Agreed. T’Pol was acting rather snotty there and not very logical. I get that the scene was playing for humor but T’Pol was acting out of character so it actually took me out of the story.
@25 “The Last Outpost” is simply the first time we actually meet the Ferengi face-to-face (other than this Enterprise outlier). Besides the mention in “Encounter at Farpoint” recall that Picard also had a run-in with them while captain of the Stargazer, which of course was the origin of Daimon Bok’s vendetta against him. Any previous encounters were probably like those with the Romulans before TOS‘s “Balance of Terror.”
@26 I think T’Pol has a wicked, very dry sense of humor, and that her giving Archer a hard time before releasing him was simply an example of it. Certainly not the first time a Vulcan has the last (unvoiced) laugh.
“since there’s no guarantee this small band of idiots would keep good records or transmit them to any kind of central authority”
I think there’s a pretty good chance that they’d purge most mention of this episode from their logs. Too embarassing, and no profit in mentioning it.
@25/CLB: Well, yes, true. Of course, Starfleet have already heard of the Ferengi at this point (as seen in “Dear Doctor”) and it seems unlikely that Archer wouldn’t have thought to make a note of the name. They just never made the connection with the aliens they encountered here. So it seems they’d been hearing of each other for a lot longer than “The Last Outpost” implied. We’d learn soon after in “The Battle” that Starfleet fought the Ferengi again without knowing who they were but the Ferengi were apparently aware. So I think the Ferengi were better at joining up the dots than the humans were. Or maybe had more dots to join up!
I was more annoyed about the continuity break, primarily because I saw zero necessity.Rules of Acquisition aside, this episode would work equally well with some idiotic Orions.
As an episode it’s ridiculous but I did feel sympathy for Krem. The gas now that I’m reminded about it, I don’t understand how it winds through the entire ship without the environmental system scrubbing it out of the air.
I’m not particularly aggravated about the whole Oo-mox thing since the Ferengi are generally speaking sexist and disgusting. I do find it fascinating that so many Ferengi males seem to be xenophilic perverts, interested in a wide variety of females who display very few traits of Ferengi females. T’Pol having to use her sex appeal to fool them may have been a reasonable necessity if they actually were a legitimate threat. But yeah she should’ve just shot him. I liked her trolling Archer though, it shows her growing recognizable sense of humor.
@22,
“If Europeans and Native Americans could make contact in 1000 CE and then forget about each other for nearly another 500 years,”
Faulty premise. The Norse didn’t forget; hell,l they wrote it in the sagas. Its the rest of Europe that ignored it.
@31/ragnar: And Starfleet surely remembered Archer’s ship’s encounter with unnamed big-eared alien raiders, and wrote it in the records. So the analogy holds. The point is that you can meet someone and not realize you met them before, because you haven’t made the connection yet. Like how Picard made “first contact” with the Ferengi nine years before TNG but didn’t know he had until “The Battle.”
Personally, I’ve hated the Ferengi ever since their first appearance, which I saw when I was 12 or so, discovering new episodes of TNG which aired on CTV up here in Canada. Their appearance, lack of nuance, uber-capitalist lameness and oo-mox nonsense constant leering nasty whatever immediately left even my pre-teen self cold, to the point that I wouldn’t watch DS9 until many years later, simply because it had one in the main cast, which I assumed (correctly) would lead to more Ferengi-centric episodes which I regarded as gold-pressed cow turds to be avoided in TNG reruns. Despite remaining my favourite Trek property, I still think TNG has a lot to answer for because of initiating this garbage. Later, I would watch Voyager secure in the knowledge that there wouldn’t be any Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant…until there were…gah. And then this episode came along and made me abandon this show which was already not really blowing up my skirts.
Honestly, who thought these unintelligent sex criminal alien trash pandas were a good idea? Even the one whose stupid Ferengi name I forgot, you know, Jake’s friend who got into Starfleet and didn’t really get all Weinsteiny…even he was BARELY tolerable, because he was at least vaguely intelligent. But I still skipped Ferengi portions – sometimes entire Ferengi episodes – of DS9 when I finally watched it some years ago, thanks to the KRAD rewatch review magic.
I am with @krad on this one, it’s not a dumpster fire, it’s a burning, overloaded, overturned garbage truck in the middle of a main artery during rush hour. While @ChristopherLBennett is right that it can be believed to fit into continuity (a first contact forgotten), there was no need for this episode in the first place. If they had wanted to do a “resteal the ship” episode, they forgot what makes those actually entertaining: the teamwork of everybody using their strengths, not half the team left unconscious and literally treated as objects. Porthos got more to do (and more respect) than anyone not part of the main three. The jokes were hackneyed, cringey or both, and you got the impression that the Ferengi in this encounter had to be incompetent if the trio was going to beat them. Competence porn, this was not.
That’s the worst of it: it could have been entertaining. It absolutely wasn’t. It didn’t advance an arc, plant any seeds or even serve its purpose as filler. Again, not the one that would make me break my TV — this one isn’t worth that kind of effort.
@33,
Later, I would watch Voyager secure in the knowledge that there wouldn’t be any Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant…until there were…gah.
To be fair, “False Profits” was at least a justified, loose crossover with TNG. “The Price” had left those Ferengi stranded in the DQ — and indeed, the very concept of the DQ was introduced in said episode. It was far from a perfect episode, yeah, but it was still a logical follow-up.
Now, the later appearance of the Ferengi in Season 7 when they tried to get Seven’s nano-probes? Now that was bulls***t.
I’ve said this before. There was a clear shift midway through the first season from the more original, character driven stories to the more plot-driven traditional Trek stories. It’s no surprise the Jacquemettons left the show after this. This regression was doing a disservice to them and their own unique talents as writers.
Despite that, Acquisition is an interesting case. I hated it the first time I watched it. But on a second viewing? Not so much. It’s still a very flawed, very unoriginal episode, no doubt about it. Coming after what DS9 did to the Ferengi, making them three-dimensional, it’s almost appalling to see them going back to TNG-era Ferengi. Most of their antics is nauseating. But even as I read the recap, I find myself smiling more often than not. And I think it’s because the whole scenario reminds us that Bakula, Blalock and Trineer have real comedy chops and comic timing. A lot of the episode is still watchable because of that almost witty banter – which is also a credit to the Jacquemettons, that they manage to craft enough of a fun caper out of this situation.
As I said, the shift towards more traditional Trek stories is also reflective of just how overwhelming it must have been for Brannon Braga to get that first season off the ground. With 26 episodes to fill, anyone would fall victim to the time pressure and end up doing a retread – one that had no business working.
But doing a retread is by no means a product of laziness. Case in point, season 2’s superlative Regeneration, which brings back the Borg in style. And analyzing the episode, I can’t find any instance where it contradicts past Trek history either. I remember TNG’s The Last Outpost pretty well to this day. That episode made it clear that Starfleet had NO idea what the Ferengi looked like. The only thing anyone knew was the analogy to Yankee Traders, known mainly to Riker and Data. But their faces? Nose? Ears? A complete mystery, all the way until they get a look at Daimon Tarr.
Going by that, and since Archer and company never got the name, one can easily assume Starfleet xenoexperts had a rough sketch of the aliens in archives after debriefing the crew, but no basis of comparison to identify them as Ferengi. 200 years later, that sketch could have easily been lost (and I assume the NX-01’s internal sensors weren’t capable of taking pictures for posterity either).
Of course, if we’re going by franchise long-term inconsistencies, let’s also remember that DS9 characters like Kira and Odo already knew Quark and other Ferengi pretty well back in the occupation (which not only covers the same period as TNG‘s early seasons, but also predates them). So Ferengi were known to both Bajorans and Cardassians. And let’s not forget the Cardassians were still technically in a war against the Federation back in 2364. And Ro was already a Starfleet officer at that point – if they wanted Ferengi intel, Starfleet could have just asked her.
And we know the answer to that. Because a minor inconsistency shouldn’t get in the way of telling a potentially good story. Amd now the question is: was Acquisition worth opening up that can of worms? Debatable. Definitely one of season 1’s low points, but overall, I’d rank it higher than VOY‘s False Profits, TNG‘s Ménage à Troi or DS9‘s Profit and Lace.
If we as a society already have sophisticated video surveillance in our cities and in buildings, there’s absolutely no reason why Starfleet, 130 years or so hence, don’t have even better capabilities. Starfleet would have more than just a sketch to catalogue what the Ferengi look like without knowing their name and be able to cross-reference that description in their vast database, particularly by the 24th century when the two powers are now having skirmishes.
@37/garreth: It was suggested as early as “Court Martial” that video logs are routine, but the franchise has rarely remembered that, and there are countless episodes that presume there’s no video surveillance on starships.
And yes, Starfleet knew what these nameless alien raiders looked like, but they had no way of linking that with the name “Ferengi” until “The Last Outpost.” After that episode, Starfleet probably put the pieces together, but a single random run-in over 210 years before wasn’t that important.
@37/Garreth @38/Christopher: Which I forgot to add on my last comment. One can only imagine just how many incidents Starfleet vessels have faced involving various alien pirates and raiders who were after their ‘gold’ and ‘vaults’, over the course of 200+ years. Without knowing the Ferengi’s actual name, the Acquisition encounter would have been archived long before Last Outpost. Even Data’s knowledge of Starfleet history on his positronic brain wouldn’t be able to reconcile the name, even if he had access to video surveillance of NX-01’s missions.
@36,
But doing a retread is by no means a product of laziness. Case in point, season 2’s superlative Regeneration, which brings back the Borg in style.
Yeah, was “Regeneration” a ratings stunt? Absolutely.
Does it mean it’s a bad episode? Far from it.
I actually really liked “Regeneration”, from doing a logical follow-up to First Contact to then TV-composer Brian Tyler’s score.
I’m not going to lie, this episode actually made me laugh (with T’Pol’s little bit of payback with Captain Archer being a particular favourite); also, the villains most definitely aren’t as clever as they think they are – but then if they were they’d be operating in a much, much richer market, instead of freezing their loves off Beyond the Pale.
I do appreciate this episode for keeping in mind the concept that the further you go back in humanity’s history from Picard captaining the Enterprise, the more humans are like Ferengi. Now, to Sisko’s credit on Deep Space Nine, he pretty quickly figures out how to play Quark using what he calls the “Ferengi tradition” of plea bargaining—but it’s clear he has no small amount of disgust during “Emissary” for the necessary evil of the Ferengi, never suggesting to Quark that he and Sisko share the same values.
Archer, though? Within seconds of regaining consciousness, he switches his code. Archer knows exactly the game he’s playing, and he doesn’t mind playing it to protect his ship and his crew. It’s the “Ferengi” game, which was very lately the “human” game, and (as a character playing another character) he acts it to the hilt. It’s perhaps a lost opportunity that Earth is apparently already a utopia by the time Enterprise begins, but we at least get the impression that, with people like First Contact‘s Zefram Cochran still in living memory, Archer’s era of humans still very well remember what humans used to be like.
(As for the Ferengi, all other complaints aside, I’m more than okay with them getting played as easily as they are—the way I read it, they’re out on the fringes of their own known space looking for spoils, pirate-style, because they’re not clever enough to wheel and deal their way into them back home. They’re the classic dumb crooks of an action comedy, figuring that making a quick buck the “easy” way somehow takes less smarts than the legitimate route, then finding out they’re very, very wrong. Not innovative storytelling, really, but completely plausible given the tone of this episode.)
I don’t understand why people write such things: What possible advantage can it be to the story to have the major problem be the threat of a band of weak stupid cowards?