Oog, this episode had me shuddering most of the way through. The whole show was one big soapbox *all* of the Ferengi cliches ever. Anyway:
-In 2151, there are only 173 Rules of Acquisition. A bunch of them get quoted, including at least one new one.
-The Ferengi are on board a small cargo ship, which *looks* Ferengi, but seems realy small for how far they must have come. Their weapons include repaints of the established Ferengi hand phasers Quark has used, which is odd since they were originally established as Vulcan weapons. They also have newer shotgun-style rifles with a side handle.
-More importantly, the energy whip is back! The prop is a modified normal whip, and not the phallic blue thing we see in "The Last Outpost" and the Marauder Mo action figures. The Neelix Ferengi guy goes to town on Trip at one point with the whip.
-Specious mention: Bolians. Also, at one point they figured on Porthos being a superior form of life to the Hew-mons on the size of his floppy ears.
-In pillaging the ships, they were taking anything of potential value, including pecan pie and the helm chair. They also swiped a torpedo, leavingthe rest of them stacked in the armory.
-We see an expanded Jefferies tube set here, including a "biomatter something" side-chamber which serves as the "ship's vault" containing gold.
-Gold has value to the Ferengi, as does latinum. The two apperently have yet to mix.
More?
Mark
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
I get to see it tonight. It sounds like a funny episode. Is it good?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
It's decent enough, but there's next to no story with all the cliches running around. It's something of a bottle show too, with only one new set (the Ferengi ship) and expansions of existing ones. Plus, aside from all the unconscious bodies lying around, only Archer, Trip and eventually T'pol get lines this week. Two more points:
-The Ferengi ship's controls are based around that black control hemisphere thing we see on the bridges of other ships. However, they have control levers and such everywhere.
-T'pol's characterization is really odd in this one. Again she lies her ears off, plus she quite blatantly enjoys tormenting and teasing the Captain at the end of the show. On the other hand, this is the first time I believe we see her nerve pinch someone...
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Erm... Didn't she do that in "Strange New World"?
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Yes.
BTW, I thought (as per DS9 "Who Mourns For Morn?") gold was valueless to the Ferengi???
-MMoM Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Well, in this day of pre-replicatorness, I'd asume that precious metals maintain their preciousness through the era...
Mark
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Having gold still be valuble to the Ferengi in this time period is actually a nice tie-in to the speculative history of Ferengi commerce that Behr and Wolfe wrote into "Legends of the Ferengi."
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I guess... Could you expound on the role of gold in the book?
Also, they actually *do* mention gold-pressed latinum in the episode - once, and briefly. Archer corrects them to say the "vault" holds gold BARS, but it seems to be of little consequence...
Mark
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Snay's "Acquisition" Synopsis:
DIE HARD on the Enterprise. Much like Rascals, The Siege, and countless other TNG, DS9, and VOY episodes.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
This episode made Rascals and The Siege look great. Once again the Enterprise is subdued by idiots. The lack of proper security procedures made Wolf look competent. Yeah, let's fiddle with a mysterious device... RIGHT BESIDE THE WARP CORE.
Tech and misc stuff: - The Ferengis and the Vulcans don't know about each other, when one's been travelling in space for 2000 years and the other's a prolific merchant species?
- The Ferengis were tricked into the biomatter resequencer (room) in the end, I assume that's what the funny looking thing was.
- All hand weapons onboard are stored in really obviously places, so that even idiots can find ALL of them in a short time even if they couldn't read English.
- Ferengis referred to Enterprise's weapons (including torpedoes) as "low-grade". They stole at least 3 of the torpedoes.
- The Ferengi rifles are made from the ST:FC rifle barrels, repainted and kitbashed.
- Porthos was stored in what appeared to be an air-tight box. This proves my theory that dogs don't need air to live.
- There are no cute looking women onboard the Enterprise.
- The Ferengis tried to steal the anti-matter injector... There was so much wrong with that I don't even know where to begin. It's not even something that you can just "pull out".
- Archer gets another round of beating.
- I don't believe that Ferengis are so stupid as to steal chairs off ships. There were so many other valuable things they could have taken.
- I don't believe that Archer would not have found out the Ferengi's specie, and informed Starfleet. So it's rather strange that the Enterprise-D was recorded as the first ship to make direct contact with them.
All in all, a very annoying and forgetable episode.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Being interested in the minutiae, I couldn't help but kind of like this episode. Yeah, it was boring and plot-less. But for once, I have to admit that they got most of the details right. (I have to wonder if Ira Behr ghost-wrote this episode...)
Did anyone notice the return of the Exploding Consoles? When the Ferengi shot the console on the bridge, not only did the annoying noise fizzle out, but the entire console exploded in some nice fireworks! (I guess this is the precursor to those 50,000-volt deathtraps.)
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
quote:But for once, I have to admit that they got most of the details right. (I have to wonder if Ira Behr ghost-wrote this episode...)
Of course he did. Because it would be impossible for anyone who ever made direct eye contact with Brannon Braga to get anything right on their own.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, if the episode really is a long string of painful Ferengi cliches, I guess there's a good chance Behr was involved. Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
Why was porthos awake? I also missed the first five minutes, how did this nerve gas spread so fast throughout the ship?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
... air-conditioning unit?
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
I don't know about those Ferengi rifles, they looked like the Voyager compression rifles minus the bayonet. I really can't believe that the dog was shoved inside that box container like that, where was the SPCA when this was filmed? I also noticed that the hypospray that Trip used to wake T'Pol up looks like an engineering tool from Voyager.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
One small set detail that I liked was in the docking collar or whatever. The docking hatch to the Ferengi vessel wasn't an exact match to the Enterprise's and it even looked to be slightly offset. I just thought that was a nice detail.
Also, I think I liked the whip. Hmm, maybe I need to think about exactly how I elaborate on this sentence. I thought it was used effectively and in an interesting way (as opposed to TNG's implementation).
I thought there was much that was implausible, but I did enjoy the line: "I can't lock onto it's language.", far more than I expected.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
OMG, I loved this episode! This has got to be one of my very favorites we've seen so far. I can't see why you guys wouldn't like it. It had the same sort of feeling as TOS "The Trouble With Tribbles." (You know, when the situation their in is actually fairly serious, but the whole scenario is handled with a sort of tongue-in-cheek humor.)
Excellent, excellent! And I'm pleased to find that I didn't mind their use of Ferengi at all...just as long as they don't become recurring characters. (One encounter without "discovering" their identity is one thing, it would be a little hard to swallow if we saw repeats of that... )
-MMoM Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I didn't like how they treated the Ferengi, honestly. We got a "DS9" look at them, especially the tag when they were all chained up and the one guy was laughing at them. We shouldn't have had that at all. Everything should have been MUCH more mysterious about it ... the execution sort of had that whole "Hi! Look at the Ferengi! Since we know them from TNG and DS9, we're not going to treat them as we otherwise might HAH!"
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
I can see Archer's report to Starfleet now:
Archer: "We've just encountered a potentially hostile species."
Admiral Forrest: "Alright, what are they called?"
Archer: "You know, with all that happened, I simply forgot to ask them. It's a real shame too, because the Universal Translator translated their language into perfect English just fine. Boy, am I stupid."
Admiral Forrest: "Ok, well I assume you've got them in the brig and are headed for the nearest Starbase to drop them off for interrogation & study."
Archer: "Uh, no, I actually decided to just let them go on their way."
Admiral Forrest: "So you didn't even take scans of their ship to determine if their warp drive was superior to ours, so that we could duplicate it?"
Archer: *(scratches his head)*
Admiral Forrest: "Johnny, if you keep fucking up like this, I'm just going to have to erase all your logs & records so that nobody remembers Enterprise for the next 200 years..."
[ March 28, 2002, 09:43: Message edited by: Dukhat ]
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Right now I could care less about the Ferengi being mysterious in the beginning of TNG. First off, I don't don't remember they having said anything about their name of the species. Second, it was funny. Some of you guys just make me wonder if the only reason to watch Trek is to complain what went wrong.
Please,should enjoy the episodes and try to ignore what is wrong. I do that all the time when I watch shows and then only then when I watch it a second time I look for the screwups.
This episode was meant to be mildly funny. Sure it'll be fine if we have 178+ serious episodes with no funny parts whatsoever for 7 seasons. But seriously that is extremely boring.
I really don not see where this episode is boring to some of you.
[ March 28, 2002, 09:38: Message edited by: Matrix ]
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well, Matrix, that's why we have this Forum. It's here so that we can discuss how we feel about what we saw. People have a legitimate right to say that they don't like it just as much as you have a right to say how wonderful you think it is.
Posted by U//Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Does anyone have any images of the Ferengi ship? Was it distinctly Ferengi, or just brown? Did it have prongs? Did the Ferengi have their headgear?
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
No. No. Yes. No.
Posted by U//Magnus (Member # 239) on :
"Was it distinctly Ferengi, or just brown?"
No.
Huh?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
He meant "yes" ...
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
It didn't look like any Ferengi ship we've seen so far, but it did have very small prongs in the front. It was a darker brown color than previously seen Ferengi ships.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
It was quite distinctly Ferengi. And, BTW, it was the FERENGI's universal translator that did the translating.
What do you guys want? That's what the Ferengi *are*. They're bumbling, greedy, and rather unintelligent. That's their character. Just like the Klingons are big, mean, angry warriors. Just like the Bajorans are deeply religious and resentful of Cardassians. Just like EVERY species on Trek, thay have their particular role. WTF is the problem?
Personally, I think it would've been wrong if they HAD shown us Ferengi acting in a way that didn't jibe with their other appearances.
And I wish people would stop bringing up the early TNG Ferengi. That whole thing was a fucking abortion. The Ferengi just couldn't hack it as some bloodthirsty nemesis of the Federation. FORGET IT.
-MMoM Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
I never said it wonderful, all I said is that for some reason almost everyone either has no opinion about it/seen it or complains that it does not follow up to the norms for Trek. Here's the big question, in your own mind, you do not ahave to answer it, do you seriously think that after a few years of no Trek want to see another show regardless if it is Enterprise or even another Voyager. Or would you loose interest altogether?
Also Mighty Mim is correct, the Ferengi we see on Enterprise are the Ferengi of the 24th century. The early TNG Ferengi was supposed to be equivilant to the Borg. Except that they failed and now are the greedy and yes somewhat funny group that we see today.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
So, wait, they should have resembled the Ferengi from one appearance 210 years later more than the Ferengi from many appearances 215 years later?
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
We all have our own views of what the Trek Universe should look like, that's why we go here and try to show it. But Matrix, for a fan like me who looks into detail and continuity at every episode and in life, what do want me to do? Forget that TNG and the past series' never existed? I've always prefered a linear perspective in life and prefered to see on in the TV shows I watch. That is why I'm not happy with Enterprise; it's not linear in the timeline and the stories aren't that creative. Hopefully that will change since I know how bad the first season of TNG was. But if it doesn't then I just might erase this show out of my mind and of my version of the Trek Universe.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
ENT is revealing the background of all the stuff we see later. It doesn't actually contradict what we've seen, just the *made-up* background people have fabricated in the past.
ENT is a prequel series. Yes, there are going to be small changes in the continuity of things. TPTB will be making adjustments to what might have been implied by or inferred from previous shows. However, I do not believe they will be messing with stuff that has been concretely established, only what has not been. Any changes are of little overall consequence in the larger picture. Trek is a changing dynamic. They must feel free to tinker. Such is the way of things. It has always been this way. The Ferengi are a case in point. So are the Borg. So are the Vulcans. So are a lot of things.
Flexibility is the key.
YOU need to change YOUR view of the Trek universe in order to fit what THEY are revealing. Not the other way 'round.
-MMoM Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
I guess that post sounds a bit like B&B propaganda, but it really is true. Change is not so bad, as long as it is subtle and not too drastic. Personally, I think ENT so far has been on the right track with this.
-MM Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Like is all about change. You change your life around when you first go to school, walk, and so on. Yes I like to see them try to keep everything accurate from past series. However that's like being chained to the wall for past comments that you said.
On the other hand, if you don't Enterprise, that much why are you watching it at all? Why must complain when you have no say whatsoever what B&B does to it?
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