Acquisition

[PhoenixIreland]

Im watchin this now for the first time.
I skipped over many Ent episodes before and am watching them all now.

The memory alpha article says this messed up continuity and that angerd many fans.
How did it do that?

 

[JiNX-01]

Im watchin this now for the first time.
I skipped over many Ent episodes before and am watching them all now.

The memory alpha article says this messed up continuity and that angerd many fans.
How did it do that?

Well, the Ferengi never turned up until the TNG era so they couldn't possibly have existed before that.

Enterprise was clearly a TOS prequel, and was therefore limited to using / mentioning aliens that existed only at the time of TOS.

 

[ChristopherPike]

I was always happy for Enterprise to be a prequel to whole Star Trek franchise. But a heavy slant towards TOS seems less forced. It being natural to set up races we're going to see right around the corner.

TNG was very explicit about the Ferengi being largely unknown prior to The Last Outpost. But of course later in DS9, one of their most famous pieces of literature is called "Vulcan Love Slave". Which makes absolutely no sense if the races hadn't encountered each other in the past.

I found the episode a fun, if inconsequential comedy runaround. What you have to remember is not all fans are as tolerant. Indeed large sections of the fanbase had grown bored with the Ferengi. The race had been exploited to death on DS9, before that being TNG's comic relief. So by their two appearances on Voyager, that well had run dry and the joke was no longer funny.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

I actually thought it was funny.

 

[angie]

Despite the canon issues I like this ep.I tend to think maybe the records were destroyed or lost so the TOS era Enterprise and onward don't know all that Archer's Enterprise encountered.

 

[MattJC]

I think this incident and the one with the Borg got forgotten when the Xindi attack and the Earth-Romulan war broke out.

 

[Timo]

TNG was very explicit about the Ferengi being largely unknown prior to The Last Outpost. But of course later in DS9, one of their most famous pieces of literature is called "Vulcan Love Slave". Which makes absolutely no sense if the races hadn't encountered each other in the past.

And, of course "Acquisition" provides the perfect excuse for this. It reinforces our image of the Ferengi as secretive pirates who only deal openly (but unfairly) with their clients when they absolutely have to. As they say in "The Nagus", they have a bit of a problem with their reputation preceding them... Naturally, the Ferengi would try to remain invisible to Earth and the Federation for as long as possible, and might well succeed at it until the 2360s.

I think this incident and the one with the Borg got forgotten when the Xindi attack and the Earth-Romulan war broke out.

And in any case, it seems that space pirates in the 2150s were a dime in a dozen. Even if Earth made detailed records of every encounter, and especially if it did, there would be far too much material for any particular piece of it to stick out.

When piracy apparently was curtailed later on, records like this would become very low priority indeed. Somebody might write a scientific paper on it, sure, but new starship captains wouldn't be drilled to recognize a particular type of 2150s space pirate by sight.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[darkshadow0001]

Maybe the Ferengi were unknown in TOS is because they didn't like Kirk... the Klingons didn't, so why not the Ferengi as well?

 

[pookha]

they were known to the federation before the supposed official first encounter in the last outpost since data gives info about them.
really deep space nine played around with the continunity with quark being on terak nor prior to the last outpost.


but still the story while fun wasnt worth the furor that arose and several other species could have filled in .

 

[Reanok]

I thought Acquistion was a fun and humorous episode. I like it Scott, Connor and Jolene seemed to have alot fun making this one.

 

[commodore64]

Not following canon bothered me, but the episode was fun.

 

[DarthPipes]

Another bad episode and further proof that Berman and Braga were not serious at all about doing a prequel show. Four episodes in, they do an episode that deals with a holodeck. Less than twenty episodes in, they do a Ferengi episode. Less than two season in, they do a Borg episode.

Then they make the crew look stupid as hell by having them not learn what species the Ferengi are.

 

[bluedana]

It's a funny episode, and the "canon" issues aren't important, if they even exist at all. Who knows if the Ferengi would even give their official name - just because we go around saying hey, we're humans from Earth? The Ferengi could just as well have given a fake name and address if asked. Criminals do that from time to time.

 

[BarryWaddle]

I saw the episode yesterday, and Archer did give them the ultimatum that he never wanted to hear from them again...I'm sure after 200 years the records got buried, they weren't heard from again by Starfleet, and like it was said before, 22nd century pirates were a dime a dozen. Minor bump in the road. Now the Romulan episode...That bothered me...Should've come later in the series, had it gone a full 7...

Jeffrey Coombs, Ethan Phillips and Clint Howard were pretty good though...You've all gotta admit that much.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Now the Romulan episode...That bothered me...Should've come later in the series, had it gone a full 7...

Interesting that you bring that up because showing them having invisibility bothers me more. We can argue semantics, that it could be holographic camouflague instead of a cloak in the 23rd/24th Century sense but it was still a major foul up. The Suliban had help from the future with their technological and biological alterations, that was all established. All pretty much intentional to giving one TCW fraction an advantage.

Having said that, I loved how Minefield echoed WW2, in the tradition Balance of Terror did. Even the design of the warbirds was fitting after the Vulture inspired designs of TNG. But the 3 or 4 times they vanish in that episode, I bite my lip everytime...

 

[Roshi]

I didn't like the presence of the Ferengi even with that plot contrivance. But, if they somehow had managed to refer to the Vulcan Love Slave collection, it would have been nice.
Well, for me.

 

[suebsg9]

I thought Acquistion was a fun and humorous episode. I like it Scott, Connor and Jolene seemed to have alot fun making this one.

I second that!!!

 

[pookha]

Now the Romulan episode...That bothered me...Should've come later in the series, had it gone a full 7...

Interesting that you bring that up because showing them having invisibility bothers me more. We can argue semantics, that it could be holographic camouflague instead of a cloak in the 23rd/24th Century sense but it was still a major foul up. The Suliban had help from the future with their technological and biological alterations, that was all established. All pretty much intentional to giving one TCW fraction an advantage.

Having said that, I loved how Minefield echoed WW2, in the tradition Balance of Terror did. Even the design of the warbirds was fitting after the Vulture inspired designs of TNG. But the 3 or 4 times they vanish in that episode, I bite my lip everytime...

unless the whole cloak ect technogy got deep secreted by section 31.
and it is odd in balance of terror how even though invisibility was supposed to have till new been impossible enterprise has a pretty easy time tracking the romulan ship.

 

[Lady Conqueror]

But, if they somehow had managed to refer to the Vulcan Love Slave collection, it would have been nice.
Well, for me.

I thought they kind of implied that T'Pol was the inspiration for that.

The whole not saying their name thing didn't bother me. As others have pointed out why would a once off encounter with a bunch of space pirates in the 22nd Century be immediately recognisable as the Ferengi in the 24th Century (sure some historian may have cross-referenced after 'The Last Outpost' and made the connection but there really is no reason to know beforehand) especially with other more important events taking place during that timeframe (Romulan War, Federation forming etc.)

Plus didn't DS9 already break that canon by having the Quark, Rom and Nog land at Roswell in 'Little Green Men', i'm pretty sure they stated directly that they were Ferengi in that episode - how come nobody ever made that link in Picard's time? And yes I can already see that the answer's coming would be that the evidence got destroyed in WW3 or the Eugenics wars or some such (It wasn't a serious question )

 

[Therin of Andor]

Plus didn't DS9 already break that canon by having the Quark, Rom and Nog land at Roswell in 'Little Green Men', i'm pretty sure they stated directly that they were Ferengi in that episode - how come nobody ever made that link in Picard's time?

Nobody agrees, even today, what the Roswell aliens looked like. "The X-Files" says one thing", "Roswell" another, ditto DS9 - and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" something else entirely. Why assume images of Quark, Nog and Rom were properly preserved, and are still available in the 22nd - or 24th - century?

"First Contact" isn't three examples of a lifeform time traveling to another planet. "First Contact" is more formal, or at least more public, than that.

I had no problem with "Acquisition". Archer never learns a name for the invading pirates and, centuries later, when Picard's Stargazer met a Ferengi ship at the height of the Battle of Maxia, there's no reason to believe that a search of old Starfleet databases would suddenly reveal the identification "Ferengi" as equaling "three alien renegades who once attempted to pirate the NX-01".