Acquisition
- Thread starter Voth commando1
- Start date
Women wearing clothes do that to a Ferengi...
It seems to me that on Enterprise they didn't know they were ferangi I don't recall that name ever being spoken, then again I could be wrong. So in the log it would be recorded as raiders of low intellect and a basic description. Thus it wouldn't be linked to the farengi for a hundred years when some historian goes back and finds the original entry.
Sort of like the Borg incident.
A 25th century historian is discussing the Enterprise under Jonathan Archer and discovers these events. After corrobating their authenticity the intrepid historian cross checks with ferengi and Borg records(if such a thing exists). Finds the necessary information and history is rewritten to accomadate the new data.
Such cross-checking is probably a chore. In a busy universe like that of Star Trek, there simply are huge numbers of such encounters, often involving players who might not wish to be truthful about what they saw when a Fed archivist comes asking. "Putting it all together" results in an image of dirty greys and browns, hiding the true picture...
In hindsight, it's easier to sort out the true mentions of Borg or Ferengi and add them to the database on those species - and then start wondering what that other species of scary cyborgs really was, and who those other big-eared, man-eating, whip-wielding trader-pirates might have been.
Timo Saloniemi
In hindsight, it's easier to sort out the true mentions of Borg or Ferengi and add them to the database on those species - and then start wondering what that other species of scary cyborgs really was, and who those other big-eared, man-eating, whip-wielding trader-pirates might have been.
Timo Saloniemi
I would love to read an IU novel by a federation historian.
You have a really low opinion of histiography, huh?
Edit: I should do more than quip.
This is one of the big things historians love to do. I mean, look at the Sea Peoples. Most all we know is that they were an aggressive civilization and at one point a source of mercenaries for Egyptian pharaohs early on in the record, who engaged in a series of attacks on ancient Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean from minor strikes in the 14th century BCE up to an extended wave of invasions against Egypt in the late 12th and 11th centuries BCE, with a possibility based on timing and proximity that they were also behind the collapse of the Hittite, Mycenaean, and Mitanni kingdoms. They essentially were behind shaping huge swathes of multiple nations for centuries, but we don't have any solid evidence who they were, because they're only ever referred to as "Sea Peoples" in those records we have. And do historians just throw up their hands and wonder, or just leave them unanalyzed until they happen to chance into a record that outright says "the Sea Peoples were Philistines" or something? Nope. They look for evidence in the historical record to connect them to an existing civilization, or evidence to the contrary, that they really are a group that's just unidentified. They've worked on this literally since the late 19th century when the references were first noticed and collected. Dozens of people over the decades have put years of time into this.
This is one of the big things historians do, fill in gaps and answer questions. And compared to identifying the Sea Peoples, figuring out that the Earth cyborgs were Borg left over from the First Contact incident and that the big-earred pirates who likely attacked other ships in the area too were Ferengi would be a cakewalk.
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This is the kind of inconsistency that I sort of just....let go? Because I'm more interested in the story they're telling than making sure all the puzzle pieces across 50 years of Trek history fit together perfectly. This one doesn't feel too egregious because the writers went out of their way to make sure the Ferengi are never identified as such. Lazy? Maybe. But I'm okay with it -- there are far, far worse Ferengi stories than Acquisition.
Also you can always think up a throwaway explanation. Maybe a Starfleet historian did connect those dots and say, "Oh shit, this weird capitalist alien that Picard's crew just ran into sounds exactly the same as the unidentified aliens that ransacked the NX-01!" But we just don't see that episode.
Also you can always think up a throwaway explanation. Maybe a Starfleet historian did connect those dots and say, "Oh shit, this weird capitalist alien that Picard's crew just ran into sounds exactly the same as the unidentified aliens that ransacked the NX-01!" But we just don't see that episode.
You have a really low opinion of histiography, huh?
Edit: I should do more than quip.
This is one of the big things historians love to do. I mean, look at the Sea Peoples. Most all we know is that they were an aggressive civilization and at one point a source of mercenaries for Egyptian pharaohs early on in the record, who engaged in a series of attacks on ancient Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean from minor strikes in the 14th century BCE up to an extended wave of invasions against Egypt in the late 12th and 11th centuries BCE, with a possibility based on timing and proximity that they were also behind the collapse of the Hittite, Mycenaean, and Mitanni kingdoms. They essentially were behind shaping huge swathes of multiple nations for centuries, but we don't have any solid evidence who they were, because they're only ever referred to as "Sea Peoples" in those records we have. And do historians just throw up their hands and wonder, or just leave them unanalyzed until they happen to chance into a record that outright says "the Sea Peoples were Philistines" or something? Nope. They look for evidence in the historical record to connect them to an existing civilization, or evidence to the contrary, that they really are a group that's just unidentified. They've worked on this literally since the late 19th century when the references were first noticed and collected. Dozens of people over the decades have put years of time into this.
This is one of the big things historians do, fill in gaps and answer questions. And compared to identifying the Sea Peoples, figuring out that the Earth cyborgs were Borg left over from the First Contact incident and that the big-earred pirates who likely attacked other ships in the area too were Ferengi would be a cakewalk.
That might be an apt comparison if fleets of Ferengi pirates were going around raiding entire worlds, and different planets had different names for them, and there were yet other non ferengi pirates doing similar raids, with similar descriptions.
It would be a more equitable comparison(imo) to use random acts of piracy on the high seas, which have gone on throughout history unto today.
That's pretty much what I figure too. It's not even an inconsistency to me, really.
Me neither. Originally when I wrote my comment I put inconsistency in scare quotes, but took it out because I didn't want to sound sarcastic.That's pretty much what I figure too. It's not even an inconsistency to me, really.
Thing is, the Ferengi apparently didn't mind identifying themselves to the Velakians and Menk, in Dear Doctor. So we can maybe make the excuse that nobody on NX-01 happened to find out anything about these space pirates, and the Aquisition gang never tried to raid any other starships near Earth or never got caught and interrogated by anybody, and no other Ferengi pirates headed anywhere near Federation space for two centuries.
But then we also have to ask who it was didn't mind saying they were Ferengi to the Velakians, and what they were up to and why they didn't leave any contacts with anyone. Also why no Earth or Vulcan or Federation scholars for two centuries went back to Velakia and asked any follow-up questions. (Also why Team Archer never asked follow-up questions, since sheesh, anyone who's played Civilization knows to ask about trading maps with someone who's made peaceful contact.)
If you suppose that only and exactly the things we saw on-screen are the only things that ever happened then you can get away with this. But it cracks when you suppose that similar things probably happened before and after and to similar people nearby. For singular or extraordinary events, giant space amoebas and the like, it's all right to suppose this stuff doesn't happen often. Five-man spaceships wandering around deep space? That's got to be going on all the time.
It's not like you lose anything by losing this episode; if it seems that big an inconsistency to you, you can always just clip it out of your mental set of in-universe events.
This stuff is fictional and created by people, so yeah plotholes will be missed and inconsistencies will be developed, and the rate that it'll happen only accelerates the longer a setting exists and the more past material there is to potentially be inconsistent with. This is a little one to me, doesn't bug me. Maybe the Ferengi bribed the Valakians to keep quiet, maybe there weren't all that many raids and the NX-01 just happened to get unlucky, maybe the ship in Acquisition was heading far out from Ferengi space and it really was the only one in the area, and the events of the episode convinced them to head back to safer territory. And yeah, each of those second-level possibilities raises new third-level questions and potentially brings in other problems and creates a big patchwork that only has a greater and greater chance of fraying, but at least in the case of this one there are clear second-level possibilities at all. That already puts it above some Trek stuff.
This stuff is fictional and created by people, so yeah plotholes will be missed and inconsistencies will be developed, and the rate that it'll happen only accelerates the longer a setting exists and the more past material there is to potentially be inconsistent with. This is a little one to me, doesn't bug me. Maybe the Ferengi bribed the Valakians to keep quiet, maybe there weren't all that many raids and the NX-01 just happened to get unlucky, maybe the ship in Acquisition was heading far out from Ferengi space and it really was the only one in the area, and the events of the episode convinced them to head back to safer territory. And yeah, each of those second-level possibilities raises new third-level questions and potentially brings in other problems and creates a big patchwork that only has a greater and greater chance of fraying, but at least in the case of this one there are clear second-level possibilities at all. That already puts it above some Trek stuff.
"Official Ferengi Continuity" may have believability problems already without any help from ENT. We hear of them in Encounter at Farpoint. Then we meet them in The Last Outpost, then we find out Picard not only engaged them in battle ten years prior, but lost his old ship(The Stargazer) in that battle. From then onward, they start popping up everywhere. And other Federation species are quite familiar with them. And they are quite familiar with the Federation.
We then find out in DS9, that Ferenginar is pretty darn close to earth(relatively speaking). You would think that after 200+ years of exploration, Starfleet would at least be familiar with all of the warp capable species in their own back yard. I mean, The Ferengi in TLO had a ship as large and as advanced as the galaxy class.
The Final Reflection, Spock's World and The Romulan Way have parts similar to what you're looking for.
Weeell, an excellent example. It took geological ages for history writers to get to the point where they're now - which is essentially "nowhere much". We still don't know if any Sea Peoples even existed, or were just silly rumors whipped up by embarrassed losers of kingdoms.
In the two centuries or so between ENT and TNG, UFP historians could cross-compare their notes on the Ferengi in ways unimaginable to their colleagues from the 20th century (but imaginable to us: vast databases being automatically mined by advanced and intelligent expert programs, say), and still come up with very little that is useful. Most of the data would be from the stalest depths of Aarne-Thompson anyway, telling us more about the storytellers than about the subject matter. At least back in the days of the Hyksos and Hittites, the only ones polluting the databases with whimsical written records were kings; today, false information is fed by millions of dubious sources and collected by thousands, and the UFP would have it even worse.
The likely result of the Hunt for Ferengi would be the same as with the Sea Peoples: dozens upon dozens of harebrained theories, the most populist of which would rise to prominence and confuse the issue even further, whilst serious research could only declare "data inconclusive" and be ignored for its lack of sex appeal.
Timo Saloniemi
ha! this is a hard question.
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