Enterprise Flashback: Acquisition

The Ferengi were a new alien race introduced with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Before they became the greedy capitalist analog fans know now, they were so mysterious at first that Picard mentions them eating their adversaries. (Maybe he was just having a laugh?) We were told for certain, though, that Starfleet never previously had a direct encounter with the Ferengi. That made for some convoluted hoops to jump through for prequel series Enterprise in the episode "Acquisition."

Trip Tucker emerges from the decon chamber to find everyone aboard Enterprise unconscious. A group of aliens is raiding the ship, and only he can stop them. And he must do it in his underwear.

The first half of this episode is a straight-up Die Hard homage. But this being Enterprise -- which never misses an opportunity to be salacious -- it one-ups that movie's famous "he's saving the day barefoot" by having Trip skulk around in his underwear. (Enterprise serves eye candy for everyone, I guess.)

As I mentioned, the episode has to cover for the fact that Ferengi were unknown prior to The Next Generation. It does this by never identifying these greedy adversaries by name... and makes them even more alien by playing the entire first act in a sort of pantomime: there's very little dialogue, and what little there is is in the Ferengi language. (It gives composer Velton Ray Bunch an unusual amount of space in which to contribute his musical score.)

To play these Ferengi, the Enterprise production turns to a reliable group of mostly veteran Star Trek actors, including Jeffrey Combs, Ethan Phillips (who have both played Ferengi before), and Clint Howard. Together with Trek newcomer Matt Malloy, they find the comedy in this obviously lighter episode. They steal everything that's not bolted down, deliver many jokes about ear size (including about T'Pol and Porthos!), get led into slapstick hijinks by Trip and later T'Pol, get pitted against each other by Archer... and generally make a fun time of this installment.

But there are a few shortcomings to the episode. Only the "Big Three" of Archer, Trip, and T'Pol really get anything to do here; everyone else's job is to lie unconscious for the episode (if they appear at all). T'Pol seems uncharacteristically quick with emotional improvisation when she embodies perhaps the original "Vulcan love slave" of Ferengi lore. Archer, for his part, seems equally slow on the uptake, continuing to push "gold" as a thing the Ferengi should want, even after hearing them mention "latinum" multiple times. And the ending makes no sense. Archer lets the Ferengi go for no reason other than maintaining Star Trek continuity; there's no in-universe explanation for why Our Heroes shouldn't apprehend all these Ferengi once they gain the upper hand.

Other observations:

• There are fun Ferengi details for the fans. It's said there are 173 Rules of Acquisition, far short of the number that would exist by the time of Deep Space Nine. (When you can keep selling revised copies, why not keep adding?) And the strange "whip" weapon of the Ferengi's original appearance makes a return. There's also a mention of the Menk, the subservient alien race said to have encountered the Ferengi a few episodes back.

• For any dog lover out there, Porthos spends far too much time trapped in a box.

This episode is all in good fun, and does a fair enough job at that. But the ending is nonsense, and I don't love the large step this episode takes toward an original series model for Star Trek: you have three "stars," and all the other characters are decidedly secondary. Still, overall, I give "Acquisition" a B.