Summary
The Enterprise is chasing a Ferengi vessel that’s stolen something. Once they get close the Enterprise is disabled. They assume it’s some Ferengi weapon, but the attack is actually coming from the planet. They both agree to go down together, but the Ferengi ambush the away team and admit they will say they were attacked first, thus nullifying their agreement. A hologram, or apparition, or something, of a long dead member of an alien empire appears and tests Riker by attacking him. Riker refuses. This pleases the alien and he releases both ships and sends them on their way.
Observations
My man Quark (Armin Shimerman) listed in the credits. Once a Ferengi, always a Ferengi, I guess.
Ferengi ship design is neat. Vastly different from what we’ve seen before in Trek.
More bizarre humor about how obscure Earth history is to Data. They must drop these jokes at some point. I don’t recall it being a thing in later series. On that subject Picard gets a bit wistful for “Le Tricolore” and its proper use of the colors blue, white, and red, unlike those dumb Americans. This is totally out of place for Picard. Respect for culture is one thing, longing for a simpler time when French armies marched across Europe isn’t quite in the character of an enlightened 24th century captain.
There’s no Chief Engineer in this episode, the lady from Episode 2 is nowhere to be found. Instead Lieutenant Junior Grade Geordi LaForge, the helmsman, heads down to engineering and orders people around. What? There’s no setup for this. It’s not like engineering can’t figure it out, but Geordi has a brilliant idea to solve it. Riker just orders him down there to figure out why the ship is disabled.
Ferengi in extreme closeup with white background. What’s that all about? Data says the image is “distorted” later on. This is never explained.
Once again Picard is asking his crew for advice. I like that they established this so early on and stuck with it. It will be interesting to see if there are episodes of TNG that contradict this behavior, certainly the films and the Picard streaming series did.
Children in the conference room? How in the hell did they get up to the bridge and get in there? All this to setup a joke where Data gets stuck in a Chinese finger puzzle. Get it? SYMBOLISM!!!
The Tkon Federation… extinct for 600,000 years! Neat. Never hear of them again, I suppose? They were wiped out by a super nova. The whole empire? Maybe J.J. Abrams saw this episode and said “I’ve got my Star Trek plot!”
Riker kind of coming off as a bull-headed dink. Angrily responding to Data who is giving him very valuable information about the planet to which they were beaming.
Transporter malfunction; they ended up on a cheap Styrofoam set instead of the alien planet.
I’m so glad the Ferengi changed. When I think of where the characters of Quark, Rom, and Nog ended up; it would have been a shame to have kept them as sniveling fools.
I suspect these episodes are remastered because there’s some visual effects here that are way too advanced for 1987 television.
So everyone is just kind of hanging out, wherever, to freeze to death/suffocate on the Enterprise? They didn’t all huddle together somewhere for warmth? Nobody has warm clothing on? Still just wearing the spandex uniforms? At least Crusher has long sleeves on.
More Crusher and Picard will-they-won’t-they. Spoiler. They won’t. Missed opportunity. Not saying they should have had sex, but just having their relationship blossom to a point where Picard finally says “No, I’m the captain. I’m your captain. As much as I want this, and want to believe it’s best for both of us, this isn’t right. It may never be right because of that fact.” Would have been some great character drama.
Riker says of the Ferengi that he sees in them what humans were hundreds of years ago, but with the technology they have they are very dangerous. This creates a conundrum for the Ferengi going forward, one that they will attempt to rectify in Deep Space Nine. Are they vicious monsters? Or are they simply living by a code that the Federation doesn’t understand?
More show of friendship between Geordi and Data. Nice that this was setup and consistent so early on… and then abandoned for the Picard series where they act like Data and Picard were best pals.
Armchair Screenwriter 