“Acquisition” is episode nineteen of season one of Star Trek: Enterprise.
The Enterprise is drifting and a Ferengi ship is approaching – though the Federation wouldn’t officially encounter the Ferengi until the TNG episode, “The Last Outpost”. The Ferengi dock with the Enterprise and two enter the ship. Both are wearing masks and the crew is slumped in the passages and cabins. In engineering is a device emitting a mist. One Ferengi deactivates it. The other seems easily distracted, this time distracted by T’Pol’s ears. They enter a turbolift, check a scanner and remove their masks, arriving on the bridge. One contacts the Ferengi ship.
Trip is in the decontamination chamber and he asks Phlox if his time is up yet. There’s no response. Trip has to override the door mechanism to get out. He finds people on the floor and checks their pulses. The Ferengi arrive onboard the Enterprise and start swiping stuff. Trip finds Phlox unconscious in sickbay, then hears the Ferengi and hides. The Ferengi continue taking things – one takes T’Pol – and bring them to a cargo bay, which contains more stuff and more female crew.
Trip arrives in engineering and checks the scanners. He sees the Ferengi taking Captain Archer from the bridge. Archer is restrained, then brought around. It looks like the Ferengi have their own translators. When Archer is conscious, the Ferengi interrogate him. His crew won’t be harmed as long as he cooperates. Where is the ship’s vault? Archer says they don’t carry valuables. He isn’t believed. He tells them to take what they want and get off his ship. One Ferengi, Krem (Jeffrey Combs) tells the leader, Ulis (Ethan Phillips, best known for playing Neelix on Voyager), they should leave. However, Ulis isn’t impressed with the loot.
Archer spots Trip watching him. Krem indicates the women and says they will be valuable as slaves. Ulis decides that they will leave with the most valuable females, but the captain calls him back and says he will show the Ferengi where the vault is. As long as they let Archer keep half the gold stored in it. Hundreds of gold bars. Ulis says they will look for it themselves and Krem is told to load the stuff they have taken. He objects to doing menial work and the others suggest he use Archer to do the loading. He does.
The captain talks to Krem. It’s Krem’s first month on the job, working for his cousin, Ulis. Krem says you can never have too much and talks about the Rules of Acquisition. A man is only worth the sum of his possessions. Archer says that kind of thinking almost destroyed his civilisation. Krem thinks they should have managed their businesses better.
Archer tells Krem that Krem doesn’t seem to be treated fairly. Krem states his cousin manages all his financial transactions. Krem doesn’t have the lobes for business. Of course Krem charges for his services. Trip is watching and Archer gets Krem to go get him a glass of water. Krem leaves, but not before fastening the captain up. Trip comes over; there’s nothing left in sickbay to wake the others and the armoury and weapons lockers have been cleared out. The captain has an idea, but Trip will need help to pull it off. He tells Trip about the hypospray used to wake him up and where it is.
Trip heads to the cargo bay and revives T’Pol, then tries to revive Hoshi. T’Pol gives Trip a look, given that he is only in his underwear in a room full of unconscious women. Trip explains what happened. He was in decon because of the artefact he brought back, the artefact that the Ferengi used to disable the entire ship. T’Pol says at times she wishes Vulcans hadn’t learned to repress their violent tendencies.
The Ferengi don’t trust each other, and are greedy, so this is used against them. They never mention the name of their species and, given events, wind up giving humans and Vulcans a wide berth for some time. Keeping continuity; though Ferengi were encountered, the Enterprise didn’t know that was who they had encountered.