Plot
Voyager discovers evidence of replicator technology on a pre-warp planet, which is reported as very unusual. Chakotay and Paris beam down to the planet to investigate. They discover two Ferengi (who first appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Price"), pretending to be prophets to the native people.
When the Ferengi are beamed aboard USS Voyager they refuse to go back to the Alpha Quadrant, and Janeway is forced to return them to the planet. Meanwhile a wormhole is detected and it is traced to the Alpha Quadrant. The wormhole being the same one the Ferengi had come through, years ago. This would be a shortcut home for Voyager, the only problem is that the Delta Quadrant side moves around erratically. Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres work on a way to stabilize the wormhole while Neelix, disguised as a Ferengi, travels back to the planet. He pretends to be a representative (the "Grand Proxy") of the Ferengi ruler, the Grand Nagus, and demands the two return to the Alpha Quadrant.
Neelix' ruse is uncovered and the Ferengi attempt to kill him. Neelix barely survives the assault and the natives uncover the situation. They become confused and declare all the "Ferengi," including Neelix, are to reach home by being burned alive. Neelix and the others are beamed away at the last moment and the natives are convinced their prophecy has come true.
Back on Voyager, the Ferengi manage to steal back their shuttlecraft, which Voyager had confiscated. They end up being sucked into the wormhole, which destabilizes to the point that it is worthless to Voyager.
Read more about this topic: False Profits
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)