Voyager encounters a world on the unstable end of a wormhole which has been bouncing around the delta quadrant. On this world, they find that a pair of Ferengi have been posing as gods for a pre-industrial society - Ferengi that were stranded in the delta quadrant in The Price (TNG, season 3). Initially, Janeway just beams them out, but Arridor convinces her that abducting the natives' "gods" would do irreparable harm, so she sets about finding a sneakier plan. The first plan is to disguise Neelix as the grand proxy of the Grand Nagus, but that fails. Plan two: learn the rest of the prophecy that foretold the arrival of the "sages," figure out how to abduct them while remaining true to the prophecy. That works, but now, instead of going back to the alpha quadrant through the wormhole (which they'd lured back to this planet), the Ferengi overcome their guard and disable Voyager with their shuttle, and bumble into the wormhole - which leaves again before Voyager can take it home.
The Ferengi were intended to be the next "big bad"* when they were introduced in TNG. Since they were pretty goofy and one-dimensional, they fell pretty flat in that role, and were relegated to simply being walking, ham-handed metaphors for how ugly greed is. They started out that way in DS9, but I feel they hit a turning point with Quark's fantastic speech to Sisko in The Jem'Hadar: "The way I see it, hew-mons used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget. ...But you're overlooking something: Hew-mons used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi. Slavery. Concentration camps. Interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you. We're better. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lock to pick." From that point forward, the Ferengi were used as a much more likable comic-relief troop. And that was the goal for their use here.
The "moral dilemma" as to whether or not the crew should try to intervene in the Ferengi's meddling is glossed over quickly, which is good because I can't think of any situation in which a Federation captain has hesitated before stopping a third party from breaking the prime directive. I don't quite get the reasoning for needing to send the Ferengi back and trying to remove the Ferengi in a less intrusive way. Certainly, Picard would have just beamed down and told the inhabitants that the Ferengi weren't their gods, and, by the way, all religion is a lie. Maybe that's not the best way to do it either, but there's got to be some middle ground, right? The way Voyager goes about it, they actually seem to legitimize the Ferengi's regime on the planet by making their departure fit with the prophecies. I'd rather that they just showed up with a bunch of phaser rifles, in plain view of the natives, and stormed off with the Ferengi without saying a word, at least leaving some doubt that they were actually the sages in the minds of the people there. Of course, if they did that, we wouldn't have an episode.
Neelix makes an entertaining Ferengi, but of course, he has portrayed one before. I don't have much else to say about that.
It also seems like a cheap ending to just have Ferengi MeddlingTM ruin Voyager's chances to get home. The Voyager crew is constantly being outsmarted by everyone they meet, and for me it is starting to add up - especially when it is done by two people who were being portrayed as the epitomes of incompetence for the entire rest of the episode. The director, Cliff Bole, was pretty apologetic for this episode, claiming that the reason why it wasn't terribly good is that it was "too silly." I disagree. Silly is fine. But this episode is just meaningless - a contrived conflict, and a chance to get home foiled by bumbling.
Watchability: 2/5
Bottom Line: People are often very quick to generalize and say that there's an overarching rule that caused an episode (or series) to not be very good. Silly isn't bad, even a meaningless episode isn't necessarily bad, but a combination of those factors with one-dimensional villains and generally uncreative dialogue produced a pretty boring result.
*Now I've lost another perfectly good hour to tvtropes.
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