It's time for Nog to head off to Starfleet Academy. As per Ferengi custom, Rom announces that his son is selling off his childhood possessions to finance his departure from home. The crew gather around to pore over Nog's effects. Quark arrives to pull Rom away from the festivities, saying that he needs his brother to check out the new starship their cousin Gaila has gifted him as payment for a longstanging debt. To their surprise, the ship is not a bucket of bolts but a sleek, state-of-the-art cruiser that can take Quark anywhere he wants to go. With an avaricious gleam in his eye, Quark says that he's going to escort Nog and Rom to Earth.
Before the voyage, Odo stops by the bar to express his doubt that Quark is shuttling his nephew to Earth purely out of familial generosity. Onboard Quark's ship, Rom reveals that he knows Quark's real motive for going to Earth: to smuggle a shipment of contraband kemocite. Father and son haggle for a piece of the action. When they get close to Earth, however, Rom discovers that they can't slow down. The ship has been sabotaged by Gaila to murder Quark! But Rom comes up with a way to use the kemocite to Techno Babble their way to safety. The world dissolves away.
The Ferengis awaken in an American military infirmary in the year 1947, and a squad of soldiers soon stomp in. Nog recognizes their uniforms and lets the others know that they've traveled 400 years back into the 20th Century. Their universal translators are malfunctioning due to the recent detonation of atom bombs, however, so the two groups can't understand each other. Watching the soldiers cluelessly mimic his movements, Quark realizes the potential to exploit these primitive rubes.
The humans observers quickly split into two camps: Nurse Garland and her fiance, Professor Jeff Carlson, want to study the aliens and learn from them, while General Denning and Captain Wainwright only see them as potential enemies. Rom eventually fixes the translators, allowing Quark to introduce himself as the Chief Financial Officer of the Ferengi Alliance and offer to sell the Americans super-advanced technology. The general is dubious, but when Quark suggests that he could take his business to the Russians, the general takes him seriously. Meanwhile, Rom and Nog converse more sociably with the professor and nurse, and Nog manages to score some free oo-mox in the process.
Things seem to be going smoothly until Odo suddenly appears, having smuggled himself aboard Quark's ship and disguised himself as a dog to blend in. He's there to bust Quark for smuggling, but now he's stuck with them. He insists that Quark help bring them all home, but Quark has other plans. The shady Ferengi is confident that he'll quickly be running Earth, and then he'll contact Ferenginar to give them warp technology centuries before their rivals, ushering in a new timeline of Ferengi superiority in the galaxy. With a final warning, Odo goes back into hiding.
But before Quark can get his grand designs off the ground, the general gets the go-ahead to treat the aliens like invaders. He has them bound and injected with truth serum to find out their true plans. The serum has no effect, but further threats cause Nog to start bluffing that they are an advanced scouting party for a massive alien invasion. He stages an escape attempt that quickly falters, but the friendly nurse and professor join in, reasoning that they can always claim the aliens mind-controlled them. But even with human help, the party is surprised by the general and his men. That's when Odo springs from hiding to disable the soldiers.
Even Quark now realizes that they have to leave. The aliens say goodbye to the humans, who share their hope that one day humanity will be able to take to the stars and join in a great alliance of planets. Back aboard the ship, Rom has figured out that they can combine the last of their kemocite with the explosion of an atomic test to Techno Babble back to their present. It works!
Back on the station, Odo follows through with his threat to arrest Quark. All of the evidence has vanished on the trip back, so the charges probably won't stick, but Odo insists. As Quark is hauled away, Rom promises to get him a good lawyer. Perhaps Cousin Gaila could recommend one!
Tropes present in this episode:
- Actor Allusion: Nog's pajama shirt Rom buys is the same shirt Sovak (both played by Max Grodénchik) wore back in TNG's "Captain's Holiday".
- Aliens in Cardiff:
- Captain Wainwright is nonplussed to learn the Ferengi plan to invade... Cleveland.
- Also the premise of the whole episode, with the Ferengi and Odo crash landing outside the small town of Roswell, New Mexico and being held prisoner at the USAAF base nearby.
- Artistic License – History: All American atomic testing was being done off-shore in 1947. The Nevada Proving Ground (later renamed the Nevada Test Site) did not open until 1951.
- Artistic License – Military: Wainwright's captain's bars are placed horizontally on his collar, rather than vertically.
- Artistic License – Politics: General Denning's sneering surprise that the "piano-playing Democrat" Truman is taking an aggressive stance on national defense is based on political stereotypes of the 1990s rather than the 1940s. When the episode was written, Democrats were criticized as sissy elites who were soft on defense, but in the 1940s, Democrats held the more aggressively interventionist stance leading up to World War 2.
- Been There, Shaped History: Turns out, the alien crash at Roswell was real, and Quark, Rom, and Nog were the aliens.
- Big Damn Heroes: Odo, who snuck onto Quark's ship and ends up helping the Ferengi escape. Quark promptly lampshades the trope.
- Blatant Lies: When Kira identifies her springball paddle amongst Nog's possessions and says she's been looking for it for years, Nog claims it was sitting on the bar all along.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: During a conversation with the general wanting to know what Quark knows about Earth.Quark: Baseball, root beer, darts, atom bombs.
- Chekhov's Gun: Bashir and O'Brien's gift to Nog, a guide book on Earth, comes in handy throughout the episode.
- Cigar Chomper: General Denning always has one in his mouth.
- Conqueror from the Future: Quark decides to try and do this. He doesn't count on the paranoia of the military personnel.
- Continuity Nod:
- While looking through historical records, Nog notes how Gabriel Bell looks a lot like Sisko. Quark shrugs it off, declaring that all humans look alike.
- Who is the person Quark entrusts with running the bar during his absence? Morn! We already know that he will eventually inherit the bar in at least one possible future timeline.
- Aside from atom bombs, which he'd just learned about, the things Quark knows about human culture are baseball (thanks to Sisko), darts (thanks to Bashir and O'Brien), and root beer (which came up for a scene in "The Way Of The Warrior", and which Nog ordered in "Facets").
- Continuity Snarl: Quark wants to give the warp drive to the Ferengi so they can have it before the Vulcans and Klingons. Other episodes mention Vuicans having interstellar travel centuries earlier.
- Covert Pervert: Nog gets Nurse Garland to give him oo-mox in the guise of an ear rub.
- Deus ex Nukina: Quark and co. take advantage of a nearby nuclear test to power their return to the 24th century.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In the beginning, Rom indicates after they find Quark's ship that Quark could set out on his own, flying into the galaxy for new business opportunities and leaving Rom alone with the bar - clearly angling to free himself from Quark's influence. Quark, naturally, shoots him down. But in the end, after everything Quark put him and Nog through over the episode, Quark is arrested for smuggling. Rom pretends to completely botch the search for his lawyer, and we last see him smiling as he enjoys a long vacation from his brother.
- Everybody Smokes: Just about everyone on the military base does, shocking the Ferengi who have only dealt with humans in the No Smoking future and giving Quark ideas. The studio was originally against showing anybody smoking at all, until the writers pointed out that it was entirely accurate to the setting.
- Everyone Has Standards: Quark may be wanting to fleece the primitive Humans for money, but he's apalled at hearing from Nog that Humans developed Atomic Bombs and regularly tested them on Earth.Quark: ...They irradiated their own planet?
- Foreshadowing: As they approach Earth, Nog mentions the Bell Riots, reminding the audience of what happened the last time a Deep Space Nine episode went to Earth: the characters were unexpectedly flung back centuries into the past.
- General Ripper: General Denning and Captain Wainwright are convinced that the Ferengi are here to invade Earth, and will not accept any evidence to the contrary. Wainwright, in particular, is fairly bloodthirsty.
- Giving Radio to the Romans: Once trapped in the past, Quark intends to either sell technology to the humans or bring the warp drive to the Ferengi.
- Global Ignorance: Nog knows very little about Earth in the 24th Century and even less about its 1947 incarnation. When trying to trick the military into thinking the Ferengi are going to invade, his only hope is to randomly point at a dot on the map, which turns out to be the city of Cleveland.
- Hidden Depths: One of the first episodes to truly demonstrate Rom's mechanical genius, after Nog mentioned he could have been chief engineer of a starship in "Heart of Stone".
- Honest John's Dealership: The hardass commander sizes Quark up pretty well by comparing him to his brother-in-law, a used car salesman.General Denning: You know, Quark, you might be some kind of Martian...
Quark: Ferengi.
Denning: Whatever. But the more we talk, the more you remind me of my brother-in-law.
Quark: Is he a businessman?
Denning: He's a car salesman, and not a very good one. - Humans Advance Swiftly: Nog points out that it took humans half as long as Ferengi to go from primitive to interstellar civilization. And the Ferengi didn't even develop warp drive, they bought it.
- Humans Are Morons: Not that the Ferengi are much smarter.
- I Want My Mommy!: Rom says he wants his Moogie when threatened with interrogation.
- Lampshade Hanging: Every time Rom starts spouting Technobabble, Quark goes glassy-eyed.Rom: If we vent plasma from the warp core into the cargo hold, we may be able to start a cascade reaction in the kemocite. Then we can modulate the reaction to create an inversion wave in the warp field and force the ship back into normal space! If I time it just right, I might be able to get us close enough to Earth to make an emergency landing.Quark: Rom, you're a genius!Rom: (flattered) Think so?Quark: How should I know? I have no idea what you're talking about.
- Loophole Abuse: Nog says that as a cadet in Starfleet, he'd be obligated to report Quark's attempt at smuggling—but since he's not at the Academy yet, he'll take ten percent.
- Mars Needs Women: The Ferengi are clearly attracted to the human Nurse Garland. Nog tricks her into giving him oo-mox, a Ferengi form of foreplay, and Rom asks to be serviced next. For their part, when the humans learn that Ferengi women do not wear clothing, Garland jealously forbids her fiance from visiting.
- "Mister Sandman" Sequence: After Quark revives after the crash, we get a panning shot showing a twentieth century hospital room that includes an oscillating fan. A US Army soldier then lights up a cigarette, picks up a rotary dial phone and informs his superiors that one of the "Martians" has just woken up.
- Newspaper Dating: A slow pan over a calendar establishes the month as July 1947.
- Nobody Poops: One of the franchise's rare exceptions. Rom figures out Quark's smuggling scheme because he checked the cargo bay while his brother was "in waste extraction."
- "Not So Different" Remark: When Worf voices his skepticism about Nog at Starfleet Academy, O'Brien comments that others might have said the same thing about him not so long ago.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Turns out Odo didn't believe Quark was merely taking Nog to Earth. He busts him for kemocite smuggling.
- Quark was also a bit surprised that the ship Gaila gave him was actually in pristine condition. That's a very un-Ferengi-like gift, one would have expected the cheapest old ship Gaila could find, instead. Of course, it soon turned out that the ship was sabotaged to kill Quark...
- Properly Paranoid: The military aren't entirely wrong to be suspicious of the Ferengi and they're ultimately proven right that they, or at least Quark, plan to invade Earth. They just don't expect that it's going to be an invading army of used car salesmen rather than bloodthirsty warriors.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: When the universal translators aren't working and we hear alien speech from either party's perspective, it's unintelligible, and there are no subtitles. When Quark smirkingly addresses Nurse Garland, however, we can clearly hear him say "oo-mox."
- Reincarnation: The Ferengi afterlife apparently involves bidding for new lives.
- Roswell That Ends Well: Turns out it was Quark, Rom, Nog, and Odo.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Quark when he's getting jabbed with the truth serum needles.
- Shout-Out:
- The whole episode is an homage to 50s B-Movies and, appropriately, three of the four human characters are named after popular B-Movie actors:
- Faith Garland is named after Beverly Garland, who starred in Swamp Diamonds and It Conquered the World.
- Rex Denning is named after Richard Denning, who appeared in Creature from the Black Lagoon and Day the World Ended.
- Jeff Carlson is named after Richard Carlson, from The Magnetic Monster and It Came from Outer Space.
- Faith Garland dreamily muses about humankind's future in the stars in quite familiar terms.Garland: Imagine the possibilities. Who knows what they could teach us. A few years from now, mankind could have rocket ships of our own. We could travel the galaxy, exploring new worlds and new civilizations.
- Quark deliberately misquotes John Masefield.Quark: All I ask is a tall ship, and a load of contraband to fill her with.
- The human characters smoking is a reference to Lost Continent (Most famous for its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000) and the absurd amount of smoking it features.Ira Steven Behr: You see smoking in fifties movies all the time, but Continent took it to an art form that is just jaw-dropping to watch. Every time there is a problem, everyone just starts handing out cigarettes.
- A dog who turns out to be a shapeshifting alien is a reference to The Thing (1982).
- The whole episode is an homage to 50s B-Movies and, appropriately, three of the four human characters are named after popular B-Movie actors:
- Smoking Is Not Cool: As Quark notes, it smells foul; and in addition to being harmful, the fact that humans would willingly buy and take a poisonous product convinces Quark that Humans Are Morons — especially in this era — that he could manipulate for his own gain.
- Stop Copying Me: The Ferengi are slapping their heads to get their Universal Translators working. The humans decide to copy them in an attempt to communicate and proceed to Dope Slap themselves, much to Quark's amusement.
- Take That!: The day being saved by an atomic bomb was a minor one to True Lies. Specifically, the scene where Harry and Helen share a passionate kiss with a mushroom cloud in the background.
- Take Over the World: Once stuck in the past, Quark quickly goes supervillain and concocts a master plan to sell the humans bits and pieces of future technology while saving the real powerful stuff for the Ferengi of the past, allowing the Ferengi to be unchallenged while creating a massive space empire that he would then rule. It fails because the humans of the past turn out to be even more volatile than he thought, and too tricky to manipulate.
- Too Good to Be True: Quark is convinced that the ship Gaila gives him must have something wrong with it, and has Rom go over it with a fine-tooth comb. He's surprised when it appears to be on the level, but it's actually been sabotaged to malfunction after the warp drive has been engaged.
- Translation Convention: After they arrive on Earth in 1947, Quark, Rom and Nog's universal translators stop working due to the beta radiation in the atmosphere caused by atomic bomb tests. The audience still hears the three of them speaking in English when interacting with each other but they are heard speaking Ferengi when seen from the perspective of Faith Garland, Jeff Carlson, General Denning and Captain Wainwright. Similarly, when Jeff Carlson speaks to the three Ferengi, his speech is distorted to signify that they do not understand him. In spite of the distortion, however, it is still comprehensible to the audience. Rom later manages to get the universal translators working again.
- Translator Microbes: It appears that the Ferengi universal translator takes the form of modules placed into the ear canal. Deep enough that a pin is required to hit the reset button.
- Truth Serum: The military attempt to use sodium pentothal on Quark. Apparently it doesn't work on Ferengi, but he's only too willing to talk to stop these crazy humans jabbing him with painful needles.
