One of the funniest episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine saw the show’s Ferengi family accidentally land on Earth, beating the Vulcans of Star Trek: Enterprise by a decade. Earth has been a lightning rod of alien visitations throughout Star Trek history. The most pivotal was First Contact with the Vulcans on April 5, 2063, an event that literally pulled humanity from the aftermath of World War III into their optimistic destiny as founders of the United Federation of Planets.
Over a century before the Vulcans met Dr. Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell) in Star Trek: First Contact, a different set of Vulcans crash-landed in Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania. In Star Trek: Enterprise, T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) revealed that her great-great-grandmother, T’Mir, was part of a Vulcan survey mission that crashed on Earth in 1957 after they studied the launch of Sputnik. Her colleague, Mestral (J. Paul Boehmer), became fascinated with humans, and he chose to remain on Earth after T’Mir and Stron (Michael Krawic) were rescued. But the humans were none the wiser that Vulcans were in their midst in the 1950s, unlike when the Ferengi arrived on Earth in 1947.
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How DS9’s Ferengi Beat Enterprise’s Vulcans To Earth
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 4 episode, “Little Green Men,” Quark (Armin Shimerman), Rom (Max Grodénchik), and Nog (Aron Eisenberg) accidentally became the Roswell aliens when they crash-landed in New Mexico in 1947. The Ferengi were bringing Nog to Starfleet Academy when the warp core of Quark’s shuttle malfunctioned, causing them to time travel 400 years into Earth’s past. The Ferengi were captured in a US military base, who believed them to be Martians, but it turns out Odo (Rene Auberjonois) stowed away to spy on Quark. The Ferengi and the Changeling were able to escape Earth and return to the 24th century, but history doesn’t record their arrival outside of Roswell alien conspiracy theories.
DS9′s Ferengi approached First Contact with 20th-century humans very differently than Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Vulcans did. Once Quark, Rom, and Nog were able to communicate, they attempted to negotiate business deals in classic Ferengi fashion, with Quark postulating a complete takeover of Earth’s financial markets. The US military, in turn, couldn’t conceive of the Ferengi as anything but alien invaders. In contrast, T’Mir and the Vulcans did their best to blend in with the people of Carbon Creek so as not to cause a panic that there are aliens in their midst. T’Mir even sold humans the Vulcan invention of Velcro.
Other Star Trek Aliens That Visited Earth In The Past
Amusingly, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) actually visited Earth before Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s Ferengi and Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Vulcans. Spock, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), and Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) were brought to 1930s New York City by the Guardian of Forever in the classic Star Trek: The Original Series episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Spock is technically the first Vulcan to canonically visit Earth in Star Trek, but he’s far from the first alien to land on the third rock from the sun.
Among the aliens who have come to Earth are the beings who were worshiped as the Greek gods, the Travelers who created Supervisors like Gary Seven (Robert Lansing) and the Romulan Tallinn (Orla Brady), and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) lived on Earth since the late 19th century. Even the Borg Queen (Alison Pill/Annie Wersching) walked the streets of Los Angeles in 2024. But Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Ferengi have to rank as the funniest ‘alien invasion’ of Earth’s past in Star Trek, and they technically made First Contact before the Vulcans (unless you count Spock).
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