The good Ferengi

[Valdivia]

As captain of a Starship, you are attending a planetary medical emergency on a small colony world. The number of affected people is in the tens of thousands, and you were the only ship capable of reaching them in time. More ships and supplies are on their way, but they will not reach you in time to prevent thousands of deaths. And your ship is definitely lacking in supplies. In particular some impossible to replicate medicine. There is little your medical department can do without them.

When all seems lost, Ferengi ship approaches. They know what your struggle is, and come bringing a massive ammount of the right supplies. Free of charge. They claim they had the resources available but not the doctors to use them, but since you can help these people, they are giving them to you.

Your medical team urges you to accept. Whatever ulterior motives they might have, these supplies could save thousands of lives. Your security department, however, reccomends wariness. Their appearance with exactly the right supplies is suspicious. Would you accept them?

Stereotypes might not be something to base your actions on, but these Ferengi definitely fall into it. Is the stereotype affecting your decision making? Or are you too quickly to trust? Tell us what you would do!

This is a new edition of our category Morals of Trek, where you are in the shoes of a Starfleet Captain facing a dilemma any of our favourite characters could have faced in Star Trek. If your crew has faced any such dilemmas and you want to see it featured in a Poll of the Week, let us know!

[+ Hutch]

Interesting.

I would accept, but have the medical crew double check everything first. The stereotype would certainly make me think that the Ferengi would want something in return, but that would be a different discussion for later - the priority is preventing deaths by whatever means necessary. 

[+ Alexander Williams]

I agree. Doing nothing is probably worse so we have little to lose for that matter. And as a Ferengi NPC i know it's perfectly safe to trust them

[Hannibal Parker]

I would not trust a Ferengi to tell me water is wet. They have an agenda, and while my Medical staff would be tending to the emergency, my Security, Tactical, and Intelligence staff would be going over the Ferengi with a fine toothed comb....

[Randal Shayne]

While all of us are aware that the Ferengi have quite a reputation, I feel compelled to point out that we currently have Ferengi crew members in the fleet. This shows that great strides have been made in their society, and while no culture can turn itself around in the blink of an eye, having starships from an organization like Starfleet regard seemingly decent Ferengi as dangerous and/or untrustworthy can hinder this process even more. Therefore, I say we trust them. And even if the crew has an ulterior motive, they offer medical supplies and help- things that we can trust. After all, if the materials were defective, they'd be loosing tens of thousands of prospective customers.