“Q2”
Written by Kenneth Biller and Robert Doherty
Directed by LeVar Burton
Season 7, Episode 19
Production episode 265
Original air date: April 11, 2001
Stardate: 54704.5
Captain’s log. Icheb is presenting a paper on Starfleet history to Janeway, who thinks it’s a bit too long, but good enough for him to finally be a full-fledged cadet. After he leaves, q shows up to make snotty comments. Janeway doesn’t recognize him until Q appears, and identifies him as her godson, who was an infant when Janeway saw him last.
Q says that q is taking a little vacation from the Q-Continuum, and Q wants him to experience humanity. However, after Q leaves, q does pretty much whatever the hell he wants: He starts a dance party in engineering, he reprograms the computer to be as snide as he is, he removes Seven’s clothing, and he starts a war between the previously peaceful Wyngari and Vojean. Attempts to talk to him fail, and attempts to ignore him in the hopes that he’ll get bored just result in him trying to be less bored: He puts Voyager in a confrontation with the Borg.
That gets Q to show up, with the admonishment never to ever provoke the Borg. He puts everything back the way it was, then takes Janeway aside. Apparently q has been a holy terror, to the point that his mother has disowned him. Q was hoping that Starfleet ideals would rub off on him, and Janeway points out that you don’t parent a kid by fobbing him off on someone else—you spend time with him.
Q tries that, which lasts all of ten minutes (but much longer in the Continuum, apparently), and it turns out that Q is a terrible parent (surprise!). Now q is embarrassed to be seen with him. And the Continuum has lost all patience. They’ve given q one week to get his act together, or they’ll turn him into an amoeba. And for the duration of that week, he doesn’t have his powers.
Q then leaves him on Voyager. Gamely, the crew attempts to train him. At first, q cheats (altering the program of a holodeck diplomacy scenario, e.g.), but eventually he comes around. Janeway almost gives up on him until he admits the truth: He is overwhelmed by the pressure. Q and Lady Q had him so he’d be the savior of the Continuum, and he has no idea how that’s even possible. But he really doesn’t want to be an amoeba, so he applies himself.
He becomes friends with Icheb—q calls him “Itchy” and Icheb calls him “Q-ball”—and the pair of them join Paris on the Delta Flyer for piloting lessons. While flying, there’s a minor malfunction on the ship (the 24th-century equivalent of the check engine light), but they just ignore it.
When Q returns, q reads an essay he wrote about the history of the Continuum, which Q is visibly bored by. Janeway upbraids Q, but Q insists that q has to demonstrate overwhelming Q-ness or it’s amoeba city for him. The captain then offers to speak on his behalf to the Continuum and let q stay on Voyager as a human instead of an amoeba. But q doesn’t want to be an amoeba or a human, he wants to be a Q like his father.
Buy the Book
In the Watchful City
Icheb is convinced to go with q to fix the Delta Flyer, but instead q uses it to travel to another star system, using a spatial flexure. He then fires on a Chokuzan ship, and the resultant battle injures Icheb very badly, so q must return to Voyager because Icheb needs medical attention.
The EMH needs to know what the weapon was that was used on Icheb. Accompanied by Janeway, q returns to Chokuzan space to beg for help. The Chokuzan commander agrees, but only if Janeway subjects herself to punishment for q’s actions. Appalled, q insists that he receive punishment, as it’s his fault that Icheb is dying. Impressed, the Chokuzan starts to laugh: It turns out that the Chokuzan was Q all along, and this whole thing was a test. (Icheb is also fine.)
Q, q, and Janeway stand before three Q judges, who declare that q is not worthy of being a Q. They do not force him to become an amoeba, but instead condemn him to remain human. The judges disappear, as does an outraged Q, and q asks Janeway if the offer to stay on Voyager is still good. It’s obvious that Q doesn’t want him, as he abandoned him twice on this ship. But then Q returns, saying the real question is why he keeps coming back…
Q’s story to q is that he threatened to leave the Continuum, at which point they gave in. Janeway knows better, and Q sheepishly confirms in private that Q must now be responsible for q every nanosecond. In gratitude, Q provides Janeway with a shortcut that will get them home a bit sooner. Janeway asks why he doesn’t just send them all the way home (a question she inexplicably never asked either of the other two times he was on board), and he asks what kind of example would he be for his son if he did all the work for her?
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? A spatial flexure can transport a ship instantly to another star system. Despite q using that trick with the Delta Flyer, this incredibly valuable technology that could probably get them home will never be seen or mentioned again, even though q was able to do it without benefit of his powers.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Q insists that Janeway is the perfect person to parent q. When Janeway reminds him that she isn’t a parent, Q says that she’s certainly a mommy to her crew.
Mr. Vulcan. It’s Tuvok who suggests ignoring q in the hopes that he becomes bored. This almost works.
Half and half. Torres is not happy about her engine room being turned into a dance hall…
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix, claiming to be good with children, tries to talk to q, who rewards him by sealing his mouth shut and removing his vocal cords, thus thrilling a subset of fandom who hates Neelix. Later, after Q restores him, Neelix makes it a point to babble even more than usual whenever he’s in q’s presence, which is actually quite delightful.
Resistance is futile. When q first encounters Seven, the first thing he does is remove her clothes. She is not embarrassed, but simply keeps working as she was when clothed.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Later, when Seven is teaching q about spatial mechanics, q asks if he can see her naked again. Because of course an omnipotent entity who is only taking a human form for convenience’s sake would act exactly like a heterosexual male human adolescent…
Do it. “You can’t just dump your child on someone and hope he learns something.”
“I can’t?”
Janeway and Q discussing parenting methods.
Welcome aboard. John deLancie makes his final Voyager appearance as Q. He’ll next appear in the Lower Decks episode “Veritas,” and he’ll also be in the forthcoming second season of Picard. Keegan deLancie, John’s son, appears as q—he even looks a little bit like Suzie Plakson, so it really is perfect casting…
Lorna Raver plays the Q judge, Michael Kagan plays Q disguised as a Chokuzan commander, and Manu Intiraymi is back as Icheb.
Trivial matters: Ken Biller first pitched this story in season four.
This is the second time in Trek that a regular actor’s son has played the son of the actor’s character, the previous time being when Sir Patrick Stewart’s son Daniel played the son of “Kamin,” the person whose life Picard led in TNG‘s “The Inner Light.”
While this is the last (so far) appearance of q onscreen, he does appear in several works of tie-in fiction, most notably The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer, in which he helps Kes resurrect Janeway, and also sacrifices his life to stop the Omega Continuum. He also appeared in I, Q by John deLancie & Peter David, The Q-Continuum trilogy by Greg Cox, and your humble rewatcher’s Q & A.
This episode is the first to establish a date for the end of the five-year mission that was chronicled on the original series, as Icheb’s report has Kirk’s last adventure before the five-year mission ended (and he was promoted to admiral, as seen in The Motion Picture) take place in 2270.
Previous works of tie-in fiction chronicled the end of Kirk’s five-year mission, each of which contradicts the other: the 1986 comic book Star Trek Annual #2 from DC’s first series by Mike W. Barr, Dan Jurgens, & Bob Smith; J.M. Dillard’s 1989 novel The Lost Years; and the 1995 comic book Star Trek #75 from DC’s second series by Howard Weinstein, Rachel Ketchum and Mark Heike, which concluded the “Star-Crossed” arc that chronicled the Kirk-Carol Marcus relationship.
Reportedly, Rick Berman pushed for casting Keegan deLancie after seeing him guest star on an episode of Ally McBeal.
Q’s admonishment to q never to provoke the Borg is amusing considering that Q was responsible for Starfleet’s first significant contact with the Borg in TNG‘s “Q Who.” Your humble rewatcher established in Q & A that both introducing Starfleet to the Borg ahead of “schedule” was part of a long-term plan to make sure the Borg would be distracted by their conflicts with the Federation and not expand to a particular planet.
This is the shortest title in Trek history up to this point at only two characters, though its record will be broken by Enterprise‘s “E2.”
Set a course for home. “How do you save a race that is already omnipotent?” It’s, to coin a phrase, “Déjà Q” all over again! But where that TNG episode was absolutely hilarious and still managed to do some character development with Q (as well as Data), “Q2” is just a tired slog. There’s precious few of the laughs one expects from a Q episode, and what yuks we do have are puerile at best. The sex-farce humor is particularly sad, from q drooling over a naked Seven to Q materializing (fully clothed!) in Janeway’s bath.
The already-idiotic notion that q would unite the Continuum is made even more idiotic here by it not actually working, and there being apparently no consequences in the Continuum. They fought a civil war that blew up suns that was only stopped by this child’s birth, yet now he’s treated like an inconvenience and an irrelevance.
Keegan deLancie does okay, though the transition from snotty teenager to earnest kid trying to do some good is not even a little bit convincing. The burgeoning friendship between q and Icheb is, at least, convincing, and provides the only real character work in the entire episode. Most of it is just the actors reading the lines and going through the motions without any emotion or character or interest. Even the usually reliable John deLancie is phoning it in.
Probably the biggest disappointment is the lack of Suzie Plakson as Lady Q. On the other hand, it’s probably for the best that she wasn’t stuck in this awful script, but, as with “The Q and the Grey,” she probably would’ve elevated the material. Goodness knows, there’s nowhere here to go but up…
Plus there are three elements that just don’t ring right. The Q judges are dressed in the outfit that Q wore in both “Encounter at Farpoint” and “All Good Things…,” but in both cases, Q was cosplaying as a judge from a fascist state in the “post-atomic horror” on Earth. It makes absolutely no sense that the Q judges here would do likewise. And the spatial flexure is a bit of technobabble that really should’ve been used beyond q going on a joyride given that it would probably get Voyager, y’know, home and stuff.
Speaking of that, in the end, when Q provides his shortcut, Janeway asks why he doesn’t send them all the way home and WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SHE ASK THAT IN “DEATH WISH” OR “THE Q AND THE GREY”????????
Q works beautifully on TNG because deLancie and Sir Patrick Stewart have simply perfect chemistry, which will likely hold true when the entity appears on Picard. His appearances on Voyager have been a sequence of diminishing returns, and when they finally address the elephant in the room regarding the fact that Q can get them home with a snap of his fingers, they botch that, too. Just a sodden, awful mess.
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s most recent fiction includes the thriller Animal (written with Dr. Munish K. Batra) about a serial killer who targets people who harm animals; All-the-Way House, part of the Systema Paradoxa series of books about cryptids, telling the secret origin of the Jersey Devil; “Unguarded,” a story about guardian angels in two different faiths in the anthology Devilish and Divine; and “In Earth and Sky and Sea Strange Things There Be,” a story of H. Rider Haggard’s She, in the charity anthology Turning the Tied.
Q works beautifully on TNG because deLancie and Sir Patrick Stewart have simply perfect chemistry, which will likely hold true when the entity appears on Picard. His appearances on Voyager have been a sequence of diminishing returns, and when they finally address the elephant in the room regarding the fact that Q can get them home with a snap of his fingers, they botch that, too. Just a sodden, awful mess.
As I said back in…I think it was either the “Death Wish” or “Q and the Grey” talkbacks…”All Good Things” really should’ve been Q’s swansong — at least at the time.
I mean, we’ll have to see how his encore on the new Season of Picard fares (and his Lower Decks guest role was at least fun).
But I didn’t really care for this episode back in 2001 either — and not just because, at the time, it seemed a poor sendoff for DeLancie (since, as far as we knew, VOY’s final Season was the last hurrah of the 24th Century on TV).
Q’s crossover appearance on DS9 in retrospect should’ve been a warning that he wasn’t going to work outside of TNG — apart from, heh, Sisko decking Q.
Yes, a massive letdown and an unfortunate cheapening of the Q concept — never a great concept, but at least it had a certain consistency that’s largely discarded here. A Q child acting the same as a human adolescent is rather ridiculous. Q are transcendent beings that merely cosplay as humans so that we may comprehend them. It’s the equivalent of a zookeeper using a vulture hand puppet to feed baby vultures. It doesn’t reflect the underlying reality.
True, Voyager has made that mistake all along, with Q’s flirtations with Janeway. Although at least that had the excuse of giving close friends Kate Mulgrew and John DeLancie an opportunity to play Hepburn and Tracy together. Having q send Seven’s catsuit to the cornfield is just juvenile pandering.
The one thing about this episode that I’m grateful for is that it set the end of Kirk’s 5-year mission in 2270. The Okudas’ Chronology had conformed to Roddenberry’s preference that the animated series be ignored and had put the end of the 5YM in 2269, shortly after “Turnabout Intruder,” and thereby left virtually no room for either TAS or any of the novels or comics. Putting the end in 2270 provides room for those things again, at least up to a point.
Well, one more thing. Icheb’s mention of Kirk saving the Pelosians from extinction shortly before the end of the 5-year mission was the basis for my version of the end of that mission, which I described in retrospect in Ex Machina and then depicted in Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History. As for the other two species Icheb mentioned as being saved from extinction by Kirk years earlier, I covered them more recently in The Captain’s Oath.
Thank you for the cornfield reference. The shot (pictured above) of Neelix without a mouth is 100% “It’s A Good Life” and just as horrifying and sudden.
“That’s all the television there is!”
The best part about Q appearing in Star Trek Picard season 2 is that this will no longer be the final appearance of the character.
Steven: Well, it wasn’t anyhow, thanks to Q’s appearance in “Veritas” on Lower Decks.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@4/krad: And Q was back in his Post-Atomic Horror Judge cosplay in “Veritas,” raising the same question you raised about the Q judges here.
Christopher: True, but I can forgive the deLancie Q wearing it out of nostalgia, if for no other reason. (Out of the box, it also made it easier for him to be identified given the rather simplistic animation style of LD….)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@3,
The best part about Q appearing in Star Trek Picard season 2 is that this will no longer be the final appearance of the character.
I’m still on the fence about bringing back Q at all — at least into Picard’s corner of the franchise.
I was fine with “All Good Things” being Q’s final appearance within the context of TNG and its own overrarching narrative. His final scene with Picard in the Court Room was, and still is, a perfect sendoff.
As happy as I am to see DeLancie snapping his fingers again, I’m still concerned Q’s role in the new Season of Picard will cheapen that.
The challenge is going to be what more you can add to the Picard-Q dynamic at this point.
One thing I can say in this episode’s favor is, in my opinion, the Janeway / Q dynamic works better here than in the previous two episodes, and I actually really enjoyed the dynamic in this episode. Q’s not trying to do that stupid pursue-Janeway-as-a-love-interest thing, he’s just trying to be a good parent. And I can see Janeway as one to give better parental advice than Picard would.
I had almost totally forgotten about this episode. Offhand, I’d recalled that Keegan deLancie played Q’s kid on Voyager, but I hadn’t recalled that it wasn’t part of “The Q and the Grey” or something.
“Don’t you Aunt Kathy me.” Deja Q was a better episode, but only because that’s one of the few Q episodes I really enjoyed (along with Tapestry, but Q seems a minor part there). They were more often than not tied in with boring holodeck type silliness. I also think Janeway’s role and performance were strong overall, and she does a good job as godparent. I also liked Itchy and Q-ball palling around. My heart broke a little at Q’s reaction to q’s essay. At least they provided a half-hearted reason why Q doesn’t send them home this time. Uses Janeway’s own words against her.
“final appearance of his character.”
Ahem. John deLancie also played Q in My Little Pony (oh, sure, he adopted the name “Discord” but it’s still Q). Which led to a very “Is that…? No, it couldn’t be. It is!” moment of glee on my part.
Yes, I have 3 daughters.
@11,
Heh, yeah, Discord was Q in all but name.
I used to joke that with Trek off the air at that time, Q got bored without Picard to torment anymore and needed to keep busy.
Well, that or else he must have lost a bet with another member of the Continuum. :d ;)
Maybe a unifying trait of members of the Continuum is a flair for the dramatic, and they decided to wear those particular judges’ outfits because they look really really good? I mean, if I was immortal and omnipotent, I certainly wouldn’t want to look drab.
Two thoughts about this episode:
1. We’ve already had a pair of Q that have children in Amanda Rogers. I feel Q is honestly treated worse by Voyager than the Borg.
2. I admit I do think Q2 is Trelane at a different point of his life. This is purely my headcanon, though.
Um, I never said it was the final appearance of the character. I said it was the final Voyager appearance of the character…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Blah. I know I’ve watched this in full many years ago (and I’m sure I didn’t like it), but the other day I attempted a re-watch and couldn’t get past midway through the first act. It was just too juvenile which I guess is fitting since we’re dealing with a juvenile bratty q here. Like Krad, I thought it was stupid that q is taking on the sexuality of an adolescent heterosexual human male by fawning all over Seven. But that’s Berman/Braga-era Trek for you: whatever excuse you can make for getting Jeri Ryan naked will be utilized. All I could think was that the naked scene was what the UPN promos would be highlighting on “Next week’s exciting episode of Star Trek: Voyager!”
I also thought Q here was really not the Q I remembered from his TNG days, looking older and tired and bloated. Of course it’s just the natural aging of the actor but it also takes me out of the story. Ironically, I don’t feel the same regarding de Lancie’s upcoming guest role on Picard. From the images I’ve seen, he actually looks more sinister not to mention more handsome. And I think he could justify his appearance to Picard in that he wanted his updated look to reflect the passage of 30 human years and/or just to make Picard feel more comfortable.
The only minor amusement I get in relation to this episode is the thought that if guest actor Keegan de Lancie married fellow guest actor Michael Kagan, the former could change his name to Keegan Kagan. I like the way that sounds!
@14/C.T. Phipps: “We’ve already had a pair of Q that have children in Amanda Rogers.”
Except they had given up being Q and had Amanda as humans. That’s not the same as a child being conceived within the Q Continuum itself.
“I admit I do think Q2 is Trelane at a different point of his life. This is purely my headcanon, though.”
I’ve never liked that idea. The personalities are similar, yes, but they’re quite different in other respects. “The Squire of Gothos” made it quite clear that the power came from Trelane’s machines, not Trelane himself. Trelane was neutralized when Kirk destroyed his first machine, and when he struck again, Trelane explained that he had other “instrumentalities” at his disposal. Also, Trelane was clearly not omniscient, as his knowledge of Earth and the laws of physics was deeply lacking.
And “a different point in his life?” Q is more than 5 billion years old, according to “The Q and the Gray.” For him, the interval between Kirk’s era and Picard’s era is proportional to maybe 30 seconds out of my lifespan so far. I don’t feel I’ve changed noticeably since I started writing this paragraph.
Following the Trelane as Q theory (though not this particular q), I suppose Trelane’s parents could have placed those mechanical limitations on him. Gothos could be a sort of playpen for a bratty youth. Only in this case the playpen can be… steered through space and materialize here and there. Hmm, swanky tech if you can get it.
@15:
I also thought Q here was really not the Q I remembered from his TNG days, looking older and tired and bloated. Of course it’s just the natural aging of the actor but it also takes me out of the story.
Yeah, it’s the old problem with live-action media and having actors portraying ageless and immortal characters. You can only suspend disbelief for so long before you can’t just ignore the actors’ natural aging anymore.
Brent Spiner recognized it, which was why he lobbied for Data to bite it in Nemesis. James Marsters knew it too after Angel, saying he was only open for reprising the role of Spike for a limited period to avoid this.
(Hell, look at Angel himself. Network shenanigans aside, the cancellation arguably came at the right time, because it was impossible to ignore that Borenaz was a decade older compared to early Buffy).
And yeah, digital technology and techniques like Data in Picard or Sam Jackson as 1995 Nick Fury in Captain Marvel is mitigating that problem. But even that can only go so far between the limits of digital tech and the inability to disguise vocal or body language changes.
Ironically, I don’t feel the same regarding de Lancie’s upcoming guest role on Picard. From the images I’ve seen, he actually looks more sinister not to mention more handsome. And I think he could justify his appearance to Picard in that he wanted his updated look to reflect the passage of 30 human years and/or just to make Picard feel more comfortable.
Yeah, I’m curious how they’re going to explain it too.
My take is also that Q is reluctantly ‘lowering’ himself to Picard’s level to make him ‘comfortable’ (and also just being an a**hole as usual).
Voyager loved its reset button so much – so they should have done a Q episode where Q actually gets them home early on, the return of the crew home receives some sort of exposure (a-la Endgame), but eventually, Q hits the reset button and throws the poor bastards back into the Delta quadrant
@18/Jimbo: But if Trelane and Q are so different, why would it be desirable to handwave away the differences to make them the same? That’s conspiracy-theory thinking, inventing ad hoc arguments for why the evidence is deceptive rather than just admitting that the evidence disproves one’s belief.
I mean, the only real similarity is that they’re both arrogant jerks who like cosplay, but there are lots of people out there who have similar personalities without being related. Things don’t have to be connected just because they vaguely remind you of each other. It makes the universe feel more insular and limited if everything’s forced to be related to everything else.
“I wonder if it’s too late to ask Jean-Luc?”
I wasn’t sure going into this one. Q’s transformation from omnipotent sadistic sociopath to lovable comedy character is one of the more curious arcs in Star Trek history, and I remembered this one as leaning a bit too far into the comedy side of it. But watching it again, I was pleasantly surprised. I must admit I was torn between the nostalgia of seeing Q again (after his longest gap between appearances to that point) and feeling that it’s maybe a good thing that he isn’t in the episode that much. John de Lancie continues to have good comic timing given the material, and even gives Q a rare moment of steel when he’s prepared to let Icheb die in order to teach Junior a lesson. But the focus is on the younger de Lancie as the younger Q. The first part of the episode is a comic turn of what would happen if a young Q was let loose on Voyager, full of nice moments from him finally shutting Neelix up through Seven’s lack of nudity taboo. And then we get to follow his believable journey from sulky teenager to promising (but still far from perfect) young man. It even manages to use Icheb well rather than just having him make his usual contractually obligated token appearance.
Janeway says it took her more than a week to straighten Seven out: She probably needs to watch Season 4 again! Chell gets another mention. We’re told that Q’s information that will knock “a few years” off Voyager’s journey.
As for the Q Judges, given that Janeway’s there, I’m willing to accept their appearance as an affectation they put on for her sake.
21). Oh good grief, please don’t lump me in with conspiracy theorists. Just having a bit of fun with the fictional things I enjoy. Dial it down a notch.
@23/Jimbo: I just meant it’s the same kind of arbitrary reasoning, inventing new explanations for a belief without evidentiary support rather than just revising one’s belief to fit the evidence. It seems like a hell of a lot of trouble to go to in order to cling to the idea when I see no reason why it should even be desirable to posit the idea. The only reason anyone ever proposed that Trelane and Q might be connected was because of their similarities, but if you actually pay attention to “Squire,” it’s clear they’re not remotely as similar as it superficially appears. So why doesn’t that eliminate the incentive to postulate a connection? It seems like clinging to the idea is more force of habit than anything else.
I didn’t really think that q’s behavior towards Seven was motivated by adolescent prurience- I got the impression that he was trying to humiliate and embarrass her, as part of his general tendency to act out and push boundaries. This is not, of course, a defense of him, or a suggestion that the decision on the part of the showrunners to do a “Suddenly Seven loses her catsuit uniform,” scene was due to any high artistic ideal.
24). Yes, arbitrary reasoning, inventing new explanations – all those things. Why? Because for some people it’s fun. That’s all. This is not a court of law. This is not a writers’ room. What we say here is not going to change canon in any way. It’s just headcanon. It’s just theorizing on a comment board in a quiet corner of the internet, playing in a sandbox.
So please dispense with trying to shut down friendly conversation by reaching for the moon and injecting toxic, real world issues like conspiracy theories. It’s kind of a hot button issue these days, and I do not appreciate that comparison at all.
@19: There’s actually precedent for Q to f*ck with Picard when it comes to aging. In “All Good Things” in the future timeline when Picard is 25 years older than in the “present”, Q appears to him as dramatically older and mocking Picard feigning being hard of hearing. So it’s entirely in character for Q just to be an a**hole however, in Picard he looks more like a distinguished older gentleman than a decrepit old man
https://youtu.be/bPfQT5veA8Q
@27,
Heh.
“Q? What is going on here? Where is the anomaly?”
“Where’s your mommy? Well, I don’t know. “
I really need to re-watch all of Q’s TNG appearances before the Season premiere (and “All Good Things” in particular since this is Q and Jean-Luc’s last chronological interactions prior to Season Two).
I’d actually meant to do a re-watch of all the Q episodes before KRAD’s Q&A was published back in 2007, but I never had the chance at the time (heh, sorry Keith!).
@28: I also thought it would have been a perfect send off for Q if his final appearance was on “All Good Things” – his character going out on a high-note. Everything else after (essentially Voyager and Lower Decks) just reeked of crossover ratings stunt that did nothing but cheapen and weaken the character and show an aging disinterested actor. I could have done without Q and Janeway playing Moonlighting aboard Voyager. Even the one appearance on DS9 was obviously a crossover ratings stunt but I can be more forgiving of that one because it wasn’t his chronologically last appearance. But I’m also excited for his reappearance on Picard because I see it as a direct continuation of how this squabbling pair had last left things in that series finale. I just hope it’s not botched.
@29
Eh, that’s just because it was bad writing. Besides, you have no idea how interesting the Q’s adventures with Captain Freeman were!
They never tell us anything!
Q’s ability to get the crew home with a snap of his fingers was addressed in ‘Death Wish’; it’s the bribe he offered Janeway to rule against Quinn, which she didn’t do. If you don’t play the game, you don’t get the prize.
It was addressed again in ‘The Q and the Grey’:
“Q: Ah, yes. The crew of the intrepid starship Voyager. Perhaps you’d be interested in sending them home.
JANEWAY: You’ve tempted me with that prospect before. But frankly, your credibility is more than a little suspect. My crew and I will get home. We’re committed to that. But we’re going to do it through hard work and determination. We are not looking for a quick fix.”
This was effectively Janeway refusing to prostitute herself to Q for a lift home. Which would be fine if she hadn’t got all preachy about it – they look for quick fixes in multiple episodes, and the last one works out because they cheat with information and technology from the future.
Q’s probably bored of dangling that particular carrot, as Janeway is too self-righteous to bite at it.
@31/Muswell: “This was effectively Janeway refusing to prostitute herself to Q for a lift home. Which would be fine if she hadn’t got all preachy about it – they look for quick fixes in multiple episodes,”
They’re fine with quick fixes, but not with selling their souls to the devil in order to achieve them. Well, except in “Scorpion.”
“and the last one works out because they cheat with information and technology from the future.”
No argument there. “Endgame” was a total copout, but I guess I’ll save my comments for that thread.
I first saw the “Trelane as a juvenile Q” in the novel Q-Squared by Peter David. It’s a good story with lots of alternate universe shenanigans.
@33/wiredog: I think Q Squared is a fantastic novel, probably my favorite of Peter’s work, but I still don’t buy the underlying concept.
Muswell: My problem with “Death Wish” was that the episode ended with Q being grateful to Quinn and the Voyager crew for reminding him of who and what he is. He could have sent them home then just as a gift, much like the gift of laughter he gave to Data at the end of “Deja Q.” But he didn’t because the show would be over.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@29,
Well, I guess one advantage of Q appearing on VOY was that it eventually gave us Pizza Night in the Continuum. XD
But yeah, from the glimpses we’ve seen on the next Season of Picard, DeLancie seems re-energized by the prospect of getting to work with Stewart again.
I think the “Mon Capitane! How I’ve missed you” line wasn’t just acting.
Trying to sort out q from Q while reading this almost gave me a headache. I keep thinking there has to be a better way to identify and separate these characters that always share this one name. Using numbers like Q2 or Q3 doesn’t seem like the better solution, though. I wonder how an actual Trek script using multiple Qs would do it.
I’m surprised Biller pitched this in season 4. Q2 plays like a product of late-season, and late-series fatigue. It goes for the lamest, most predictable clichés from beginning to end.
I do like some of the Icheb/q scenes (Burton can still bring out some energy from the actors), but the episode never bothers to address the bigger Q concerns from their previous appearances. As pointed out, if q is supposed to be the savior of the continuum, why does it seem as if they’re content to banish the ‘boy’? Plot inconsistencies aside, the end result is a q who isn’t much of a character beyond the usual teen tropes.
As for Q himself, I don’t mind so much the softening of his character to a more comedic, homely version that’s emotionally open to Janeway (DeLancie certainly sells it, I’d say even better than his Farpoint judge/jury/executioner persona), but this wasn’t the right story at all.
And the reason the Q judges use the Farpoint costume, I assume it’s because of course Voyager would reuse costumes from 1987. It was always a show on a very tight budget, and they had to save money for the big VFX two hour Borg finale, after all.
@37/Eduardo: “As pointed out, if q is supposed to be the savior of the continuum, why does it seem as if they’re content to banish the ‘boy’?”
If all the Q were in agreement on the need for change, they wouldn’t have fought a civil war. The idea is that q can save the Continuum by bringing change and dynamism that it lacked before, but all you have to do is look around at present-day politics for a painful reminder that there are always forces that vehemently oppose progress and social change. Even when clear-headed people recognize that such change is the only thing that will save a society, there are always those who will fight against anyway even if it means dragging the whole society down with them.
“And the reason the Q judges use the Farpoint costume, I assume it’s because of course Voyager would reuse costumes from 1987. It was always a show on a very tight budget, and they had to save money for the big VFX two hour Borg finale, after all.”
Did they even have three leftover judge costumes, though? Only Q wore one in “Farpoint.” How many duplicates does a TV show typically make of a singular costume?
Did they even have three leftover judge costumes, though? Only Q wore one in “Farpoint.” How many duplicates does a TV show typically make of a singular costume?
Funny enough, I’d been wondering about that too.
Could they have been duplicates created for Star Trek exhibitions or conventions?
@38/Christopher: A very good point, given the current real-world rise of anti-vaccine movements. No bigger hindrance to progress than people like that.
Did they even have three leftover judge costumes, though? Only Q wore one in “Farpoint.”
I assume they did. It would make sense to have a couple of safety spare costumes, if the actor got coffee or food stains on the cloth between takes.
There’s a comment from Brannon Braga and Ron Moore on one of the DVD commentaries that brings up that issue. Production didn’t like scenes of characters eating because of the risk in soiling or damaging the costly Starfleet uniforms – if so, dry food was preferable since it was easier to clean.
This episode is often cited as the worst of season seven. I think that honor actually goes to “Repression,” but “Q2” is certainly somewhere at the bottom.
The puerile stunt of removing Seven’s clothes and having Q Junior comment on her “perfection” has already been mentioned, but also doesn’t make sense in the context of the Q, who have always been shown as not thinking highly of humans. I always enjoyed the dance club scene in engineering, because the pulsating color swirls of the warp core would not be out of place in a 90’s/00’s dance club. The audience of course got a kick out of seeing Neelix permanently silenced.
Some problems, though. Q Junior brags how he (while he was still a Q) once opened a spatial flexure using only a deflector dish. Why would a Q need a deflector dish, or any technology, to open a spatial flexure when he should have been able to do it with a literal snap of his fingers? Of course, this is because we will later see Q Junior do this, while human, when he and Itchy take the Flyer for a joyride. Additionally, Q Junior is able to open a spatial flexure using technology aboard the Flyer, and presumably all of that data and telemetry are somewhere in the Flyer’s memory, but there is no evidence that Voyager’s crew investigates this procedure as a way of shortening their trip home. At the threshold of acquiring newt technology, Janeway just slithers away…
krad: That’s a rather disproportionate thank you gift. Data indicated that he didn’t want Q to make him human and Q didn’t even make him permanently able to feel emotion, it was just a one-off experience. Perhaps a more apt equivalent would be if Q gave them a one-off call home.
Of course, the other “real” reason nothing like that happens (apart from not wanting the show to end) is that it would completely destroy the tone of the end of “Death Wish” (for the characters as well as the audience) if, while they were all stood around Quinn’s body, mourning him and reflecting on the consequences, Janeway suddenly said “Well, Q, seeing as how you’re in the mood for going against the establishment today, how about sending us home anyway?” or Q suddenly cracked a smile and announced “Good news! Because you were there when Quinn convinced me of the values of euthanasia, I’ve decided to do something nice for you!”
I really do not know which episode I hated most in the last two seasons of Voyager “Fury” or “Q2”
It was going to be Q2 as it looked like it would be the swan-song for one of Treks greatest recurring characters, thankfully we are going to see. Q return to what he is always best at thats sparrin with Picard so we can consign the memory of this episode to the trash
Terrible.
As for “shortest title ever,” isn’t “E2” also only two characters? Or is krad counting the superscript as only half a character?
Was Trelane the only character in TOS people have tried to retcon into a Q? I feel certain there were others, but possible suspects have strangely fled my mind.
I was pretty much done with this episode when the dance party in engineering started. I rolled my eyes through the rest of the hour. The only thing I found even remotely interesting was the friendship between Icheb and q. I thought their nicknames for each other, Itchy and Q-ball, was a cute detail. Oh, and I guess I was legitimately surprised when the Chokuzan turned out to be Q. But ultimately this was a pretty sad conclusion to the Voyager “Q” arc.
the friendship between Itchy and Q-ball helped to make a horribly dumb episode to be at least watchable and slightly entertaining. I didn’t find this one that horrible in comparison with some other truly bad Voyager episode, to me this was just dumb, but at least more or less innocent. The character arc is completely unbelievable, one does not change their entire personality in 3 days in such normal situations…but meh, we’ve seen worse in this series. :D
Odd. I actually enjoyed this one, despite the fact that it had no right to be any good. I like the relationship between Aunt Kathy and q. While I agree DeLancey was low energy — the man just looked tired — I found there was a compelling concept of a relationship.
Oh, it’s nowhere near the heights of the Stewart/DeLancey episodes, but it has a sweetness and low-key comedy that appeals to me on this day.
I’m honestly not bothered that the rift was never followed up on. It was something q knew how to do. And sure, maybe they could search the Flyer’s logs and find out what went down — but Q could have hand-waved (or finger-snapped) those records away.
Maybe wearing the judge robes was a way to needle Q a bit. Like, “we’re going to judge your son in the same outfit you judged humanity in.” Or maybe just an easy way to telegraph to the audience what’s going on. I don’t know, it seems like quite a nit to pick.