A member of the Q Continuum that Voyager inadverdantly releases from imprisonment wishes to kill himself.
Notes: This episode marked the first of three appearances by John DeLancie on Vovager, and also featured a cameo by Johanthan Frakes as Riker.
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By Cableface on Saturday, December 12, 1998 - 12:50 pm:
Q brought to voyager the actual people with whom Quinn interacted on earth except Riker.Quinn helped one of Rikers ancestors, not Riker himself, so why did Q bring him?Also, he is wearing the old uniform with the old oval insignia and yet he knows who Janeway is and that she commands voyager, a pretty recent ship.
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By Ben Jackson (Bjackson) on Sunday, February 28, 1999 - 10:10 am:
I loved this episode! I usually don't go for voyager, but when I saw that Q was gunna be on, I couldn't resist. Anything with Q, I think, is going to be funny, not just because of his personality, but just the way he says the jokes make them funnier. The best moment was when Q called...himself!
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By BrianB on Friday, July 09, 1999 - 8:00 am:
To Cableface, Riker's old comm badge may suggest Q pulled him from TNG's 3rd thru 7th season. That raises the question, was Janeway commanding V'ger during those years for Riker to know her as captain of the USS Voyager?
Other points-of-interest. Quinn, I call him Q4 (Corbin Bersen as Q2 and Olivia D'Abo as Q3), demonstrating rusty powers reminded me of Aunt Clara from Bewitched.
Finally, when did Qs start painting their lips purple and why?
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By Mark Swinton on Friday, October 29, 1999 - 1:28 pm:
BrianB:
I can safely say that Janeway was not commanding Voyager at the time- nor for that matter was anyone else! According to canon I have read and purchased, the Dedication Plaque on the bridge gives the ship's launch date as 48038- so Riker should have been wearing the newer uniform.
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By Aaron Dotter on Monday, November 29, 1999 - 5:56 pm:
I noticed that as well, and the only thing that I can figure is that Q pulled Riker from the same timeframe as Voyager and stuck him in a NextGen uniform. (Yeah, that's a pretty weak explanation, but it's the best I could do.) What was RIker doing during the 1st season of Voyager, had STGenerations happened yet?
During the hearing, when our Q was talking summarizing what Quinn had done, he said something like "if not for Q, the Borg would have assimilated the Federation." Who was he referring to? Why would he talk about what he did during a hearing about someone else? Was he just summarizing what the Q do in general?
I was surprised that the Q were not smart enough to shield the comet from transporter beams. Surely that possibility would have occured to them. If they had it would have saved them a lot of trouble.
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By Rvest (Rvest) on Monday, November 29, 1999 - 8:21 pm:
Aaron What Q meant by "if not for Q, the Borg would have assimilated the Federation," Quinn had save Riker's reletive. If the reletive had not survived Will Riker would not have been born. It was Riker's idea to go and get Picard from the Borg. If they had not gotten Picard from the Borg they would not have figured out how to put the Borg to sleep.
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By Aaron Dotter on Monday, November 29, 1999 - 9:18 pm:
Thanks for that, Rvest, I didn't think aobut it that way.
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By Chris Thomas on Tuesday, November 30, 1999 - 3:55 am:
If Q had a hand in Riker's appearance, surely he can make him appear in any costumer he wants? And isn't he most familiar with Riker in the NextGen uniform? Possibly Riker was wearing that uniform at the time as he had damaged his most recent one - we've seen other examples of Starfleet wearing different style uniforms at the same time.
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By Fleet Admiral F. Chen on Friday, December 17, 1999 - 9:22 pm:
Maybe it wasn't really Riker, just a "clone" of him from Q's memory. After all, Q can pull whatever he wants from out of oblivion, why would he need to bother Riker, pull him all the way from the Alpha Quadrant, and erase his memory afterwards, which would probably be more of an effort. Ditto with putting him in the new uniform.
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By Ed Jolley on Tuesday, January 16, 2001 - 1:48 pm:
Wasn't it convenient that the transporters just happened to focus on the Q when Torres beamed a 'core sample' of the comet on board?
The suicidal Q had been imprisoned for 300 years, but he was inspired to seek death by the misbehaviour of the deLancie Q. Misbehaviour that happened within the past 10 years. Slight timescale problem there, I think.
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By Q on Tuesday, January 16, 2001 - 2:21 pm:
Oh stop thinking so three dimensionally!
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By Adam Bomb on Sunday, March 18, 2001 - 1:07 pm:
Gerritt Graham, who played the other Q, co-starred with a pre-Goldie Hawn Kurt Russell in "Used Cars". (Russell turned down the 1980 "Flash Gordon" to do this pic.) A very funny and raunchy comedy, politically incorrect. Probably a lost genre now.
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By Gary on Saturday, May 12, 2001 - 10:11 am:
Maury Ginsberg, Isn't he Jewish in real life, and in that Voyager episode "Death Wish" isn't he supposed to play a Jewish character.?
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By Jessica on Saturday, May 12, 2001 - 1:50 pm:
Jolley, we only _know_ of Q misbehavior that happened in the last ten years; that doesn't mean he wasn't misbehaving for 3 or 4 hundred years before that; a species of immortal beings probable doesn't act very quickly in most cases--Q might have misbehaved for, oh, 2 hundred years or so before receiving his first warning & then not been actually punished for another hundred or so years.
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By Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Tuesday, July 10, 2001 - 3:18 am:
It's stated that no planetary or stellar forces are affecting this comet, but it's losing material like a real comet approaching a star.
Was it really such a good idea to imprison this Q in a fake comet? Why not something that starships would steer clear of like a black hole?
Why does this new Q use such elaborate hand gestures?
Q fails to demonstrate to Janeway the significance of Woodstock, we in the 20th century (now 21st) get a laugh from this, but would Woodstock have been considered a significant event by the 24th century?
In the Continuum the second Q states they haven't had anything to say to each other in ten millennia, but 300 years earlier he said things that got him locked up. How can you disapprove of someone, lock him up and not say anything? Also Q admitted that much discussion preceded the execution of other Q, and yet Amanda Rogers' parents (True Q) were executed two decades earlier. I suppose it could be argued that time functions differently in the Continuum, but that would be cheating.
Quite a few good lines, but I think the best was, "Did anyone ever tell you that you're angry when you're beautiful?" - Q to Janeway.
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By Jwb52z on Thursday, July 12, 2001 - 3:27 pm:
::Was it really such a good idea to imprison this Q in a fake comet? Why not something that starships would steer clear of like a black hole?:: Keith Alan Morgan
If not for the fact that it was losing material like a real comet when it should not have been, they probably would have steered clear of it. A comet isn't all that interesting in the bigger scheme of things.
::Why does this new Q use such elaborate hand gestures? :: Keith Alan Morgan
This is not completely out of character for a Q. Remember, Amanda Rogers did the same kind of thing.
::In the Continuum the second Q states they haven't had anything to say to each other in ten millennia, but 300 years earlier he said things that got him locked up. How can you disapprove of someone, lock him up and not say anything?:: Keith Alan Morgan
I'm sure an omnipotent species can do that without much trouble when they want to do it.
::I suppose it could be argued that time functions differently in the Continuum, but that would be cheating.:: Keith Alan Morgan
Those things that are most likely facts for omnipotent beings are not really cheating.
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By Teral on Friday, August 31, 2001 - 7:23 pm:
So Q's only redeeming virtue is that he doesn't lie? According to Vash in "Q-Less" the inhabitants of Brax calls Q "The God of Lies", and then there is his contradicting statements about the "Farpoint-trial". First he tells the crew of the Enterprise that they were exonerated and then later claims that the jury is still voting on it.
Why didn't Janeway ask Quinn or Q to send them home to Earth? Q would probably be indifferent about disturbing the timeline and might even do it. Or she could strike a deal with Quinn: asylum in exchange for a one-way ticket to the Alpha Quadrant. Either way it wouldn't hurt to ask, she did after all ask Braxton in "Futures End, Part II".
Isn't the story about Newton and the apple only a myth?
I hope someone on the bridge had the presence of mind to take some good sensorreadings of "Big Bang".
If Voyager was reduced to sub-atomic size what was it (and the crew) then made of? Quarks? And how would Tuvok make positive ions, since ions is "atomsized" or at least "protonsized"?
BTW, good lines:
B'Elanna: "This ship will not survive the formation of cosmos!"
and
Q: "Say. Is this a ship of the valkyries?"
Great to have Q back!
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By tim gueguen on Friday, December 14, 2001 - 10:49 am:
You all missed the most important question about this episode. Why wasn't Charles Bronson in it? :-)
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By ScottN on Friday, December 14, 2001 - 12:05 pm:
Teral, IIRC, Q did offer a trip home as a bribe.
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By Rene on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 - 3:50 pm:
Would the Continuum really allow a mere human to interfer in their affairs?
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By John A. Lang on Saturday, May 22, 2004 - 7:56 am:
Missed KMYF moment...I was waiting for Riker to kiss Janeway...but alas, it didn't happen. But I tell ya, the scene was screaming for a KMYF moment.
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By Beafy on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 7:20 am:
Nit:
I just watched the DVD version:
There's a scene with a close-up on the column suicide-Q produced, in which he states that he wants to commit suicide. The first paragraph of his text is alright, but it seems that the second paragraph is completely out of context and ripped from a novel or so.
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By Mr Crusher on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 12:57 pm:
Theres no "DVD version". This is the exact same version that aired on UPN.
The only probable explanation, that I can think of, for the timeline issues on this ep is that the Q are non-linear like the Prophets are. If that is the case, why imprison one of them where they can be discovered? I don't see it out of character for the Q to have been misbehaving for 300+ years but Q4, as BrianB put it, even mentioned him becoming mortal and then reinstated so it would seem he was refering to the actions of just a few years ago.
Why did Riker's memory of his visit to Voyager have be erased? I can see why it was necessary for Isaac Newton and that other guy, since they came from the past.
However, Riker was from the present. Erasing his memory was not necessary, as it would have no effect on history.