[7.6/10] My biggest beef with season 1’s “Hide and Q” is that it wastes a fantastic premise by squeezing it into about fifteen minutes’ worth of screentime. Riker gaining Q power and having to decide whether to keep them and how to use them is a hell of a thought experiment. The only pity is that The Next Generation dispenses with it in record time.
“True Q”, then, makes good on the idea over the course of a full episode. Enter Amanda Rogers, a promising young Starfleet hopeful granted an internship on the Enterprise. The catch is that, unbeknownst to her, her parents were members of the Q continuum who absconded, and her powers now keep manifesting whether she wants them to or not. Our old familiar Q arrives on the scene as an “expert in humanity” to test her and force her to decide whether to join the continuum or face a more...uncertain fate.
There’s so many fascinating facets of that decision, and the implicit threat that hangs over Amanda should she choose a course other than Q-dom. “True Q” doesn’t have time to fully realize all of them. Honestly, you could do a whole season about a green Starfleet cadet finding out they’re secretly a god and reckoning with their powers and the implications of them. But the episode does manage to touch on the big ones, and it improves on Riker’s similar adventure because of that.
Amanda grapples with whether the fantastical new abilities she’s discovering are worth blowing apart the life and career she’d dreamed of to this point. She sees the hollowness of getting what you want by fiat, and feels the emptiness of superseding others’ agency and consent to gain the most profound connections in the universe. She’s confronted with what morality means for a deity, whether the choices you can make in that role are the peak of unbridled freedom or, instead, an awesome responsibility.
These aren’t just excuses to have a new character demonstrate all the fun and mischief an unrestrained Q is capable of. “True Q” is, like so many of the best TNG episodes, a character story. It’s centered on Amanda’s decision and her inner turmoil over how to reconcile her humanity with her new god-like powers.
The episode’s smartest choice is to create avatars for both sides of that internal tug-of-war. There’s an angel and a devil on her shoulder, if you will. The devil, of course, is Q. I’ve said enough about how delightful John Delancie is in the role, but suffice it to say, by season 6, he knew this character and his button-pushing affect inside and out. The writers did too. Q’s sarcastic asides and put-downs to Picard, Crusher, and other unfortunate victims of his droll impatience for mortals continue to be a delight.
But he’s also kind of a creep here. There’s something uncomfortable about the way he barges in, takes Amanda by the arm, and practically tries to drag her to the Q Continuum before she defends herself. Even when he’s teaching her, he invades her personal space, in a way that makes him feel like a devlisher tempter, untrustworthy despite his charms and intimidation. It’s a more menacing, insistent Q than we’re used to seeing, but it works in this scenario.
The angel on Amanda’s shoulder is Dr. Crusher. Frankly, I’d forgotten about that. But it’s a deft move by TNG. Beverly and Amanda have common ground, having both lost family members in tragic events. Beverly has the mettle to stand up to Q, while also having the empathy to comfort and guide Amanda as best she can. She knows what it’s like to wish to see a loved one again, and she’s smart enough to understand how taking shortcuts can hurt you in the long run. In that, Crusher makes for a strong, nuanced counterweight to Q’s machinations.
Of course, this is Star Trek, so it’s not enough to just have a young woman forced to decide between the only life she’s ever known and a wild universe of omnipotence. We have to introduce the mortal threat that the Q will “terminate” her if she won’t go to the continuum, and a nearby polluter planet that our heroes are trying to help.
Both points serve their purpose. The former allows Picard to give one of his trademark speeches about what elevates humble humanity over their god-like self-appointed judges -- morality. It’s a good speech, well-delivered, with the proper sarcastic response from Q. And the latter gives Amanda a moral conundrum over whether to use her powers to help this otherwise doomed planet, especially when her crush, Riker, is on the verge of being destroyed with it.
My problem is that even there, The Next Generation is rushing again. Once again, Q says “You don’t have to be one of us, but you can’t use your powers!” and then Amanda does about three minutes later to save the locals and her dream boy. There’s a strong point to be made, the same one that “Hide and Q” made, about an inability to see suffering in the universe, know that you have the power to stop it, and still forebear. It’s a supercharged version of the usual prime directive conundrums. It just all happens too fast to really squeeze all the juice out of the idea.
More to the point, I have a problem with Amanda deciding to be a Q and go off with our usual trickster god to the Continuum. Look, normally I blanche a little at Picard’s (and Kirk’s) “Man has a merit all its own!” monologues. There’s a certain chauvinism to them, a sort of self-flattery to the viewer, that no species in this grand galaxy but ours could have something greater to boast or offer than we do.
And yet, here, Amanda choosing Q seems to belie the larger points of the episode. We see Amanda ask Beverly what she would do with god-like powers and have the good doctor answer that she’d heal the unhealable. By contrast, we see Q playing hide and seek with her and turning Crusher into a canine. Picard gives his big speech about human ethics, and we see Amanda channel human morals through her supernatural abilities, but in a way that seems antithetical to how the Q operate (even if our Q deigns to assist the good guys now and then out of a pet-like affection.)
Everything seems to be building to Amanda being guided by her humanity, by seeing a certain emptiness or even cruelty in how the Q operate. They killed her parents for chrissake! And then, in the end, she’s just like “I was born a Q, so I guess I gotta be a Q!” She sweetly says goodbye to a reassuring Dr. Crusher, and may use her powers for good, but it’s an unsatisfying end to an otherwise engrossing story. One of the recurring motifs of Star Trek is that the species you hail from is not destiny. Vulcans forge emotional bonds. Klingons mellow into caring parents. Romulans self-sacrifice for the good of their people. Even we ruddy humans manage to rise above our limitations and learn to do better.
So there’s no reason Amanada cannot see the flaws folks like Beverly and Jean Luc and even Riker point out to her about who the Q are and how they operate and decide it’s not a life she wants. “True Q” spends much of its runtime hinting toward an idea Spock once made explicit to Trellane, a similar impish demigod retroactively thought to be a Q: “I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.” TNG raises those objections once again and then casts them aside because, once more, it’s too hard for someone raised human not to use Q powers to help people, and that’s insurmountable or bad for vague and unspecified reasons.
I still like “True Q” for its exploration of these issues. Amanda is a compelling fulcrum for them. Dr. Crusher gets strong material as her guide. And Q is as arch and delightful as ever as a foil. It’s a more fulsome examination of the questions “Hide and Q” only teased us with. And yet, even here, with more time and space to do so, The Next Generation can’t quite resolve the issue in a way that’s satisfying. Maybe trying to grapple with the personal and moral implications in the confines of forty-four minutes is, like those pesky laws of physics, too much for us mere mortals to overcome.
(As a postscript, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the episode, but I remember Voyager’s “Death Wish” handling similar issues in a way that I liked even better, which is not something I say often when comparing TNG and Voyager!)
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-10-07T04:18:31Z
[7.6/10] My biggest beef with season 1’s “Hide and Q” is that it wastes a fantastic premise by squeezing it into about fifteen minutes’ worth of screentime. Riker gaining Q power and having to decide whether to keep them and how to use them is a hell of a thought experiment. The only pity is that The Next Generation dispenses with it in record time.
“True Q”, then, makes good on the idea over the course of a full episode. Enter Amanda Rogers, a promising young Starfleet hopeful granted an internship on the Enterprise. The catch is that, unbeknownst to her, her parents were members of the Q continuum who absconded, and her powers now keep manifesting whether she wants them to or not. Our old familiar Q arrives on the scene as an “expert in humanity” to test her and force her to decide whether to join the continuum or face a more...uncertain fate.
There’s so many fascinating facets of that decision, and the implicit threat that hangs over Amanda should she choose a course other than Q-dom. “True Q” doesn’t have time to fully realize all of them. Honestly, you could do a whole season about a green Starfleet cadet finding out they’re secretly a god and reckoning with their powers and the implications of them. But the episode does manage to touch on the big ones, and it improves on Riker’s similar adventure because of that.
Amanda grapples with whether the fantastical new abilities she’s discovering are worth blowing apart the life and career she’d dreamed of to this point. She sees the hollowness of getting what you want by fiat, and feels the emptiness of superseding others’ agency and consent to gain the most profound connections in the universe. She’s confronted with what morality means for a deity, whether the choices you can make in that role are the peak of unbridled freedom or, instead, an awesome responsibility.
These aren’t just excuses to have a new character demonstrate all the fun and mischief an unrestrained Q is capable of. “True Q” is, like so many of the best TNG episodes, a character story. It’s centered on Amanda’s decision and her inner turmoil over how to reconcile her humanity with her new god-like powers.
The episode’s smartest choice is to create avatars for both sides of that internal tug-of-war. There’s an angel and a devil on her shoulder, if you will. The devil, of course, is Q. I’ve said enough about how delightful John Delancie is in the role, but suffice it to say, by season 6, he knew this character and his button-pushing affect inside and out. The writers did too. Q’s sarcastic asides and put-downs to Picard, Crusher, and other unfortunate victims of his droll impatience for mortals continue to be a delight.
But he’s also kind of a creep here. There’s something uncomfortable about the way he barges in, takes Amanda by the arm, and practically tries to drag her to the Q Continuum before she defends herself. Even when he’s teaching her, he invades her personal space, in a way that makes him feel like a devlisher tempter, untrustworthy despite his charms and intimidation. It’s a more menacing, insistent Q than we’re used to seeing, but it works in this scenario.
The angel on Amanda’s shoulder is Dr. Crusher. Frankly, I’d forgotten about that. But it’s a deft move by TNG. Beverly and Amanda have common ground, having both lost family members in tragic events. Beverly has the mettle to stand up to Q, while also having the empathy to comfort and guide Amanda as best she can. She knows what it’s like to wish to see a loved one again, and she’s smart enough to understand how taking shortcuts can hurt you in the long run. In that, Crusher makes for a strong, nuanced counterweight to Q’s machinations.
Of course, this is Star Trek, so it’s not enough to just have a young woman forced to decide between the only life she’s ever known and a wild universe of omnipotence. We have to introduce the mortal threat that the Q will “terminate” her if she won’t go to the continuum, and a nearby polluter planet that our heroes are trying to help.
Both points serve their purpose. The former allows Picard to give one of his trademark speeches about what elevates humble humanity over their god-like self-appointed judges -- morality. It’s a good speech, well-delivered, with the proper sarcastic response from Q. And the latter gives Amanda a moral conundrum over whether to use her powers to help this otherwise doomed planet, especially when her crush, Riker, is on the verge of being destroyed with it.
My problem is that even there, The Next Generation is rushing again. Once again, Q says “You don’t have to be one of us, but you can’t use your powers!” and then Amanda does about three minutes later to save the locals and her dream boy. There’s a strong point to be made, the same one that “Hide and Q” made, about an inability to see suffering in the universe, know that you have the power to stop it, and still forebear. It’s a supercharged version of the usual prime directive conundrums. It just all happens too fast to really squeeze all the juice out of the idea.
More to the point, I have a problem with Amanda deciding to be a Q and go off with our usual trickster god to the Continuum. Look, normally I blanche a little at Picard’s (and Kirk’s) “Man has a merit all its own!” monologues. There’s a certain chauvinism to them, a sort of self-flattery to the viewer, that no species in this grand galaxy but ours could have something greater to boast or offer than we do.
And yet, here, Amanda choosing Q seems to belie the larger points of the episode. We see Amanda ask Beverly what she would do with god-like powers and have the good doctor answer that she’d heal the unhealable. By contrast, we see Q playing hide and seek with her and turning Crusher into a canine. Picard gives his big speech about human ethics, and we see Amanda channel human morals through her supernatural abilities, but in a way that seems antithetical to how the Q operate (even if our Q deigns to assist the good guys now and then out of a pet-like affection.)
Everything seems to be building to Amanda being guided by her humanity, by seeing a certain emptiness or even cruelty in how the Q operate. They killed her parents for chrissake! And then, in the end, she’s just like “I was born a Q, so I guess I gotta be a Q!” She sweetly says goodbye to a reassuring Dr. Crusher, and may use her powers for good, but it’s an unsatisfying end to an otherwise engrossing story.
One of the recurring motifs of Star Trek is that the species you hail from is not destiny. Vulcans forge emotional bonds. Klingons mellow into caring parents. Romulans self-sacrifice for the good of their people. Even we ruddy humans manage to rise above our limitations and learn to do better.
So there’s no reason Amanada cannot see the flaws folks like Beverly and Jean Luc and even Riker point out to her about who the Q are and how they operate and decide it’s not a life she wants. “True Q” spends much of its runtime hinting toward an idea Spock once made explicit to Trellane, a similar impish demigod retroactively thought to be a Q: “I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.” TNG raises those objections once again and then casts them aside because, once more, it’s too hard for someone raised human not to use Q powers to help people, and that’s insurmountable or bad for vague and unspecified reasons.
I still like “True Q” for its exploration of these issues. Amanda is a compelling fulcrum for them. Dr. Crusher gets strong material as her guide. And Q is as arch and delightful as ever as a foil. It’s a more fulsome examination of the questions “Hide and Q” only teased us with. And yet, even here, with more time and space to do so, The Next Generation can’t quite resolve the issue in a way that’s satisfying. Maybe trying to grapple with the personal and moral implications in the confines of forty-four minutes is, like those pesky laws of physics, too much for us mere mortals to overcome.
(As a postscript, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the episode, but I remember Voyager’s “Death Wish” handling similar issues in a way that I liked even better, which is not something I say often when comparing TNG and Voyager!)