1x09 Hide and Q

[7.2/10] What would you do if tempted with godlike powers? Could you use them to prove that the nature of humanity is great and worthy of being fostered or confirm that we are weak and unready for what’s to come? Tons of great Star Trek episodes are basically cool thought experiments like these, and to be frank, that does most of the work in “Hide and Q”.

That’s not to say that the rest of the episode is bad. It’s just weirdly paced and structured. We spend a long time fumfering around on Q’s Napoleonic War planet to little purpose. There’s drawn out conversations between Q and Picard. We race from Riker gaining his powers to instant temptation to abuse them. And then we close with a long demonstration of his abilities and humanity’s fortitude against such temptation. There’s not a lot of natural progression or build to any of this. These events just sort of roll into one another, and it leaves the episode feeling lumpy.

But maybe that’s to be expected when you’re going up against a trickster god. One of the things that makes Q delightful is that he’s unpredictable, throwing unknown scenarios at our heroes for uncertain reasons. That doesn’t necessarily lend itself to tight storytelling, and “Hide and Q” ends up pretty ungainly in places, but a certain amount of that is inevitable when your antagonist is prone to entertaining himself by randomly screwing with your heroes.

Once again, John de Lancie is a blast here. He continues to play Q with puckish delight, insulting Worf, teasing Riker, and most notably taking the piss out of Picard. The captain is such a stuffy presence, especially in these earlier episodes, and so making him the veritable straight man to Q’s purveyor of madcap whimsy is a pairing that never fails on the show.

There’s more to their stand-off than just the comic energy of it, though. Q is once again putting humanity on trial, in a way, but there’s an interesting twist. Here, Q hints that over time, humanity will evolve to the point where they are an equal, if not an outright threat, to the Q. For once, there’s a hint of fear to the demigod, a worry that if the Q don’t understand humans, these primitive beings may one day challenge and best them.

That leads to the usual pontificating on Q’s part about the faults of man, and the usual retorts from Picard about our limitless potential as a species. If there’s one author Star Trek likes as much as Herman Melville, it’s William Shakespeare, and this debate over the true nature of humanity provides the writers an excuse to have characters sling numerous (often not really applicable) quotes from The Bard at one another, which is as enjoyable as it is an ultimately shallow use of the verse. And hey, it lets Patrick Stewart bust out his classical training with his usual adroitness, which is a win in and of itself.

The other interesting twist though is that this episode isn’t really about Picard, as much as he’s Q’s favorite person to torment. The captain plays a secondary role, more of a thorn in the side of Q and the real focus of this one, Commander Riker, as the two cope with the prospect of a human being attaining the Q’s godlike powers.

Before that can happen, though, Q has to mess with the good guys a little bit. That leads to him plopping most of the senior staff on the surface of a random planet and making them fight against “vicious animal things” in 1800s uniforms, while Q taunts Picard back on the bridge. (It’s also a weird opportunity for the show to add sexual tension between Tasha and Jean-Luc for some reason?). Some of it’s entertaining just to see Q’s bizarre antics and the crew’s response (see: Worf dumping out the bloodwine and Q made up to look like Data), but it all feels like foreplay before the episode gets on with the meat of the story: Riker gaining those powers and dealing with the implications and temptations.

In that, “Hide and Q” scans, like so many early TNG, as a mash-up of other concepts tested out on The Original Series. The “game” down on the planet is akin to numerous similar setups from powerful beings against Kirk and company, most notably the Lincoln-assisted skirmish in “The Savage Curtain.” And the business with Riker is of a piece with other “Starfleet officer develops reality-warping powers” stories from TOS, most notably Gary Mitchell’s tale in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

The difference here, of course, is that unlike prior officers who’ve succumbed to the enticement of godlike abilities, Riker ultimately gives up his powers after demonstrations of the fortitude of his colleagues, proving that man is, in fact, noble and rife with potential, and winning Picard his bet with Q that requires the trickster stop interfering with humanity’s way.

It’s interesting that Q zeroes in on Riker, if only because the Q have judged Picard to hidebound and stuck on Starfleet rules and customs to ever truly consider his offer. But Riker, a little more of a freestyler in the Captain Kirk tradition, seems more susceptible to the power to do whatever he wants and even join the Q to sate that urge to explore, learn, and discover.

The catch is that it all happens way too fast with Riker. One second he has his powers. The next he’s using them to save Wesley. A scene later he’s lamenting that he’s promised not to use his powers and so can’t save another child. Then he’s taking liberties with his captain and trying to show the good of his abilities before seeing the error of his ways.

It all goes down in fifteen minutes, leaving the journey rushed and undercooked, particularly his sudden change in demeanor that leaves him quickly feeling out of character. Honestly, there’s enough material here to support a two-parter, and they might have done better to conclude one episode with the result of the games being that Riker gains his powers, and then done a whole separate episode about him struggling with whether to use them in a different scenario, rather than trying to pack it all in here.

“Hide and Q” also doesn’t do a good job of justifying why Riker should given up the powers or whether it’s wrong to use them this way. There’s only two angles on it. The first is the old “power corrupts” adage, which seems odd when (1.) Riker’s change in affect isn’t believably written given its speed and (2.) he mostly seems to want to use his powers to save children from dying. The second is the notion that these “gifts” aren’t real or earned, which is, perhaps, an argument against helping kids grow up prematurely or preventing androids from discovering humanity in their own way, but isn’t much of an argument against curing blindness or reviving children who have been senselessly killed.

The truth is the show just has to get back to the status quo. There’s no show if superpowered Riker can solve all of the crew’s problems. But the episode doesn’t come up with a satisfying reason or argument for him giving up the abilities, just patching together a way forward out of truisms and Shakespeare quotes.

Still, the concepts here are good. There’s something essential to the spirit of Star Trek that man has not yet arrived at his destiny, but that there is great potential in our ability to comb the galaxy, gather knowledge, and better ourselves in the process. And there’s something true to the franchise’s philosophical bent to wondering how reality-warping abilities would change a human being and reveal who they truly are. “Hide and Q” isn’t the galaxy’s greatest realization of these ideas, but the ideas themselves are still good enough to make it worth a watch.