I also had no idea the top portion of the Starship Enterprise could separate like that. That was pretty sweet.
Idk John DeLancie has that “Tim Curry” energy where he chews the scenery well and is fun to watch but wasn’t much a fan of Season 1 Q.
It gets better.
I agree. It got unexpectedly trippy and weird at times, which was a pleasant surprise. He just came across really cornbally. I could imagine him maybe growing on me.
Penalty!
His best line: “Eat any good books lately?”
Hot take: you don’t fully appreciate Q until you’ve watched all the episodes he’s in. That includes the ones in Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Don’t forget his cameo in Breaking Bad
Are the West Wing episodes required as well?
And the sc2 campaign for his role as Alarak, Highlord of the Taldarim!
Wait, this is news to me. Q is in voyager?! /s
Yeah he tries to get funky with Janeway
Pepe le Q.
For some reason I feel compelled to up-boop the reference to MLP 🤔😅
don’t forget the old compaq videos.
I wish we could create playlists like this for shows. I don’t have the interest to watch deep space 9 but I love Q. Same goes for Clone Wars, don’t have the time but a few threads are important.
And StarCraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm
I hated him in the first couple of episodes too; but when TNG started, I felt like everything was overly dramatic. Picard bellowing out heavy-handed soliloquies, Worf growling and gnashing his teeth, Riker swaggering around pretending to be Kirk from the old days… things settle down pretty quickly though, and the characters become less two-dimensional.
As for Q specifically, he’s not around a whole lot, but he makes an appearance or two per season maybe. He ends up more curious about humanity than being adversarial against humanity, but he still sometimes just throws a monkey-wrench into everything for his own amusement or to test a theory, once in a while.
Stick with it, it’s a really good show.
When you see Riker grow his beard, you’ll know the series has matured.
For me it’s when Geordi becomes chief engineer, like God intended.
Oh wow, I had blocked it out of my mind that he ever wasn’t.
Haha it’s true - Q even makes a wisecrack about Riker’s beard, at one point!
Picard bellowing out heavy-handed soliloquies
Hahaha put him in his captain’s uniform and it’s virtually indistinguishable!
You’re supposed to kinda hate Q. He plays a recurring role here and there throughout the series, but not a central one.
The first season of TNG is a bit rough; it definitely improves.
Season two also isn’t the greatest. But its got some solid stories that do affect things later.
Mostly I just can’t stand Pulaski
I don’t like her either, but I would say that’s not because Muldaur is a bad actress, or because she was a bad character.
For example, her being a dick to Data really helped his character growth. She was abrasive but it really helped TNG grow its beard.
I’ve read before that they were trying to recreate the rivalry between Spock and McCoy. Whether they did that intentionally or not, it fails with Data because he’s too innocent to reciprocate, so Pulaski was always punching down. To me, that did make her a bad character.
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She’s a great actress doing a fantastic job of playing a very unlikable character. Except that she’s not unlikable in the way a good unlikable character is. She’s not the way OP is feeling about Q.
But it’s not just the way she interacts with Data, which does result in character growth for both of them. I’m sure they were going for the adversarial thing but it didn’t work, with Data or anyone else.
He’s like Murdoc from MacGyver. You hate the character but you can sense that he’s going to be defeated eventually and it’ll be a fun ride getting there.
Your supposed to hate Q thats part of the fun. Picard hates him
I’m not sure Picard actively hates him. However, I do think his reaction is basically the Picard facepalm jpg whenever he interacts with Q.
I’m pretty sure the Picard face palm is a shot from S3 episode “Deja Q”. He literally is facepalming at Q.
I think to Picard, Q is just this buffoon with god powers and chooses to use them purely for wind ups. He knows he can’t do jack to stop him but scolds him at every opportunity.
I would have loved one character to just disappear on a massive bender with Q for a while and come back totally fried but just slot back into their spot on the ship
but scolds him at every opportunity.
Which is exactly why Q keeps doing it.
Like that Skyrim quest where you party with a Daedric prince and wake up all the way across the map.
A Night To Remember! One of my all time favourites.
Yeah, whereas Sisko punched Q.
I’m with Sisko on that.
Sisko understands that you can’t negotiate with the powerful, he knows you need Direct Action.
So were the Prophets, apparently. I bet Q felt their energy behind that punch and noped out of there.
I was so disappointed in Sisko. So much opportunity, and he punches it in the face.
I haven’t watched Picard, but I assume the finale is a Qwedding.
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Picard doesn’t hate him, but Picard understands that Q isn’t operating in good faith and is always aimed at undermining humanity.
The problem I would think, as Picard sees it, is there is no reasonable way to do battle with Q or stop him, and so instead of a radical path of eliminating Q’s ability to interfere entirely, we’re given what appears to be a very tepid, liberal response where we’re supposed to work with terrible people who aren’t operating in good faith simply because they have power and aren’t afraid to use it.
Picard is from a strictly socialist society, and that means at some point, they understood how to deal with people like this, who are operating in bad faith. The new wrinkle is that Q is so powerful, you have to hope that you can just talk him down, because there is no way to remove him from the equation or remove his powers.
Unless you are a completist who’s willing to sit through the less than good episodes, you may want to use an episode guide such as this one which I found useful when I went back to rewatch it. Yes Q is kind of annoying, that’s actually his character and how everyone in the show feels about him too. But there are also some fantastic episodes with him, so once you get to those, you may not hate his presence as much.
I feel compelled to recommend this guide by a long time Daystrom Institute contributor. It does an excellent job identifying episodes as essential, unnecessary but fun, mediocre, or outright bad. A good place to work from if you want a more flexible recommendation of what to try and what not to.
How big of an ongoing factor is “Q?” Because I kind of hate him.
Blaspheme! Will no one rid me of this turbulent critique?
I felt the exact same way about Q after the first episode both as a character and as a concept for the show. They basically introduced God in the first episode of a science fiction show and he is annoying and arrogant.
But he is actually one of the best characters by the time the show is over and his all-powerful nature is toned down a little bit.
Season 1 is pretty goofy and inconsistent overall. Give it a chance and accept it for what it is and by season 4 the writing is some of the best in science fiction TV.
There’s literally a trope for how bad TNG was in the first seasons… until Riker grew a beard.
introduced God… he is annoying and arrogant
I mean, if you had those powers too, wouldn’t you be a little arrogant?
TOS had so many “god” characters. At least they condensed them into 1.
That’s a fair point. I remember there being several but honestly don’t remember any specifically other than the Gamemaster of Triskelion because he gave such a funny performance.
He’s a pretty major character, but that only means one or two episodes per season. He’s just got a thing for Picard
Yeah, a thing. Minor spoiler.
I don’t know why it’s hilarious to me that Picard pulls up his covers like he’s ashamed at Q seeing him in the nude, as though he isn’t a multidimensional demigod who probably can see through Picard’s clothes anyway if he so wished.
It’s just such a cute and pointless attempt at privacy with a nearly all powerful being. Like dude he just magicked himself into your bed, you think he didn’t already get a good look?
Patrick Stewart : So in my film, I play a man who controls the world with his mind.
Andy Millman : Right. Oh, that’s interesting.
Patrick Stewart : Yeah. For instance, I’m walking along, and I see this beautiful girl, and I think I’d like to see her naked, and so all her clothes fall off.
Andy Millman : All her - clothes fall off?
Patrick Stewart : Yes, and she’s scrabbling around to get them back on again, but even before she can get her knickers on, I’ve seen everything. Yeah. I’ve seen it all.
Be honest: you just wanted an excuse to post that reference, didn’t you?
I actually remembered it after I made the comment, and edited it in. Realized how Patrick Stewart at least already understands.
But it’s also true that I’ll drop this reference any time I get a chance because it never fails to crack me up.
Au Contraire Mon Capitan! You are gonna love me!
Keep going. It get’s much much better. Each season is better than the last, but Season 2 is where the feel of the show stablises and softens; it’ll always be jarring when you go back to season 1 after you pass it. Season 3 is definitely where it starts to hit it’s stride.
It’s largely an episodic show; you could skip to season 3 and go back to the season 1 & 2 later without missing much. A few recurring characters and themese like do Q make more sense if you watch from the start though.
If you’re really wavering definitely skip to season 3.
This advice here is it, OP. I’ve watched the whole series close to 10 times by now, and sometimes even I skip season 1. However, it does add some good context, and flashbacks in later seasons will make sense and give you a better feeling of attachment to the events if you’ve seen them.
While definitely true for the most part, I feel like the first episode is pretty important for a number of other reasons and there are things in season 1 that are explored for Data that are referenced throughout the series.
They already watched the first episode
While true of OP, I was responding to the idea that I’ve could skip the entire first season on the first watch.
The first season is rough but it sets up a lot of things that are touched on in later seasons.
If it helps - Q introduces a “bad guy” to the series that is so famous that people who haven’t seen the series have heard of them.
Wesley??!?
Close enough. The universe’s most dangerous animal is Man.
Ohh, you’re correct, I’d forgotten that Q had introduced that… particular bad guy.
I see you resisted the urge to say who
I understood that reference
I didn’t want to give spoilers on a TV show that came out 36 years ago.
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If you hated him on Next Gen, you’ll really hate him on Deep Space Nine. Fortunately, he only appeared there once.
Voyager. You’ll see.
They saw then Picard
As great as TNG is, the first season is like the first season of any show: characters are less developed and the vibe is somewhat different than later offerings.
As the show progresses, everything kind of falls into a better place. In fact, the Q character allows for some of the best episodes in the series (e.g. Tapestry). So my advice would be to stick with it and you’ll likely feel different later on.
You’re supposed to hate Q. The Enterprise crew hates Q. He is an annoying trickster god.
