3-11. The Q and the Grey.

Q (John de Lancie) drags Janeway into a Q Civil War!

THE PLOT

Janeway and the Voyager crew are privileged to witness a supernova at the closest distance of any Starfleet vessel in history. Janeway is very pleased as she heads to her quarters... only to be dumbfounded when she finds those quarters changed into a tacky honeymoon suite, with a bathrobe-clad Q (John de Lancie) waiting for her.

Q wants a child, and he has hand-picked Janeway to be the mother. Janeway's disinterest doesn't dissuade him in the slightest, and he begins an amorous pursuit that includes cajoling, puppies, and even fake sincerity. I think the Revenge of the Nerds cast escaped the quest to get laid with more dignity.

Needless to say, this is a smokescreen for a greater agenda. It turns out that the suicide of Quinn (from the last Q episode, Death Wish) has set off a civil war within the Q Continuum, between the forces of conformity and the rebels, led by Q himself, who wish to break with tradition. So Q whisks Janeway off to the Continuum, represented through the imagery of the American Civil War. Q is the leader of the rebels, so he naturally is wearing... blue, the color of the union army. Then he lays out his full intent: To stop the war by introducing a new Q - His child!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Q is an omnipotent being with the power to send Voyager home or trap it in the heart of a comet, all within the blink of an eye. So naturally Janeway treats him as a minor annoyance from the moment he first appears. When Q dangles the prospect of returning the ship home in front of her, she brushes him off. Fair enough if she decides not to act as Q's brood mother in exchange for the ship's safe return... but I can't believe that she wouldn't at least take a moment to consider the offer, if only for the sake of her crew. Once in the Civil War, she shows her moral superiority to the entire Q Continuum, right down to making a speech at gunpoint. I actually cheered for the enemy Q general (Harve Presnell) when he decided to go ahead and execute her after the speech.

Chakotay: Gets some halfway-decent moments opposite the female Q (Suize Plakson). When she is still on Voyager after it rides out the shockwaves of a supernova, he knows that something has happened to her powers. He brushes aside her sneers and lays out the blunt situation for her: With no powers, she is reliant on Voyager to help her. 

Hot Omnipotent Space Babe of the Week: Suzie Plakson is the female Q, apparently "our" Q's mate. If the notion sounds a bit lame, don't worry - The reality is worse. Plakson struggles gamely with trite "jealous lover" dialogue opposite Q and Janeway, then with snootiness opposite the Voyager crew. But the dialogue is so bad that she really can't do much to sell it. At one point, she condescendingly tells Torres how much she likes Klingon women for their "spunk" - a phrase that belongs in a 1940's "B" movie, not a 1990's television series. Her dialogue is unfunny, her chemistry with John de Lancie is nonexistent, and I sorely hope this character is non-recurring.

Q: Is this John de Lancie's worst performance as Q? Sure, he had some badly-acted moments in Hide and Q, but he also had a wonderful exchange with Picard about the potential of humanity. Here, there are no wonderful exchanges to allow de Lancie to show his chops. Q is presented as a sitcom comedy character, and de Lancie plays him as such, overacting every line and facial expression, mugging for laughs that just aren't there. He still has screen presence, which goes a long way toward making this episode watchable - but neither the charm nor the wit that mark Q's best portrayals are in evidence here.


THOUGHTS

Season Two's Death Wish introduced Q to Voyager in fine style. The episode gave us the most revealing look we'd had to date at Q, both the species and the character. We saw the Q as a race made stagnant by its own omnipotence, and saw Q in particular as a man who had been scared into abandoning his own rebellious nature - and finally being pushed into embracing that rebellion again. It was the first truly great Voyager episode, and possibly the best Q episode in the franchise.

That The Q and the Grey is a lesser episode than Death Wish is hardly a surprise. It's tough to follow up something that good. But this episode doesn't even try. While ostensibly following up on the events of the previous episode, writer Kenneth Biller takes the safest and laziest path available. Instead of treating the Q seriously, he counts on John de Lancie's comic abilities to carry the episode. To that end, what should be a fairly dark and dire situation is turned into a screwball comedy. 

This doesn't have to doom the episode. Deja Q, in TNG's third season, was a comedy, but it was a smart one that made Q work as a three-dimensional character, earning its laughs by having the Enterprise crew react to a powerless Q exactly as they should have: with suspicion and irritation. This script doesn't have anything like that level of intelligence, though. It's more along the lines of Qpid, right down to using Q's presence as an excuse to dress up the regulars in period costumes.  Except Qpid, weak though it was, managed some stray laughs - something this episode does not.

The Q and the Grey is an insult to its excellent predecessor. There's genuine potential in the concept of a Q civil war arising as a result of Death Wish. Instead of examining that seriously, however, the script wastes almost half the running time on bad comedy, then gives the "true" story only the most superficial (frankly nonsensical) treatment. What might have been a good drama is instead reduced to a bad comedy.

One that isn't even funny.


Overall Rating: 3/10.

Previous Episode: Warlord
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2-18. Death Wish.

The Immortality Trap: Q vs. Q

THE PLOT

While analyzing an unusual comet, Janeway orders a piece beamed onto the ship for analysis. What beams aboard, however, is a man: More accurately, a Q (Gerrit Graham), who has been imprisoned within that comet for centuries. He was confined by the Q Continuum after repeated attempts to end his own existence.

When our Q (John de Lancie) appears to return him to his imprisonment, the man requests asylum from Janeway. The captain agrees to hold a hearing, and Q agrees to go along. After all, it might be amusing. Each member of the Continuum grants the other a concession. If Janeway rules in Q's favor, then the prisoner will agree to be returned to captivity for all eternity. If the prisoner wins, however, then Q will make him mortal - at which point, the man will surely kill himself!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: Her job as judge is made particularly difficult by her personal aversion to suicide. Knowing that the Q prisoner will kill himself if she rules in his favor, she sets the bar for such a ruling that much higher. She has compassion for his rights as an individual, but will not be a party to his self-harm unless he can show grievous suffering that isn't simply a result of his own punishment.

Riker: Though his role is little more than a cameo, called as one of Q's "witnesses," Jonathan Frakes is on very good form. By contrast with most of the Voyager regulars, he has an effortless screen presence. He doesn't have to do much (and he doesn't - though he does find time in his one scene to flirt with Janeway).  He simply has to be in the room to provide the audience with a reassuring link to the larger franchise.

Tuvok: He agrees to represent the prisoner Q, and does a good job of it. He effectively shreds our Q's attempt to argue that the asylum-seeker is insane, even prompting Q to do a hilarious, disgusted double face-palm about "Vulcans!" Still, he confesses to his client that he doesn't actually believe in the position he's arguing, seeing "no logic" in a suicide apparently based solely on boredom. Tim Russ gives another exceptional performance. By this point in the show's run, he seems to have struck the right balance to show Vulcan reserve without imitating a robot. Between Meld and this, he's fast becoming one of the most reliable of the core cast.

Q: This episode is basically The Q Show, with two actors in starring roles as members of the Q Continuum. John De Lancie's Q represents the voice of authority for the Continuum. At first, this seems like a script flaw. How can the constantly troublemaking Q possibly be the voice of tradition? Then the script takes a particularly clever turn, by making that the entire point. "I miss the irrepressible Q," the prisoner tells him with sadness, extolling Q's former rebelliousness. It's very obvious from Q's reactions that he can't simply shrug off these words. The scene of life in the Q Continuum is a particular standout, and both De Lancie and Gerrit Graham are particularly good as they argue in front of this dull and barren shack.


THOUGHTS

OK, my one complaint first. Janeway dismisses Q's bribery attempt far too easily. As captain of the ship, she has a direct responsibility for every member of her crew. Here, she doesn't have to violate the Prime Directive to have the ship returned home. She just has to rule with Q and against the prisoner. Yes, that would perhaps be an injustice. But I think an argument can be made that her direct responsibility for the more than 100 lives aboard her ship outweighs her obligation to make a just ruling for an outsider. She should at least consider this offer and what it might mean for her crew, perhaps discussing it with either Chakotay or Tuvok. It should weigh on her when she makes her final decision, rather than being shrugged off in an instant.

That aside, Death Wish is an excellent episode, one of the best Q episodes of the entire franchise. It starts out seeming like a typical Q comedy episode, complete with a very amusing set piece as the prisoner Q tries to hide Voyager from our Q by taking the ship to the Big Bang, then to the inside of a living cell, before finally transforming the ship into a Christmas tree ornament. Once the courtroom section begins, we get a bit with Q duplicating himself so that he can question (and compliment) himself on the stand. It's all good fun, but also fairly typical material for Q.

Then, at Tuvok's urging, the prisoner Q shows us the Continuum itself. Here the entire episode falls into place in a way that's rather breathtaking to watch. Not only do we see the prisoner's argument, but we also see its impact on our Q. This story is about him as much as about Gerrit Graham's prisoner/philosopher, and de Lancie is wonderful as he reacts nonverbally to the other man's words. The tag is terrific, hammering home that Janeway's decision has implications. Not only will we see Q again, we are promised a Q who will be changed by this experience. By making the episode have an impact on him (as well as on Janeway), it brings that impact home to us.

It's almost against my better judgment to award full marks to an episode that is almost entirely about the two Q characters. It's notable that none of the regulars save for Janeway and Tuvok register as anything more than glorified extras. But if I put that aside and judge it simply as a "Q" episode, it's hard to imagine it being much better. Like the Q in the episode, I've seen and reviewed so much Star Trek at this point (more than 400 episodes as of this writing) that it's become increasingly rare for an episode to actually surprise me. Michael Piller's script here takes the very things I was mentally criticizing, such as Q acting as the Voice of the Establishment, and then turns them into assets. In the process, what was on track to be an entertainingly average episode is transformed into something truly special.

Full marks - but I hope that Voyager will at some point deliver a "10" that's actually about the Voyager characters. If they can write this well for Q, they ought to be able to do something equally noteworthy with the people who are on the ship every week.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

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