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Still Q's fault in the end (europe.pub)
submitted 2 days ago by [M] to c/tenforward@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 2 days ago (1 child)

Q refreshes his uniform while also goading him on, such that Picard rejects Q’s assistance

You know, when you put it like that, it's kinda obvious that Q was looking for an excuse to introduce the Enterprise to the Borg, but didn't want Picard to know that he was doing it as a favor to warn the Federation about the Borg. But since almost by definition, any intervention by the Q Continuum consitutes temporal meddling, the real question I want answered is: what was the timeline like WITHOUT Q doing that, and what about that timeline made him care enough about Picard and/or the Federation to want to make the change in the first place?

Or is "in the first place" an erroneous way to look at it, when it comes to the Q? Was that what Q was trying to communicate in "All Good Things"? Was he trying to get Picard to think like a Q, in order to have his "favorite pet" understand his POV well enough to be a proper friend to him?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    It's possible humanity never gets the chance to encounter the Borg without Q's interference.

    The Q, believing themselves to be the most superior beings in existence, see themselves as moral guardians of the universe. Seeing as the Q have the same non-linear sense of time that the Bajoran wormhole aliens have then it's safe to assume that John de Lancie's Q actually has seen the future where he doesn't intervene - and decided that doing so was the best course of action for the galaxy. Given his fondness for humanity, and Picard specifically, I think it's safe to assume that the future where he doesn't intervene results in humanity being completely decimated by the Dominion (the Defiant was meant to fight the Borg originally, as an example) - the results of which would have irreparably changed the entire Milky Way galaxy for the worse. Not a great look for our supposed moral guardians.

    This idea gets a bit messy, but it could also have just been an elaborate part of the trial. We've seen from Voyager episodes that the majority of the continuum has slipped into a sort of eternal stupor, jaded by their infinite existence in a pocket dimension. Given that, I think humanity had already been deemed guilty by the continuum before TNG even starts (from our perspective). The only reason for the trial even existing is that John de Lancie's Q disagreed with the continuum's decision and took it upon himself to act as an advocate for humanity. Perhaps he looked further into the future than the rest of the Q, or visited some alternate realities and saw what humanity could become with a push or two in the right direction. Given that humanity eventually "fails" to convince the rest of the continuum that they are in fact more than a savage child-race, the Q created the paradox in "All Good Things..." that would have caused humanity to never have existed at all. John de Lancie's Q knew he had to take drastic measures to show that humanity was able to be more than what the continuum believed them to be. One of those drastic measures being the encounter with the Borg, looking to give Picard an opportunity to demonstrate humility.

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