Review Text
In brief: Yawn. Not nearly funny enough to make up for the woeful lack of imagination and utterly wrong-headed use of the Q.
I suppose we're supposed to laugh at the fact omnipotent beings are asking parental advice of Captain Janeway. Unfortunately, the joke isn't all that funny — nor is much of "Q2" in general — so if it's not a comedy it can only be a pretty lame excuse for a Q episode.
The best Q comedy was TNG's "Deja Q." That was a show with chemistry and wit ... and a premise that at least made Our Favorite Q (John de Lancie) into a human, such that he had no choice but to experience human behavior firsthand. But "Q2" — aside from its ripped-off "Deja Q"-like elements — is unfortunately the sequel to "The Q and the Grey" from four years back, an episode that went about as wrong as a Q story could. "Q2" only takes that wrongness further; omnipotence apparently means you have the ability to do anything physically, but have the intellect and ambitions of an American teenager.
Basically, the problem is that we have humans teaching lessons to the Q instead of the other way around — which is absurd and simply a waste of the Q as a story device. When you have beings who can do anything, why put them through the shenanigans of sitcom-level teenage rebellion? In TNG's "All Good Things..." Q was trying to help Picard understand larger issues about the nature of the universe. In Voyager's "Death Wish" we had a Q who wanted to die because knowing everything had rendered his existence pointless. Those were interesting, larger-thinking shows.
Now? We get High Concept 101: "A teenage Q." And Higher Concept 102: "Let's have John de Lancie's real-life son (Keegan de Lancie) play the part of Q's son!" Well, great. It's an okay starting point and I'm sure fun for all the actors, but there has to be a story here for it to be worth our time.
Alas, there's not much to be said for the story that is "Q2." It's featherweight at best, and the lessons rehashed here are straight from Chapter 1 of the Star Trek Human Lessons Textbook. I wish I could say there was anything here resembling Q-worthy thought on the writers' behalf, anything that could put it more in the vein of "All Good Things..." or "Death Wish," but there isn't. "Q2" is simply a gag show starring the Q, with their super-duper powers as the tools for the gimmicks. There's no evidence this show even wanted to be thoughtful; it's dumbed down by design.
Q arrives on Voyager to ask "Aunt Kathy" (an amusing title, I'll grant) to help him teach his out-of-control son (born as a result of "Q and the Grey") some responsibility. Why Q cannot do this himself is a question that, if answered, would reveal the entire foundation of the episode as the sham it is. Apparently being omnipotent doesn't afford you any parenting skills. (Omnipotence just isn't what it used to be.) If we're to accept the can-of-worms premise of an out-of-control Q, at least make it seem like there's some urgency.
Instead, the idea of an out-of-control teenage Q quickly paves the way to a series of routine comic gimmicks. Gimmicky Q hijinks are a hallmark of Q stories, even in good ones like "Death Wish," but without a story to eventually grab our attention they just tire here.
Gimmick #1: Turn engineering into a dance club. "It's a party," explains Q Jr., with beverage in hand. Is it non-alcoholic? I hope so, because he's most definitely underage and that would mean Voyager needs more competent bouncers. For that matter, a drunken Q could be dangerous: Alcohol and altering the space-time continuum don't mix. Janeway rolls her eyes here for what won't be the last time.
Gimmick #2: Make Seven nekkid. This looks like one of those things the studio must've loved when they heard about. I can almost picture the people who cut together the episode trailers smiling with glee: Here's an easy workday! Plus, it can be justified as plausible! What heterosexual teenage male wouldn't wanted to see Seven without clothes? Nothing like a little realism in your Trek. Of course, Seven is too superior to be embarrassed or do any Janeway-style eye-rolling, so she simply uses the ignore-the-pest tactic.
Gimmick #3: War games. Q Jr. starts a war between two societies simply to watch their ships shoot at one another on the viewscreen. Somebody needs to go out and buy this kid a PlayStation or a DVD of Star Wars (the latter of which I'm guessing might actually be available by the 24th century, but no promises).
Gimmick #4: Make Neelix mute. Hey, this is actually a pretty good idea. Q Jr. fuses Neelix's jaw shut and makes his vocal cords disappear. Poor Neelix — he had his lungs extracted way back in "Phage" and now he has his vocal cords taken away. There's no justice in the world. Or come to think of it, maybe there is.
Such zaniness is setup for the actual premise, which is that Q suspends all of Q Jr.'s powers, and gives his son one week to shape up under Janeway's tutelage. If he hasn't shown great improvement, the Q Continuum will transform the unruly brat into an amoeba. The lesson: Actions Have Consequences, especially when your actions can rearrange entire worlds. I'd just like to know why Q can't conjure up some sense for this kid when he has the power to transform him into an amoeba. For that matter, I'd like to know if the writers actually thought any of their "intellectually immature superbeing" plot was fresh, seeing as TOS did "Charlie X" roughly 35 years ago.
The middle passages of the show are bland moments of Janeway trying to whip this kid into shape with lay-down-the-law threat tactics and then lessons that double as Meaningful Dialog Scenes. Eventually we're watching as Q Jr. writes a paper on the Q Continuum, which is hopelessly inane; apparently the great Continuum really is too much for my feeble mind to comprehend ... or for television writers to do any justice.
Then we have Q Jr. stealing the Delta Flyer because he apparently didn't learn anything from all this. His excuse for theft and joyriding? Boredom. He goes flying through alien territory with unwilling partner-in-crime Icheb, opening fire on an alien ship when they try to detain him for trespassing. Icheb is injured, Q Jr. escapes and returns to Voyager where he gets the usual dressing-down by Janeway. Icheb lies dying, with Doc going on about how he needs to know more about the weapon in order to save Icheb's life. (Yes, in sci-fi you can treat someone who has been run down by a car as long as you know what make and model the car was.)
The final act is so underwhelming it plays more like a parody on humanism than a satisfying ending. Q Jr. decides to accept responsibility for his actions by returning to face the music at the hands of the aliens he shot at. But, surprise! The alien was actually Q, who engineered the encounter as a test to see if Q Jr. would own up to the consequences of his mischief. Icheb is really okay. Then we get a quick trial of Q Jr. by Continuum judges, who, after all this, find that Q Jr.'s actions don't indicate acceptable levels of progress.
My point is more along the lines of Q's complaint — that Janeway has turned Q Jr. into a human with Federation values and, well, what good is that for the Continuum? They're judging Q Jr. on an incident and actions that have about as much cosmic relevance as what I ate for breakfast this morning.
LeVar Burton, who has directed excellent episodes like "Timeless," is saddled with a banal script that thinks small when it should be thinking big. The closing scenes give us a trial and a guilty verdict only for it to be reversed with a bunch of Q's off-screen (non)arguments. What, if anything, is all of this saying? It's clunky and abrupt along the narrative line.
My, how the Q have fallen. Amazingly, it would seem Voyager has managed to bastardize the Q even worse than the Borg. Who could've guessed that the beings who put humanity on trial back in the TNG days would be reduced to the sort of family sitcom where a son whines to his father about being too pressured about living up to expectations? Let's be real here: Do we want to see the Q as a metaphor for emotionally abandoned teenagers and/or fathers?
I'd have told the kid: Hey, you're omnipotent. With your talents I'll be damned if I'm going to let you end up working at Burger King. Stop screwing around and put that galaxy back where it belongs.
Next week: Doc's unauthorized Voyager biography. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Previous episode: Human Error
Next episode: Author, Author
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75 comments on this post
grumpy_otter
If it were possible to give negative stars, this episode should get them.
I must admit, I have never understood the appeal of the Q--Omnipotent beings really have nothing better to do than toy with weak little bipeds?
Yes, I love to sit around and poke at anthills, and pour water on them, and disturb their nests, and smush a few. Really?
Dull, dull, dull.
Saxman 1
I loved Q on TNG but I think all his appearances on Voyager (and the one on DS9) were terrible. He's always some kind of male chauvanistic pig and it just goes downhill from there. Ugh. In this ep especially, he looks tired, old, bloated and bored, just like his character at this point.
Jake
I actually enjoyed his DS9 appearance basically because of his nice interactions with the DS9 gang.
However, his Voyager appearances made him basically a copy of that uncle on Bewitched, unlike the character he established on TNG, which was much more complex & interesting.
Jonathan
What happened to Q Jr's "technology" trick that opened a rift directly to such-and-such a place? Why couldn't Voyager use the logs from the Delta Flyer to do the same thing and take themselves home? Why, further, does this omnipotent, lazy Q know more about their technology than they do even when he "won't stoop to use it" and doesn't seem to have any other relevant knowledge?
EP
Q is the archetypal Loki, the trickster. At least he was used properly in this vein in TNG, constantly tormenting humanity, and daring them to go beyond their limits, and them punching them in the nose when they would do so.
His one appearance on DS9 was totally lame, and a stunt, I suspect, on the part of the DS9 production staff to net curious TNG viewers during DS9's first season.
His appearances on VOY were absolutely egregious, and serve only to diminish the interesting aspects that his character originally conveyed.
Bah. Humbug.
Matt
I think I like your reviews of bad episodes the best.
Will
I have now seen all of Q's appearances on Voyager. I have not seen his DS9 appearance yet so cannot comment on it. I enjoyed "Death Wish", Q's first appearance on Voyager, and I also enjoyed (and I may come under fire for this, but everyone's entitled to an opinion) the Q and the Grey, but I thought this episode was just a lame excuse to shoehorn Q into Voyager at the last minute. Did he really need to come back after his last appearance?
Jay
It's obvious that the Q exist beyond time, because in the four years between deLancie's last appearance and this one, he seems to have aged at least ten.
Michael
"You know what, Talaxian? You talk too much. [Welds Neelix's lips shut and removes his vocal cords.]"
AMEN TO THAT!!!!!!!
God, if only this kid had been around in the first season, he could've spared us from Neelix altogether!
The rest of the show is risible and, Jammer, you shouldn't have graced it with more than a couple of lines. It's funny at times though, sometimes in a stupid way.
I'd give it two stars...
Cloudane
Guess I'm the odd one out, I kind of enjoyed it. It wasn't "what could've been" but after 7 seasons of Voyager I think I've accepted it for what it is because it was never going to live up to its potential.
So expectations of un-Voyager-y things cast aside, I found it to be fun and light hearted. I especially liked the replicator saying "make it yourself!", referring to Neelix as the "pet Talaxian" and acknowledging how annoying his character is, in this case by sealing his mouth :). (poor guy, his heart is in the right place. But he IS annoying)
Not an ideal end to Q (seeing as there were no more 24th century Trek series and John de Lancie was already looking a bit old for the part of an immortal) but I didn't find it offensive. 2-2.5.
Paul
Can we retroactively rename this series, "Star Trek: Unused Potential"?
First, Voyager pissed away it's initial premises. The Starfleet/Maquis conflict amounted to next to nothing, and the Kazon years -- which I think were actually the series' best -- were too ham-fisted and not consequential enough.
When it was evident things weren't working, Bernman and the gang brought in Q for one of the series' best episodes ('Death Wish'). And, honestly, I thought the 'Q and the Grey' was better than Jammer and others did.
But THIS episode on the heels of that one -- plus the watering down of the Borg and even an episode that totally neutered the Klingons -- showed that Voyager didn't just waste its own potential. It wasted the potential it inherited from TNG.
DS9 wasn't a perfect series, but at least it made its own storylines and premises. Voyager tried that, failed and then corrupted two big parts of the TNG legacy.
V
TNG Q is more daunting and complex but at the same time Loki-like. VOY in this ep is all Loki-like. Either way the episode was very funny to my husband who is NOT a trekkie and got him interested in Trek a lot more. Previously all his interest is making fun of sisko's and janeway's voice, and poking fun about how reversing the polarity and recalibrations saves the day (he thinks the writers of VOY are lazy that they can't imagine a new science-talk and just kept repeating themselves). Either way it's interesting how non-trekkies look at this ST world. Q had so much potential to bring in more fans if done right -I wished TNG made 1 movie regarding Q.
Sintek
Awful. DeLancie JR can't act and big daddy Q looks more tired and bloated than Riker post-First Contact. A shameful sendoff for a once great character.
Leah
BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHH!!! And Voyager's raping of TNG's glory is now complete.
azcats
I actually think this was the best of the 3 Q voyager episodes. by far the most entertaining.
but not one of my favorite episodes.
2 star
Watching the reruns
I agree with all the criticism about the potential of Q being just pissed away (my limited human brain can't imagine what an immortal omnipotent being would actually do, since they have probably already done everything) but ... I did like the actor playing the charming little sociopath (Q2), a true chip off the old block (Q), and what a hoot it is to discover that the two are actually father and son! Light frothy fun, so long as you skim along the surface and don't try to think more deeply about it.
Jo Jo Meastro
A decent, entertaining effort even if it is apparent that Q stories deserve to amount to a lot more.
Part of what makes it forgivable is that there are plenty of smirk inducing gags and all of the actors involved make much more mileage out of the material than there really should be. Q Junior could have easily descended into Jar Jar Binks territory, but thanks to the actor portraying him; he's actually amusing, quirky and has a certain charm. It must be difficult to nail a role were you must be irritating to every character yet loveable to the audience.
A few instances did hold it back. Even for a story that's meant to be light-hearted, some gags just didn't work and despite what the writers think; we don't want Seven reduced to shameless bait for adolescent male viewers. Plus some of Qs' human lessons were redundant. Making him write essays was dull and useless, as the episode proved a few Acts later.
In the end I did hope for but I laughed more than I sighed, so it gets a moderately enjoyable 2.5 stars.
Jack
Someone didn't research the years very well...Icheb had Kirk finishing his first 5 year mission in 2207, well before he was even born.
Cloudane
Epilogue: Q then gets bored of humans and decides to go and be a pony-dragon-thing instead. Fluttershy > Janeway 1000 times over :)
Susan
Even though I think Janeway is an idiot in most of them, she wasn't half bad here. I could be biased though, I love any episode of any Trek that has Q. lol He's my favorite guest star of all time. The kid who plays his son, is actually his son in real life too, so that was pretty awesome as well. - pepsiadikt
Steinway
Wow, I'm surprised this one is so hated. It's definitely not my favorite, but I didn't find it offensive (except for the female sexploitation moments). I didn't like Death Wish (moral objections), and thought Q and the Grey was a little boring, so I guess this one would be the best Voyager Q episode in my book. Once again I agree with azcats.
I think the reason I found endearing is that I'm a parent, and so I could relate to a lot of the parenting plotline. I didn't take it as a grand Q Continuum story, but rather a metaphor for human parenting. A lot of the time that's what Star Trek is – a metaphor for our own times.
DLPB
Q was originally a brilliant character. His chemistry with Picard was excellent, and he was played to perfection. But then, towards the end of Generation and for the entirety of Voyager, the character was destroyed by brain dead and simplistic writing.
NCC-1701-Z
I liked this episode...when it was TNG's "True Q".
Bleah. Voyager ruined the Q even worse than they ruined the Borg.
Shaen
Besides the fact that the Voyager writers didn't seem to get what made Q a great character in TNG, Keegan de Lancie's terrible acting didn't do this episode any favors. And ha ha, sexual assault played as a joke? Classy stuff.
St.Manfred
I liked the ep, with the exception of Keegan's acting and / or the sudden change of mind forced upon his character by the writers. 2.5 stars.
Proper from Gunnerkrigg
I didn't like how the judges dressed just like Q did in TNG, it cheapened the concept.
(PS. I'm an idiot and a liar.)
TRIP
This episode almost made me puke. In fact, give me a moment and I’ll be right back…
Zero Stars – Stop destroying our favourite characters!!! I personally love Q episodes. Almost every week, the writers try to piss us off in some way. My only guess at this point, is that the writers for Voyager are actually Star Wars fans, who hate Star Trek. There’s always been a bit of rivalry between those who like Star Wars, and those who like Star Trek. They infiltrated us. Get ‘em.
When Q said "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. Don't provoke the Borg!!!", I could actually sense his fear. What the hell? Even Janeway isn't afraid of the Borg. She willingly chooses to get assimilated, she raids Borg cubes, etc... Voyager has now castrated the Q. Can it get any worse?
DS9’s Q appearance was OK. It reminded me of “Encounter at Farpoint”, as it was another Alien that was being held captive. Again, they were being tested, to see if they would figure it out in time, and set the alien free. It wasn’t as good as “Encounter at Farpoint”, but they didn’t change the Q character like in this sack of crap.
As Q’s favour to Janeway, he should have left Neelix mute. Q could have just winked at Janeway, said “You’re Welcome”, then snapped his fingers and disappeared.
Diamond Dave
Just desperate. Even as someone who has only rarely enjoyed a Q episode, this is a new low. I think that what gets my back up most is that Junior takes on all of Q's most irritating traits, magnifies them by 100, and makes a character unlovable enough that his conversion matters not a jot. It also doesn't help that the conversion is so jarring, with a wildly swinging tone, and that it follows right out of the Sesame St trite lesson school.
I've said before that Q worked best as a vehicle for something else in my mind, such as introducing the Borg in Q Who. This is the other extreme, a Q episode that seeks nothing but to introduce a bigger, badder Q for nothing more than its own sake. "Can I help you, kitchen rat?" indeed. 1 star.
Skeptical
Yeesh. When they decided to make a sequel to the not so great Demon, they took that contrived, uh, contrivance and used it to make a unique and interesting episode. And when they decided to make a sequel to the awful Q and the Grey, they took that bad concept and doubled down on it, creating this mess.
For starters, the episode doubled down on the absurdity of Qs acting like humans. Remember, Q had absolutely no experience with being a human in Deja Q, despite appearing like them and knowing all about them. He openly admitted he would have appeared as a woman if he had realized before it could have distracted Picard. So why, pray tell, is little q acting like a horny fifteen year old? Why on earth would he care about techno-music and what any alien girls look like? Why would he want to party or see Seven naked? He wouldn't. But I guess the writers think we like this kind of juvenile humor. Well, I certainly don't. And even if others do, it isn't worth butchering the Q for it.
V mentioned that her husband, not a fan of Star Trek, liked the show. Well, sorry, but that's not a good justification of it. Part of the joy of a continuing franchise is the word "continuing", or continuity. We like seeing characters and concepts and cultures developing out over time, and seeing those characters and concepts and cultures in a new light. But it requires those characters and concepts and cultures to show a connection to what came in the past. Sure, it may be possible to create a good comedy with a bumbling, incompetent legendary king in a fantasy world. But if it was Aragorn, and an official sequel to Lord of the Rings? It'd be a slap in the face of all the fans who became emotionally connected to him in the far more serious LOTR. It doesn't fit the setting. Any quality in the book would be offset by the massive disconnect it would have with the intended audience.
Same here with this farce of a Q. Now, Trek is huge, and things have definitely been retconned at times, and for good reason. I don't mind that the Trill in The Host are nothing like the Dax family, because some things that work in a one-off episode wouldn't work in a deeper exploration. I don't mind that the Ferengi were retconned after their dismal initial showings. But Q was beloved. Q was at the beginning and end of TNG. Q was a well developed concept by this point. Why are we throwing away some excellent concepts for a cheap farce and juvenile jokes? Who thought this would be a good idea?
Except that it was prevalent in all three Voyager Q shows. The stupid flirting with Janeway. This teenage PG-rated rebel here. Why??? If you wanted to have a story about a magical being who didn't know what it was like to be a parent, create a new magical being. Sure, it would probably be too TOS-like and still probably be dumb, but at least you aren't embarrassing a beloved actor and beloved character.
Ugh, but anyway, it wasn't just that, even if it is the most egregious. Q tells Janeway to teach q how to be a Q, without actually letting her know what that entails. He still thinks humans are stupid; shouldn't he see the obvious contradiction in that? And so Janeway has q work on a term paper and learn how to be a human? OK, in fairness, Q gave her no direction on what to do, but gave her a very strict deadline. I'm pretty sure a term paper isn't going to impress anyone. I'm pretty sure any training program has more value than that...
Meanwhile, q apparently doesn't know how to write a paper, doesn't know how to pilot a ship, but does know how to reprogram holodecks and open random wormholes (and hey, shouldn't Kim or Seven be able to reverse engineer whatever he did based on the Delta Flyer's logs?). Just what constitutes knowledge that is beneath value for a Q and what doesn't? The answer is apparently whatever the plot requires. Which is definitely a sign of a problem in the plot...
Oh, and "Don't provoke the Borg!"? Hey, Q, what did you do back in Q Who? Oh, right, provoked the Borg. Guess he belongs to the "do as I say, not as I do" school of parenting.
As for the ending, and it's obvious parallels to Deja Q, well, I'm of two minds on that. On the one hand, it kinda makes sense that Q would set that scenario up. After all, it was what got HIM reinstituted into the Q Continuum, so maybe it should work for q as well. So logically, I can see the reasoning. But the execution just fell flat. Besides the obvious retread and the obviousness that the alien was Q (c'mon, the coincidences of everything were way too high), the emotional connection just wasn't there. That said, I did like the scene where Q callously refused to save Icheb. One of the very few scenes where he actually felt like the character he really was.
This was an episode we really didn't need, and wasn't worth it even if we did. Poor Q, he deserved much better than this.
grumpy_otter
This really has nothing to do with this episode except that I am rewatching some of Voyager and this episode reminded me of my story. . .
I got to meet John deLancie! AND I made him chuckle.
He's VERY tall, AND very handsome, which actually surprised me, because I have never found Q attractive in the least. His wife is BEAUTIFUL, and I seriously kicked myself for not googling before the event so I would have known that she is the actress who played the female voice of Reva in "Loud as a Whisper." Just like in that episode, her voice is lovely. She was also very nice--I was chatting with her for a while without realizing until later who she was.
So anyway, this was at a dinner during the Reason Rally, and John deLancie was seated right behind me. After dinner, people got up and began mixing and chatting, and the organizer requested over the microphone that all the "main stage speakers come to the annex room for a group photo." John apparently didn't hear, because he turned to me and asked what they had said. I repeated it, then said, "I thought you were supposed to be omniscient!"
He chuckled and replied, "Oh, I've NEVER heard that one before!" But he said it with a smile and wink, so I think it was okay. I at least refrained from falling at his feet in admiration, so it worked out well. :-)
Yanks
Nice grumpy_otter :-)
Voyager had used Q so well.
Then this episode came about.
All because Janeway is a female.
Never liked this one and never will.
By far Season 7's worst effort.
.5 stars because there was some humor in there.
George Monet
Maybe I'm just a terrible person, but I really liked this episode the first time I saw it and I still like it. I haven't seen a Q episode I didn't like except the one in TNG where that girl gives away her Q powers rather than saying thank you and then just not using them.
mephyve
Voyager finally did it. first they neutered the Borg and now they've broken Q (*)
Mikey
I didn't mind it. I've liked all the Q episodes to some degree, mainly for John deLancie. He's just got such great comic delivery. Pity his son doesn't rise to his standard...
"kitchen rat" cracked me up. It was "Bar rodent" in one of the other voyager Q episodes. Both great Neelix insults.
2 stars.
Skuttles
Torres says that if Q doesn't stop the light show in engineering, that the warp core is going to breach. Wut? All it takes is some strobe lights and the ship blows up? That's some bad engineering.
1/2 star. And only because I like John de Lancie. Otherwise 0.
Ben Sisko
No wonder why Star Trek went off the air in 2005. It wasn't that Enterprise was so bad, it's because many of its so-called fans love to hate on it. This episode was a thoroughly amusing hour of television. It didn't need to be an intellectually challenging episode. Voyager had plenty of those too. It's also just fun to watch an episode like this which is meant to be quite whimsical. Lighten up Star Trek watchers.
pm
Did anyone else notice Kate Mulgrew's toenails are a sickening diseased orange at the end of the tub scene in this episode?
Bote For Lalo
Ugh.
As mentioned earlier in this comment thread, Q is classical "trickster" figure, like Loki. And he's basically omnipotent and eternally bored, which makes him a dangerous annoyance to all non-Q he comes into contact with.
Thankfully, John de Lancie and Patrick Stewart had great chemistry together. Thankfully, de Lancie is a charismatic actor who, scenery-cheweing aside, is fun to watch.
The kid playing Q Jr. just plain sucked; and while he was written to be obnoxious and annoying, I didn't help his acting performance, and it pulled down the entire episode. Even with badly written material, de Lancie can at least turn lemons into lemonade and make his performance interesting. This kid had no chance, and for my money it's the worst Q episode I've ever suffered through.
A very disappointing 1 star.
Mads Leonard Holvik
A complete farce! Makes fun of original TNG Q episodes. Cheap scores. What kind of complete morons would make a script like this, much less sanction it? And why did Levar Burton say yes to direct it??
Prince of Space
This episode turned me into a newt!!!!
Prince of Space
I got better.
Franco
De Lancie is a fine actor, but the whole Q thing is utter BS.
William B
On the one hand, it's very sad for this to be the last Q appearance, but on the other, the alternative is that The Q and the Grey is the last Q appearance. This one fares worse than The Q and the Grey if only because there's less of John De Lancie and there's also no Suzie Plakson; that episode managed to at least have a lot of charisma from the guest leads, even if it was profoundly stupid. I like Death Wish but I think it probably would have been better to keep Q on TNG, with All Good Things as a perfect send-off to the character.
The novelty of De Lancie's actual son playing q wears off quickly and we are left with a plodding mess; almost shocking is that we are apparently meant to take q's boring book report on the Q Continuum as some sort of great achievement. Q's assertion that he's not proud of his son is about the only life we get here. Anyway, the Q valuing self-sacrifice isn't totally unprecedented, because of Deja Q, but even in that episode there was a twist to it (Q did admire Data's self-sacrifice, but wasn't particularly hoping to replicate it, and the second Q basically gave Q a pass for fun). The weird multiple endings with the Q jury, dressed in Q's Encounter at Farpoint/All Good Things robes which, let's recall, were based on Earth judge outfits Q was using to mock Picard, contribute to the worn-out schlockiness of the whole affair.
On the plus side, by this point I find Icheb fairly engaging (if a bit dull when his only role is to play straight man to an I'm-so-crazy non-rebel like q), and I actually do like the idea that Janeway gets some legit responsibilities as godmother. And I dunno, there is still a bit of pop to seeing De Lancie (Sr.) even if he looks tired. So it's not a total loss, but it's close to it. 1 star and I think the worst of the season.
Startrekwatcher
1 Star
I’m not a big Q fan. I’m not a VOY Q fan for sure I hate comedies on Trek. And I really hate low brow comedies on Trek. This was awful. Dumb. Juvenile. Pointless
This is what happens when you let writers for Xena come write for Trek
Springy
Entertaining. Mulgrew and DeLancie Sr are funny together.
DeLancie Jr was not the world's greatest actor, but he sufficed.
I liked Icheb having a friend.
I liked Seven's total shamelessness.
I liked the follow up on baby Q.
Mostly lighthearted fluff.
PJ
1.5 stars is too harsh. Deserves at least an extra star for the excellent fun performance from John De Lancie's real life son. Come on, the guy now helps refugees for the UN!
Jeffrey Jakucyk
Yeah this one is not very good. DeLancie didn't even try to save it, not that he could have. He's all too happy to go camp, which just doesn't work. At least the snarky replicator was fun.
JB
Wow. I've been reading these comments for the last year or so while rewatching the syndicated series. I have to say that it seems a lot of people don't understand that Q is always testing humanity, even when he, it, or they, act like they aren't. If you saw the last episode of TNG you should realize this. If you saw the end of this episode where Janeway says " I appreciate this but It will only save a couple years..." And Q earlier saying "don't mess with the Borg," you may realize he basically tested Janeway and gave her all she needed to get home a few episodes later. Yes, it was a test. Am I the only one who sees that? It had nothing to do with Q Jr. That was just a ruse. It was still decent though.
Rahul
Here's an episode that never should have been made. I could barely make it through the hour. What has VOY done to the Q?? Far worse than what it did to the Borg. This takes it to an all-time low. Nothing funny in this idiotic episode that loosely seems like a beggar's version of "Charlie X". The whole premise makes no sense -- that omnipotent beings would come to Janeway to straighten out their offspring. This is not sci-fi -- it's garbage. Just an attempt to get one more de Lancie / Mulgrew outing (since they are both good actors) -- not that that helped "The Q and the Grey" work well.
What really bugs me about the episode is that just when there might be some albeit trite lesson for Q Jr. and therefore some kind of moral or real consequence, the episode basically resets. In the end, Q Jr. isn't stuck being a human, he gets all his powers back and the Q Continuum is made to look like a farce. What was the point? Did Q Jr. really grasp the self-sacrifice thing?
Also, the usual stupid Q tricks are very old. And making 7 naked is just "Threshold" -level bad. The first half hour was cringeworthy and the second half hour wasn't much better. The Icheb character had a chance to act outside its box but it was more stiff acting.
0.5 stars for "Q2" -- like I said, this episode never should have been made. The only redeemable thing here for me was Mulgrew/Janeway acting the right way given the terrible script -- she was convincing in trying to do her part to help Q Jr. even though the whole premise is ludicrous. What has the Q Continuum become... There are good Q episodes, bad ones, and this ugly one.
Peter G.
"There are good Q episodes, bad ones, and this ugly one."
This was indeed a fistful of stupid.
Donald
2.5 to 3 stars.
This was a lighthearted comedy, not intended to be serious drama or examination of the meaning of what it would mean to encounter an omnipotent being, and you people are judging it as if it were the latter. That is an absurd category mistake.
The Q storyline was always meant to be funny. There is no way you could take any of it seriously in any of the series.
It would have been great if Voyager had been written to be a serious drama like BSG or even DS9, but since it wasn’t, you should take it for what it was and judge it episode by episode. Some episodes were meant to be taken seriously and some were not.
Momofsix
I realize that the vast majority of people who frequent this site think ST-TNG is nothing short of perfection and that ST-Voyager is nothing but its ‘red-headed step child’ but you all are really chucking spit balls into the wind! This episode was fun. Period. It wasn’t a grandiose statement about anything but fun. Seriously. Stop taking yourselves so seriously. And, we get it. TNG— nothing short of excellent. Voyager— nothing but spittle from the mouth of all that is good and Picardish....🤦🏼♀️
Dougie
The most interesting aspect of this episode is Q Sr handing Janeway a tablet with course adjustments on it that she looks at and turns to him and says “not that I don’t appreciate it but this will only take a few years off our journey, why not send us all the way?”
One expects in the next scene to see Voyager warp off — no doubt on an adjusted heading. But we do not. It sits stationary in space for the long pause.
Therefore, Q Sr apparently knows of Endgame, and the rollback of the Universe, and even no Starship Relativity interference for a TPD violation.
MadBaggins
Hate it when people show up and say things like "This is a light-hearted comedy, not SERIOUS DRAMA!" to excuse terrible writing. Comedy episodes can be just as good as the serious episodes, this one sure as FUCK wasn't.
Abby
Agree with Ben, JB, and Mom. Plus, I liked the kid’s acting. He cracked me up when he still had his powers. You really need a good sense of humour to appreciate how great this show was.
Loved every Q episode in Voyager. In TNG I couldn’t stand the character. Love the chemistry Mulgrew and DeLancie had together.
I haven’t come across a bad episode in season 7, yet. “Muses” was the last bad one and I see that that was season 6.
Cody B
I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. I liked it quite a bit. They even managed at the very end to answer the question I was thinking the whole time which was why Janeway didn’t just make Q agree to send Voyager to Earth if she helped his son. With only 6 episodes left in very much doubting I will be seeing Q or Q2 again so this was a nice goodbye. I wouldn’t have mind if this episode aired a few years prior so that there would have been time to get another Q2 visit.
Mark
Generally speaking, The Next Generation is a better show than Voyager. But I'm tired of people who always repeat the mantra, "TNG good, Voyager bad," and apply it to every episode. Q's first appearance in TNG in the series premiere was a thoroughly mediocre show. In fact, TNG's whole first season was pretty lame. In contrast, Death Wish was pretty great. Even this Q2 episode was better than Encounter at Farpoint, as uneven and nonsensical as Q2 sometimes was. So stop saying that Voyager "ruined" Q, and ruined everything else as well. Voyager had some great episodes, and TNG had some lousy ones.
Robert
@Mark - VOY had some great episodes, no doubt. But people feel that VOY ruined things because they fleshed things out that maybe worked better without being fleshed out.
I would argue that the Borg and the Q worked better when you knew less about them, even if Death Wish was clearly far better than Encounter at Farpoint.
Chrome
Even "Death Wish" borrows a lot of good faith we have from the franchise thanks to TNG. I mean it guest stars not one, but two TNG characters to help give it credibility.
Say what you will about Farpoint, but it was an original concept that created a popular recurring character and theme for the franchise.
Austin
This episode actually made me miss Wesley Crusher. 1 star.
MikeyZ
Ten years later and I actually enjoyed this one a lot.
The first thing that got me engaged was the introductory premiss: Q. Jr. getting bored. Many would just gloss over that but it got me to thinking about how eternal life, promised by many religions, would actually be highly undesirable. Eternal existence--even as some "higher," "spiritual" beings--would become supremely boring and worthless after a while, and this show broaches that idea in an admittedly clunky manner. It made me sit up and pay attention though.
Otherwise, and maybe I'm in a particular melancholic mood but Junior's transformation--very quick though as it was--was moving, especially his newfound appreciation of friendship, personal responsibility, mutual support, etc. It's as if he learned, the hard way, that it's the deeper things in life that matter, rather than superficial "fun" and instant gratification. That's always commendable.
The humor was good, too.
A solid 3 stars for my money.
EventualZen
@MikeyZ
I think the concept and consequences of eternal life was covered far better in VOY "Deathwish". Having said that, this was a thoroughly enjoyable episode - 8/10. Q Junior learned the value of responsibility and friendship, there was suspense when we were led to believe Icheb was dead, and humour "Coffee, black" , "Make it yourself".
Even though eternal life seems undesirable as much as impractical, I would want to live for a thousands in good health (with a young person's body) as long as my loved one's lived that long too.
How long would you guys want to live for and why?
PS: My name actually means the eventual peace and end of suffering that we will all attain once we die.
Booming
How long and why. For me I only want to see if humanity will destroy itself or not. So either until humanity ends or until humanity ends itself.
I also don't think that you achieve peace through death. Nothingness is not peace. I guess you favor the Buddhist view. If you are right then we will find out when we die, if I'm right then we will never know.
End of suffering is quite nice, though.
Silly
TNG wasn’t perfect, and I think Voyager’s seventh season is much stronger than TNG’s seventh.
I watched a fair amount of Voyager first run, but less and less because it mostly felt like reheated TNG leftovers. This is one of many I skipped because it sounded blah. I think it helps with the separation of years and knowing Voyager’s weaknesses.
I actually liked it. Kegan de Lancie does a great job, and I liked that his form of teenage rebellion became being super responsible. The anti Q Q.
But before that, his gags were funny. Turning the warp core into a disco light was good, and is a mild meta poke at the show itself, because of course the prop is just a giant light. And of course it’s about to breach. Starfleet warp cores after the Excelsior class tend to explode if you sneeze in engineering.
I didn’t at all like the Q civil war and the notion of Q having a baby would fix it and blah blah, but given that background, this was fine, and yes it was funny and charming that little Q called Janeway Aunt Kathy.
Oddly, I didn’t even guess the probably obvious twist. Though, no doubt because most times I watch TV these days, I’m on my phone too.
Andersonh1
Not the best Q episode, but not the worst. I found it amiable and fun, honestly. I enjoyed the friendship between Q junior and Icheb, who hasn't had anyone his age to spend time with since his introductory episode. And it was honestly nice to see the Q and the Gray followed up on. Yeah, something serious and grand and dramatic might have been preferable to Q jr hijinks, but what we got was fun and entertaining, so I can't complain.
And since we now know that Q is turning up in Picard, this will soon no longer have the distinction of being the final Q episode. That might elevate it, depending on how the Picard writers handle the character.
Michael Miller
Anyone that complains that teens are a nuisance and troublesome should watch this episode was be grateful!
DataMat
I enjoyed this episode. Tbh I like all the Q episodes to date and hopefully Star Trek Picard will continue that trend. DeLancie is a great actor and nails Q every time and his own son playing his own characters son (genius) actually works really well as the chemistry is all their on screen and the (then) young actor pulls off a pretty good performance IMO.
Skater777
What a throwaway of an episode so close to the end of the series. I am not a fan of Q in general (although DeLancie has been very funny over the years), so I admit my bias.
This episode was a complete mess from start to finish. The kid goes from complete brat to great kid in about 2 minutes without any transformative incident. He then builds a great friendship with Icheb, and I actually feel sorry for the kid when Q dissed his essay. We start to see that Q may be part of the problem.
And then it implodes. Instead of the kid bonding more with Janeway and Icheb after being letdown by his dad, and instead of Janeway schooling Q on being a crappy father, he goes right back to his old ways and steals a shuttle. He basically wiped everything he accomplished. His redemption is unsatisfying and the ending just horrible. Icheb is his only friend, but he is out of the picture after the sick bay scene. No final moment between the two of them where Q Jr. apologized and thanked Icheb for being a friend. It was a loose end that needed to be tied and the writers failed big time.
Daltone
A total mess of an episode, but after seven seasons of Voyager I'm willing to give this one a pass. Compared to some of the dirge that has come before this is... Ok.
At least it's energetic.
Two stars
Robert
This is a popcorn episode. You just need to turn off your brain.
If you turn on your brain, there are glaring problems.
Why is Voyager supposedly capable of teaching Q Jr yet omnipotent beings can't?
Why is Q Jr an archetypal heterosexual adolescent male? Why is he into corporeal females? Why does he want to see Seven naked? Why is there a dance club with exotic female dancers? Can the male gaze get anymore ridiculous in the writing? Why does he like seeing ships blow up? It seems to insane and such a waste of Q. They are supposed to be tricksters who always tell the truth and try to help lesser species along in their understanding of the universe.
Q sets up the test for Q Jr that involved Icheb getting injured. Well, why didn't Q just do something that in the first place?
EventualZen
@Robert
I agree that they anthropomorphized the Q a lot in this episode, why would Q Junior be embarrassed to be seen with his parents?
But still with it's flaws, I maintain that this is an 8/10 episode.
Deborah
Really enjoyed this episode. A lot of the above comments are just plain mean. I'm afraid that Jammer set the tone. Very glad that Star Trek is NOT a drama like BSG as someone on this thread suggested. After a good setup, I found BSG unwatchable: depressing, nihilistic, and it completely trashed the Starbuck character.
Richard
I'm obviously in the minority (although Cloudane said he liked it), but I actually like this episode. Yes, the central premise - that beings as advanced as the Q would need help from humans, is far-fetched. But would you put that aside, I think this is episode is pretty good, though not great. I would give it 2.5 stars.
Tara
The disfiguring and torture of Neelix was not cute or comedic. It was horrific. Yet no one on the crew was horrified or enraged. Apparently, torture is funny! So is sexual assault!
Actually, I got the impression that the crew recognized their helplessness and were simply afraid to confront OminpoTeen, so they pretended to be cool with whatever he did to their comrades. That might have been the smartest ploy with a ‘bored teen’, but it wasnt depicted as a ploy.
What a boring, juvenile, and morally reprehensible episode.
navamske
@pm
"Did anyone else notice Kate Mulgrew's toenails are a sickening diseased orange at the end of the tub scene in this episode?"
What a great name for a singing duo: The Captain and Toenail.
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