“Hide and Q”
Story by C.J. Holland
Teleplay by C.J. Holland and Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 1, Episode 10
Original air date: November 23, 1987
Star date: 41590.5
Mission summary
The Enterprise is en route to Sigma III, where an explosion has threatened a mining colony. Hurtling through space at warp 9.1, the ship gets caught in a net–the same stock footage they saw back near Farpoint station. Sure enough and with his usual bad timing, Q blinks onto the bridge and informs Picard that the Q have become impressed by humans, and as such are offering Riker–and only Riker– “the realization of your most impossible dream.”
Alas, he doesn’t mean skipping to season 3.
Q blinks the entire bridge crew, sans Picard, to an unidentifiable class M planet for some “games” to test Riker’s worthiness for this “gift.” He’s wearing a Napoleonic marshal’s uniform, a hint at either the nature of the games or what happened to be in the costume closet that week. When Yar protests the unfairness of a death match (you’d think she’d never done this before…), he dispatches her to a “penalty box”–on the bridge with Picard–and notes that any further penalties will displace Yar into nothingness. Back on the bridge she cries about it, because that’s what women do. In her defense, Picard gets into a Shakespeare quotation fight (As You Like It vs. Hamlet, Round 1! FIGHT!) with Q about the worthiness of humanity, and in the end makes a bet: Picard’s command against Q swearing to leave humanity alone forever.
On the class M planet, Riker and company fight a bunch of pig-like humanoids dressed in Napoleonic military uniforms whose muskets shoot lasers. Yeah, okay.
Q appears and tells Riker that he now has the power of the Q. Confused but alarmed for his friends, Riker blinks them all safely back to the bridge of the Enterprise by sheer force of will. Cool! Q, now in a Starfleet commander’s uniform, congratulates Riker on his newfound power and explains that the Continuum was just so darn impressed by humanity’s behavior on the Farpoint mission that they have gifted this ability to Riker. Riker tries to reject it but all his friends wind up in danger, again, so he uses the mojo just this one little time to save them all. In the immortal words of heroes everywhere, what could possibly go wrong?
Back on the ship, Picard warns Riker not to use the magic, which our number one shrugs off as no difficult task. Per plot requirements he is challenged almost immediately when the ship reaches the mining colony and Dr. Crusher discovers a dead little girl that Riker could, but chooses not to, save.
Riker begins to think his promise to Picard to avoid using the Q powers was a mistake, and Q shows up in a monk’s outfit to back him up. To prove both the harmlessness and awesomeness of this god stuff, Q suggests that Riker give each of his friends a gift. Picard allows it, and we get the sense he has a hunch about how this will play out.
Riker starts with Wesley, who he “may know best of all.” (That’s news to his mom, who starts freaking out.) He makes Wesley ten years older–a grown man. For Data he offers a chance to be human, which the android refuses on the grounds that it would be an illusion. To Geordi he gives the gift of natural sight, but Geordi doesn’t want it, either: “The price is a little high for me, and I don’t like who I would have to thank. ” To Worf, he gives a Klingon female in heat, who he rejects because that culture has no place in his Starfleet life. (The best thing I can say about this is that at least the entire bridge crew looked as horrified as I did.) Finally even Wesley wants the accelerated adolescence undone, and Riker seems ashamed of himself.
RIKER: How did you know, sir? I feel like such an idiot.
PICARD: Quite right. So you should.
Picard demands that Q honor his part of the wager, but Q “can recall no wager.” Someone out there can, though, because Q is beamed against his will back to the Continuum, and all is normal once again.
Analysis
I had remembered Q in the Napoleonic uniform and of course the “gifts” at the end, but the rest of it–the pig people with muskets, the penalty box, the dead little girl–were all forgotten (as well they should be, it turned out).
The main thrust of the story remains a good one–can a person retain individuality and a sense of humility if he becomes a god?–but that question is asked so late in the episode and by then the answer is so obvious that you wonder why Riker bothers playing out the charade. I was frustrated that Picard repeatedly tells Riker not to use the powers, and yet can’t really come up with a reason why. He argues that it’s “too great a temptation” but doesn’t explain what that temptation is or make any case for why it should be resisted. I can think of reasons not to use the power–losing your sense of self, the thrill of absolute power that turns into an addiction, having to face others who want to use you for their own ends, the unknowable repercussions of altering time and space–but they all go unarticulated, and as a result Picard just seems like a killjoy for telling Riker not to play with his new toy.
The “games” are largely forgettable and I’m not really sure why they feature at all. They serve no purpose other than to place his friends in artificial danger (when they should be in danger just hanging around a god-like Riker) and drag out the first half hour tediously. Also boring: the war of quotations, which again, didn’t go anywhere or ultimately mean anything. Perhaps if the episode had begun with Riker getting the powers, and then went on to deal with the temptation and consequences of using them, I would have liked it more. I also resented the overt manipulation of the dead little girl. I mean, what about all the other dead people? Think big, Riker!
I do still mostly enjoy the gift-giving scene, for two reasons. First, it allows the characters to show us that they accept their so-called flaws as virtues. The Wesley aging thing is silly, but who didn’t want to just grow up already when they were teenagers? I liked Data’s response that he is who he is and anything else wouldn’t feel real to him. And of course there’s Geordi, who winds up time and again offered some form of sight and rejects them all, because the way he sees the world is his own and he doesn’t feel in any way inferior or disabled. It’s a little odd that Riker doesn’t get Tasha a present, but considering what he gave Worf it’s probably for the best. Speaking of, this marks the first appearance of a Klingon woman on the show. Not only is she a blank, personality-less sex receptacle, but she doesn’t even speak–just growls and bites. Truly, stupendously awful. Geordi’s reaction is priceless: “Worf, is this your idea of sex?” Of course, if you think about it, it’s actually Riker’s idea of Klingon sex, which makes it all the more creepy…
Secondly, the gift scene proves that no matter how close you may be, you can never know another man or woman’s heart. The things that people want in life for themselves are not necessarily the things you would want if you were in their shoes. Riker can never know what it’s like to be Data, who is (for all he knows at this point) one-of-a-kind. He has never seen through Geordi’s eyes, or felt the loneliness of being the only Klingon in Starfleet. He could not possibly understand anyone else on a level necessary to grant those kinds of wishes. We each live in our own little worlds, and our desires are our own.
The one really clever bit in the whole episode: when Q reappears to give Riker his powers, note that he’s wearing a commander’s uniform. They’re equals now.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: Okay, I kind of love the Napoleonic uniform. It makes me wish we could see him face off against Horatio Hornblower in space.
Best Line: Riker: No one has ever offered to turn me into a god before…
Trivia/Other Notes: The Bolian race was named after this episode’s director, Cliff Bole (he directed the upcoming “Conspiracy” which introduced them).
C.J. Holland is actually Maurice Hurley, a TNG producer with a long, tangled, and mostly unpleasant history with the franchise.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 9 – “The Battle.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 11 – “Haven.”
It’s weird how often TNG, especially in the first season, comes up with a truly interesting idea only to completely blow it. This is definitely one of those episodes.
I especially hate the concept of Riker deciding that, no, he can’t use his power to save the little girl…but giving gifts to his friends is just fine! Where’s your sense of proportion, dude?
I think the whole thing would have been a lot more interesting if Riker had gotten the powers without being “tested” by Q every five minutes. That would have actually made the temptation a lot more effective than all these artificial dangers.
Wonderful summary, Tori.
I always understood that Picard’s refusal to allow Riker to use the power was based on his fear that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Riker’s intentions may *start* as noble, but eventually… Anyway, I agree with you that it would have made for a more interesting episode if the plot revolved around Riker’s use of the power.
Hey, if you think Beverly was horrified when Riker said he knew Wesley “best of all,” what must she have thought when Geordi ogled the grown-up Wesley and says, “Looooking, gooooood, Wesley.” :) (I forget, were those his exact words or was it “Not baaaad, Wesley”?). In any event, that comment always cracked me up.
First off, minus points for Torie for not mentioning Wesley being impaled on a spear and fans everywhere cheering their heads off. It was only temporary, but it sure felt good. Unlike most of the rest of this episode.
The pig-snout Napoleonic soldiers always reminded me a little of the creatures Christopher Pike was fighting in the flashback bits of “The Cage”. I’ve never directly compared them, but that’s the sense I have.
Really, another half-decent idea that is very, very badly realized. 3 is way too generous, but I might go as high as 2. 1 is more realistic.
@ 1 Toryx
It’s pretty crass, but I understand it to show that in the little girl’s case, he was keeping a promise. It’s not even that he had thought it through and decided it was the wrong thing to do, it’s that he promised Picard he wouldn’t. Dad said not to! By the end he’s rejected Picard’s philosophy and is trying to show that the powers could be used for good.
I agree about the testing. The powers are tempting enough to use without artificial threats. That’s the whole appeal of godlike powers. If he had started with little wishes, things that didn’t seem to matter, and then built his way up to huge life-altering wishes, that would have been compelling.
@ 2 Mercurio
Haha, you’re right, he says “Not bad, Wesley!” It’s not as creepy as when Geordi looks at Tasha and says “You’re as beautiful as I imagined, and then some.” I mean, maybe he’s talking about the whole bridge crew? Or did he really just admit in front of his coworkers that he daydreams about Tasha Yar?
@ 3 DemetriosX
You know, by that point, I didn’t even care. I do love that he died in the most idiotic way possible, by charging ahead unarmed against monsters with spears.
Jonathan Frakes tries to prove that he can act as smug as John DeLancie. He fails. Is there any other point to this episode?
“That’s the whole appeal of godlike powers. If he had started with little wishes, things that didn’t seem to matter, and then built his way up to huge life-altering wishes, that would have been compelling.” Brenda Clough’s How Like A God comes to mind (particularly so because of the call-out to “Hamlet” in this episode.)
This is another case of the main characters having no flaws, and being less interesting because of them. Seriously, no one took the gifts? No one in the rest of the crew heard about what was going on and came to Riker to beg an indulgence?
I have a different approach to Riker’s gift to Wesley and with that in mind, I found it interesting that you didn’t mention Wesley in the paragraph about Riker not knowing his friends. Of all the people on the bridge, Wesley was the one person Riker could really understand what his friend might appreciate as a gift. Riker had been a teenager once. He was also one of Wesley’s mentors, so he’d know Wesley’s desire to be accepted as a grownup – an equal. If this episode had been structured differently, or if it had been a book, it might have been interesting to let adult Wesley remain for a while and really come to realize that his gift caused him to miss some things. How differently things could have gone for the character in having young Wesley “grow-up” emotionally and socially as a result of Riker’s gift.
I pretty much agree with teh review and the comments. Here was an interesting idea that got tossed aside for sight gags, fake dangers, and bland characters. How much more interesting this would have been had say Q showed up, his usual taunting snide self — and no one does it better than John DeLancie you should see him in toruchwood Series 5 — Riker mouths off because that’s how Riker rolls and Q ‘gifts’ him with the power. It starts out great, but slowly we see the corruption that immunity brings. (It’s not the power its the immunity from others that is corrupting.) Riker taking more and more proactive actions because he thinks he knows best, until it turns to tragedy and then Q returns, taking the powrs back smug and right.
On the “baby steps to tyranny” model, it would’ve been interesting if Riker trying to save the little girl came after he’d been giving minor gifts; if he’d attempted to save her, only to do it wrong and make her some kind of monster, whether causing her to immediately and painfully die again in front of everyone, or leaving her a mindless zombie — then watch him try to put thoughts in her head, recreate the personality of someone he’s never met, to the horror of her parents…
Something that shows that humanity really is not wise enough or knowledgeable enough to use the power of the gods, because the Q powers obviously don’t come with omniscience, or else Riker would know all this stuff already.
Incidentally, what’s up with everybody having a nice big goblet of lemonade? Don’t they all know the rules of fairy-land? NEVER eat or drink in fairy land, NEVER accept gifts from the faeries! Sheesh.
At this point in the series, the motifs are becoming almost claustrophobic—Picard, the ultra-wise infallible father beyond corruption; Riker, brash and cocky but still able to learn an important lesson at his father’s knee. Q, a douche who has a hard time learning how fabulous and amazing and gloriously perfect and without fault humanity has become…
Meanwhile the second-tier roster descend into caricatures of their own broadly drawn stereotypes. Yar is just insufferable, the fusion of a bad character badly played, and I confess I long for her pointless death a few episodes hence. Worf does little more than growl and bark and act like a moron. The doctor fusses and worries like a hen….
bleh. It is all becoming as airless as outer space.
This all reads like a standard and not particularly interesting morality play: Careful when you rub the lamp, commander, and do be careful what you wish for!
It’s remarkable that, at this point, ten episodes in, TOS had—without any roadmap—already aired some of that series’ most potent and provocative episodes. TNG—ostensibly the beneficiary of 20 years of thinking and writing about what works and doesn’t in Trek—limps along.
“It’s remarkable that, at this point, ten episodes in, TOS had—without any roadmap—already aired some of that series’ most potent and provocative episodes. TNG—ostensibly the beneficiary of 20 years of thinking and writing about what works and doesn’t in Trek—limps along.”
Lemnoc says the obvious thing. The fact that TOS hit the ground running–and it’s hardly the only show from that time period to get off to a strong start right from the start–makes me impatient with those who ask us to make excuses for TNG’s crummy first couple of seasons.
“Hide and Q” is tailor-made to show off one of the worst aspects of the character of Cmdr. Riker. They wanted a Kirk type, someone to chat up the ladies and make smug speeches about how wonderful the human race is, only that role couldn’t go to Capt. Picard because he was already cast as a wise, thoughtful diplomat. So the role of smug asshole went to Riker instead–and he was no bloody good at it. Ever.
Deepthought @ 10: I think that might have been more interesting too, but it also would have been a return to a pretty damned common trope, even back then. It seems to me that such an episode would have been disappointing in its bland familiarity. On the other hand, maybe it would have been better for all that.
I’d forgotten about Wesley getting stabbed. As appealing as that is, it also served to make the “challenges” even more ridiculous because you just know that they’re not going to kill Wesley off like that.
I think it’s pretty hilarious that, all these years later with Wil Wheaton now in his 40’s, he looks a lot more like he did then than the magic grown up version that dreamed up that got Geordi all excited. Could they have chosen a worse replication of Wes as a grown-up than that dumb looking dude?
@13 Toryx: Wil’s only 39, but it’s a vailid point. The guy looks nothing like him, build, hair color, face shape, you name it. I suppose you could argue that Riker made him look like he would want to look, more muscular and whatnot, but as Wil Wheaton pointed out in his review of this episode, this guy is more like the costume designer’s fantasy than that of your average teenage boy.
I don’t have comments on this episode. I can’t re-watch it no more than I could cut off my own arm. Self-preservation and all that stuff.
I’ve been lurking for a week or so and catching up on the archives and you’ve got a great blog. Can’t wait to get into some of the more interesting episodes of TNG.
Make it so.
@15 ShameAndFailure
Welcome! I’m also looking forward to talking about the many better episodes ahead. I hope everyone sticks around until we get there…
@1 Toryx
At first I was going to defend Riker’s decision to grant gifts as a response to his guilt over his previous refusal to save the girl, but then I realized there’s no expiration date on bringing someone back from the dead–at least, not for the Q. Agreed with everyone who said that was where the story should have been focused, but instead it lost its way. Obviously it’s okay for him to bring his crewmates back to life; Picard never asks him to put them back the way they were. But I suppose since they were killed by Q’s “animal things,” it doesn’t count.
@2 Mercurio
Wesley and Geordi are so awkward in every way, they deserve each other.
@3 DemetriosX
I was going to remark on this as the first of Wesley’s grisly deaths, but I think it only happens once more, in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” where it was supposed to be even worse, like getting electrocuted at his station or something.
@8 Ludon
I was kind of amused when Dr. Crusher tried to rush Wesley off the Bridge before Riker could turn his attention to him. It might have been interesting to see Wesley struggle with the fact that as a child he’s precocious, and as an adult he might be talented but he could just as easily be mediocre, along with all the emotional maturity he’d have to learn. But then the episode would just turn into Big, and the doofus they got to play him as an adult likely isn’t as talented as Tom Hanks.
@10 DeepThought
Riker says, “I was just thinking about lemonade.” Really? What made you think about lemonade in the middle of this crisis with Q?
@12 etomlins
Lemnoc says the obvious thing. The fact that TOS hit the ground running–and it’s hardly the only show from that time period to get off to a strong start right from the start–makes me impatient with those who ask us to make excuses for TNG’s crummy first couple of seasons.
I actually hadn’t considered that, but it’s a good observation and I have no excuse except that… it was the 80s? *shrug*
So the role of smug asshole went to Riker instead–and he was no bloody good at it. Ever.
Oh, I think he gets much better at it!
I had higher expectations, but the first truly excellent Q episode won’t appear until late next season. John de Lancie is still a delight, and his insults are generally well-written. The legendary Q and Picard relationship starts to hit its stride as Stewart settles into his role.
Some things I appreciated included a few callbacks to TOS: One was Q’s assertion that man can’t abide stagnation, echoing Kirk’s sentiments in “This Side of Paradise”: “We weren’t meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.”
Another was a hint of “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which showed Gary Mitchell’s transformation and corruption when he found himself with godlike powers. But I just don’t buy Riker’s abrupt change and attitude toward Picard. Over time, sure, maybe, but he buckles pretty quickly. And Picard is so smug about it. I did amuse myself a little though when the idea popped into my head that this was the same setup as Bewitched, with Riker promising not to use his abilities.
Finally, Q’s tortured exit reminded me more than ever of the resolution of “The Squire of Gothos.” No wonder fans have been so convinced Q is related to Trelane, especially with his fascination with military history and props.
I also love the creepy moment when Q turns into Data. Data is just kind of unsettling as it is. And I think the gift-giving scene mostly works, aside from the embarrassing Klingon sex thing, and Geordi’s awkward crush on Yar. It’s a slightly more acceptable way to introduce the characters’ motivations than any of “The Naked Now,” but it’s also rather humiliating for them to have their deepest dreams exposed in front of their friends, right?
There’s also a fair amount of the usual goofiness, such as Worf jumping around, proving he’s a better security officer than Yar, who actually cries. (How does she even know she’s in a penalty box? Q explained that after he had flashed her away.) But it’s most disappointing that once again, a really interesting problem–the morality of doing nothing when you have the ability to act–was simply wasted. And the theme of “Rah rah rah! Humans are awesome!” is definitely worn thin already.
Oh yeah: and Shakespeare happened.
A grudging Warp 3 from me.
@16 Eugene. But by the time we finally got to “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Wesley wasn’t so bad any more. He was old enough to legitimately be on the bridge and the writers didn’t seem to hate him as much (probably because Roddenberry wasn’t around anymore to insist on him being such a Marty Stu). But no, he didn’t have a bunch of deaths grisly or otherwise. That was reserved for Harry Kim.
@18 DemetriosX
Oh yeah, I forgot about Kim being Voyager‘s whipping boy. I don’t remember his character actually deserving it though. I think O’Brien was abused most on DS9 because his character was very sympathetic (except when he was being racist) and Colm Meaney actually had the talent to pull off demanding scripts. Was it just that people didn’t like Garrett Wang? He never did get promoted past ensign, did he?
@19 Eugene, I don’t think he ever got promoted. They tried to justify that with Janeway not having the authority to do it, but even after they wound up in contact with Starfleet he didn’t make lieutenant. I seem to recall that Garrett Wang had some conflicts with the producers over the direction Harry should go, letting him be more than just shy and awkward, Asian-American stereotypes, that sort of thing, and they took it out on his character.
#20, DemetriosX: “They tried to justify that with Janeway not having the authority to do it, but even after they wound up in contact with Starfleet he didn’t make lieutenant.”
Wait…all of a sudden “Voyager” is making more sense. Janeway never was a real starship captain, never had a Starfleet commission at all…she was awarded a fake captaincy and shot off into oblivion at the head of the all the Federation’s biggest losers, like the Golgafrincham colony ship, so when Janeway got back into touch with Starfleet later in the show’s run it was the most unpleasant surprise in the world for them. “She’s still alive??! And she wants a field promotion for that Harry Whatisname? Crap! Stall her, stall her!”
@20 DemetriosX
But Picard has the authority to give a kid a field commission to acting ensign? And Janeway could incorporate criminals and traitors and a Borg drone into her crew? I’m calling shenanigans.
@21 etomlins
Did I read it here, or did someone else tell me that Mulgrew claims she played Janeway as insane? Because that does make sense.
so when Janeway got back into touch with Starfleet later in the show’s run it was the most unpleasant surprise in the world for them. “She’s still alive??!
And of course the natural course of action was to then make her an admiral :)
“And of course the natural course of action was to then make her an admiral :)”
Hah! Well, I don’t think that Travis Bickle really survived the end of Taxi Driver, nor do I think that Rupert Pupkin actually got his own show at the end of The King of Comedy. I’m willing to extend “Voyager” the same flexibility of interpretation.
@ DeepThought & Eugene
Your comments about lemonade just fell into place for me. That old saying “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
The cosmic reset button got pressed so many times it jammed.
Wow all this makes me very happy I dropped Voyager after three episodes.
@24 Ludon
I like that. Even if that may not be what the screenwriter intended :)
More to the point, the first season is definitely a lemon, but they eventually found a good recipe for lemonade. Even if it sours a bit right at the end.
@ 7 S. Hutson Blount
You’d take those gifts?? No way. There are always strings attached.
@8 Ludon
That would have been a much better episode, yes. My issue with gifting Wesley adulthood is that adulthood doesn’t work that way. It’s not looking old, though that helps–it’s being taken seriously, as a peer, by other adults. Just because Wesley looks older doesn’t mean he’d get the rights and privileges associated therein, because the rest of the ship knows he’s only 13 or whatever. I’m sure they’d all still treat him like a kid, and he’d still have the emotional maturity of one, so it wouldn’t be much of a gift at all, except to be wildly uncomfortable in one’s own body.
@ 9 bobsandiego
Or refused to take the powers back at all, and forced Riker to use them to get rid of them.
@ 10 DeepThought
I think the Q powers are magical enough that they’d have restored the girl perfectly fine. I don’t get the sense that space-time has much of a rubber band effect, in that there’s a Way Things Should Be Or Else. Every time they change the course of history we get alternate universes, not a rupture of the continuum.
@ 11 Lemnoc
Spot-on.
@ 15 ShameandFailure
Welcome and thanks! We look forward to the discussions.
@ 17 Eugene
I particularly liked Q’s remark that “Oh, your species is always suffering and dying.” It certainly is, and doubly so if your understanding of us is from Shakespeare.
The show seems really keen on exposing people’s deep dark secrets to all their coworkers. We’ve had “The Naked Now,” “Where No One Has Gone Before” where you could see everyone’s imaginations at work, and now this. It only gets worse as they use the holodeck as a crutch for characterization.
re: the Q powers being magical —
That’s just the thing though. It seems to me that this entire episode depends on Riker not being omniscient — how can he Learn A Valuable Lesson if he already knows everything?
Of course, it’s possible Q is just lying when he says Riker has the power of the Q (or playing a game because he didn’t say Riker has *all* of it). If omniscience is part of the package, perhaps he didn’t give that to Riker, or Riker can’t access it yet. In any event, the point is when you make a human into a god, the resulting god still has human limitations and blindnesses; if those include the minds of close friends, they’d necessarily include the minds of dead strangers. I’m not saying there’d be a rubber-band effect if Riker de-killed the girl; just that he cannot know enough to do the job properly.
There’s a larger point about Q’s characterization here — he is like the Greek gods — all-powerful but fundamentally human, able to have comprehensible motivations like pestering Picard out of boredom or because it grants him amusement. He’s not like the God of the Abrahamic religions, by definition unknowable and fundamentally alien in his conceptions of justice and morality and rightness, in what amuses him and what displeases him. That remark, “your species is always suffering and dying,” that’s Olympian disdain, not divine unconcern. (And if the Q in general do not have a kind of omniscience that extends into the minds of others, that would explain all of Q’s messing with the Enterprise crew; he is trying to discover insight into their minds which he has to arrive at the old-fashioned way.)
Back on that Riker-revival thing, because it touches on another point that’s fuzzy in Star Trek: the existence of a soul or a non-physical aspect of personhood/selfhood. When Picard beams into the energy cloud as pure energy, they have to find *his* energy specifically — even though that’s as nonsensical as homeopathic talk about the memories in water molecules — they can’t just re-synthesize him from the pattern buffer. There’s this conception of identity tied to my specific atoms, my specific energy, that says that people are more than the emergent effects of a specifically shaped network of neurons. That’ll get played with later on with Thomas Riker, of course, so far as we’ve seen recently, Riker would have to inject personality into the girl, just rebuilding her brain wouldn’t cut it.
@28 Torie, re adult Wesley: That story was at the very least in pre-production when this episode aired, if not already shooting. It was called Big.
@ 29 DeepThought
By that theory, maybe the girl’s chi or whatever is floating around in the vicinity and could be easily wrangled back into her body.
@ 30 DemetriosX
Not really. It’s been a long time since I saw it, but I remember that in Big the boy-man manages to create a whole double life where no one knows who/what he really is aside from his best friend (who’s a kid, obviously). They all treat him like an adult because they all assume he’s an adult. Wesley, on the other hand, would be a child in a man’s body who everyone on the ship knew was a child. He couldn’t “pass,” and no one would treat him like an adult when they knew he was a teenager.
Torie
You’re touching on what I meant about having Wesley grow up because of Riker’s gift. Have Wesley come to realize – through continued troubled interactions with others – that there’s more to growing up than just getting bigger. Then let his being returned to his normal physical self be the starting point for him growing into a character worthy of wearing the uniform. But that has to be filed under the heading “What could have been.”
On a slightly different tack;
As someone already touched on, I was never that fond of Riker, especially in the first season when they tried to shoehorn him into the “James T. Kirk” mold. With all apologies to Jonathan Frakes, he just never had the…PRESENCE of William Shatner, and it showed when they made him the center of a story. Instead of commanding, he came of as smug or petulant, and he was even less believable when they tried to make him a ‘ladies man’ ( in such stinkers as “Angel One”, or “Up The Long Ladder” ).
Although he grew into a much better character, he was almost unbearable in the beginning. He had that same sort of soft blandness apparent in the character of Will Decker in “Star Trek – The Motion Picture”. I found it hard to believe either of them as effective ship commanders. Stories like “The Icarus Factor” which explored his daddy issues also did him no favors. As with Wesley, I got tired of writers trying to convince us that Riker was “the best” by simply having other characters ( like Picard ) pay lip service in dialogue. I don’t feel the character and actor really gelled until “The Best Of Both Worlds”, where he was forced to take command and show what he had. By that point, I think the writers had stopped trying to write him as “Kirk Jr. – Man Of Adventure!” and really allowed a newer, more original character to emerge.
Ironically I think Riker became more tolerable as a character once they made him less commanding, if that makes any sense. Once he became a clearly delineated member of the supporting crew and not an awkward sort of co-captain, Riker made more sense.
Superficial of me to say this, I know, but I think the beard helped too. There’s a babyfaced look to the first-season version of Riker that’s hard to take seriously when he’s trying to throw his weight around.
As for Riker the ladies man…ugh. With due disrespect to the episodes Dep1701 names for me Riker’s worst moment will always be in the episode “11001001”, the one with “Minuet”. He unleashes some pseudo-Bogartian pickup line actually containing the phrase “gin joint” that cracks me up to this day just thinking about it.
But it’s hard for me to think of a Trek character who was ever convincingly sexy. Even Kirk’s much-vaunted skills of seduction are faintly silly, although forgivably so (unlike Riker’s parody version.) Curiously, whenever I think of the most genuinely erotically charged scenes in any Star Trek show, they’ve mostly to do with Spock; for example, Spock’s private moments with the Romulan commander in “The Enterprise Incident”, tame and understated as they are, have more sexual energy in them than anything I can think of in TNG.
@34
“Ironically I think Riker became more tolerable as a character once they made him less commanding, if that makes any sense. Once he became a clearly delineated member of the supporting crew and not an awkward sort of co-captain, Riker made more sense.”
Exactly! I think you nailed, quite concisely, the point my sleepy brain was trying to get across in my post last night.
@22 Eugene: Maybe after reviewing all the records and seeing Janeway make the exact opposite of what a sane person would say was the correct decision so often, the only safe thing for Starfleet to do was promote her out of the way. Kicked upstairs, as it were.
@ 32 Ludon
Ah, I see. Yes, that would have been better.
@ 33 Dep1701 and @ 34 etomlins
Agreed on all counts. He starts off as a smug jerk who tries too hard. It isn’t until he gets some beard gravitas and stops competing with Picard that he finds a place. Early on, the show is constantly pitting him against Picard as equally capable and confident. This doesn’t work both because Frakes just doesn’t play him that way, and because it doesn’t make sense to have two commanders. It isn’t until he turns down the captaincy that the writers acknowledge him in a supporting role that suits the whole ensemble much better. With time, they also showed the ways in which he complements Picard, rather than competes with him, by being tactful and personable in a way that Picard isn’t.
It’s a good point about Spock and sexuality, too. Star Trek unfortunately either neutered its main characters, or made them laughably pornographic (see: Dax, Seven of Nine), with little room for healthy sexiness in between.
I’ve only just learned that SFDebris did a video review of this episode some while back:
http://sfdebris.com/startrek/t111.asp
He’s quite strident, hilariously so, pointing out (among other things) that while Picard and by extension the entire episode takes it for granted that it would be wrong for Riker to use his Q powers for any reason, even saving a life, never does the episode ever bother to tell us why.
@etomlins #38
That’s pretty much what Torie said in her review —
…no?
Yes! Although it’s rather amusing to see it put in the form of a hypothetical conversation between Capt. Picard and the dead girl’s parents.