In the encounter between Q and Gunian (in Q Who) - was the original intent that Guinan would have special powers (beyond the time sense we saw later)? There is a scene where it looks like she and Q are going to start shooting at each other with their hands?
I always wondered about that myself. Guinan looks like she's about to start throwing hexes or something.
I always wondered what her relationship to Picard was. In BOBW she tells Riker it is "beyond friendship, beyond family..." ??
I don't know about hand projectiles, but it seems her encounter with the Nexus gave her some degree of clairvoyance, or a 6th sense of sorts. Case in point - during Yesterday's Enterprise Guinan was freakin'. She knew she wasn't supposed to know Tasha Yar... etc. Her Spidey Sense seemed to be aware of alternate timelines. I could see how a close call with an anomaly like The Nexus could have such an effect. After Generations, rewatching certain TNG episodes where Guinan had a weird sense about people had a different meaning.
I assumed, when I first saw the Guinan-Q confrontation that there was going to be something more to Guinan that what we eventually saw. I felt toyed with by the Guinan-Picard relationship, to be honest. It's like the writers wanted it to be something mythic and mythical and couldn't quite make it happen. I dunno, Guinan just bugged me, per se, to be honest.
If you watch The Color Purple, Whoopi Goldberg does the same strange pose when a guy is about to attack her. So I think it's just a Whoopi Goldberg thing. I loved this scene--"she's an imp"--and the whole episode, really. Lesser writers would have had Q gloating at the end. Everyone seemed slightly more intellectual in the episodes with heavy Maurice Hurley influence, and they wore that well, especially Riker.
Posted from Guinan's entry on Memory Alpha: In the novel Engines of Destiny, a confrontation between an alternate Guinan and the Guardian of Forever reveals that the version of Guinan in the Nexus is the source of her constant 'feelings', as this version of herself exists outside all time, and can thus reach out to her other selves and provide valuable insight into possible actions that must be taken, although even she is ignorant of what the definitive outcome will be in the end.
Besides hanging out in 10 Forward, making strange drinks and wearing a weird hat, I did not notice any special powers that Guinan had. However, she was of the same species that Dr. Soran was in "Generations" I don't recall that he had any special powers of his own, besides lecturing Pickard about how totally futile life outside the Nexus is, and killing Kirk... Resistance is Futile
it seemed like Guinan, with her extreme age and listening abilities, had a 'special power' in that she knew the 'true nature' of the Q, and was not fooled by his tricks. Q might've just warned picard of her being an 'imp' in order to cast doubt on her in Picard's eyes, in an attempt to make her less credible (and in turn make himself more credible to picard) in reality, it was probably a character development that the writers decided to drop and were luckily able to later attribute the whole thing to the Nexus and call it good
In the book Star Trek: Where No One Has Gone Before, which covers the history of the whole anthology (the second edition covered from TOS to about S2 or 3 of VOY, I think), there is a brief comment by Whoopi on the character of Guinan. She states that it was not to be explained how she knew Q, because this would give away why she is on the Enterprise. Guinan is also said to be several thousand years old in TNG, though I have no idea if this age range has ever been suggested by other sources.
This question gets asked too much and I don't know why. It was just an extreme defensive posture. She could've been prepared to do a wrestling/judo/karate move on Q should he decide to rush her for all we know. I doubt she was supposed to have "powers."
That...or maybe Q can only affect those who believe they are defenseless and that they CAN be affected. Perhaps Guinan was wise enough to realize this, and by showing she believed she could take a stand against him, he was thus unable to affect her. Which of course would anger Q to no end--especially if he couldn't do anything about it but cast aspersions on her credibility.
While she might not have had super powers, I sincerely doubt she was bracing for a physical assault from Q.