There was an episode where a Q wants to commit suicide, and I think it's the same one they are having a civil war about. You know, from a Q standpoint, them committing suicide might mean disagreement with Q on a core issue, and the civil war might be Q taking over the rest of the Q; since there's no reason to think anything was as it appears, at the end. Also, the death of the Q never really had an impact that it should have, I can think of 4 major concepts they could have had a run at it, with such.
those episodes were kind of a mess, IMHO. They made the Q concept far too literal, with fighting wars inside the continuum, imprisoning Qs in a star, etc. Plus, they forget Amanda in "True Q" was born to Q parents, making the whole idea of Q's kid as "messiah" kind of silly.
The episode with the Q civil war didn't really click with me much either. The crew overwhelming these Q, in their own realm of all things, felt really off. I never did quite understand exactly how powerful the Q are supposed to be. Sometimes, they seem omnipotent and other times they seem to have many limitations, despite their cosmic powers.
I guess this would beg the question.... How powerful are the "Q" really? Or maybe that's more suited for another thread.
My theory? It's all a lie. All of it. Every single thing Q or the Continuum say about themselves is either a flat-out lie, an exaggeration, an understatement, or a half-truth. Q (de Lancie) is and always has been a trickster, and we were led to believe that the rest of the Continuum are far more reserved and "above it all", but I think that's a lie. They really are a race of tricksters, every last one of them. It's all a game to them, even though they pretend to be judging humanity.
I've pretty much think the same about them. They're kind of a Loki figure, so to speak. There are times when they seem very contradictory, like not seeming to know things they ("Q") should. They're supposed able to master space and time but they can't predict an outcome to something that happens minutes later or they don't know something about someone they should easily be able to acquire.
The real problem with this is Voyager just took it too far. What was compelling about the Q was the mystery about them, their intentions and motivations. They took an omnipitent race and watered them down into a disfunctional sitcom family pretty much, to make the "heroes" able to deal with them. Death Wish is a good episode and was fun to watch and if they left it there that would've been fine. Q and the Grey was just downright stupid and Q2... ugh. Just ugh.
Death Wish I didn't love, was kind of neutral. Didn't kind of gel with the other Q so much - but did like Kathy's and Q's interaction. Worked well much like with Picard. I could have done without the Riker cameo. The Q and the Grey - well here's an episode where it clearly feels like they had two ideas and merged them. Wanting to do American Civil War and a Q story. Let's merge them! Again some good chemistry between Kathy and Q. The rest of the crew interactions - like Paris and Neelix doing nothing but go 'What are you doing Q'? was poor. Miss Q however was awesome. I think in TNG Q worked well with the entire crew - what shows from Paris and Neelix's interaction is that Kathy/Q holds the story, but the rest falls flat. I don't remember, and probably don't want to, when the kid comes back later.
Oddly enough I never had a problem with the Q civil war episodes and just went with the madness (isn't that what Q is about?) I kind of took it that when the crew were brought into the continuum, they were being temporarily put in a context where they could interact halfway on a Q's level - given Q 'clothing' and 'weapons' that to their human perceptions, were made to look like human uniforms and human guns. But Q said something to the effect that the crew wouldn't want to imagine what a Q weapon could actually do to them, if it struck them. In other words, the humans were children being allowed to shoot the cosmic firearm at the other gods, but if return fire had struck them, they would have been obliterated in ways humans could literally not imagine. As for it all being a lie, I don't think so personally. However, I WOULD go with "no one version of events is complete, as Q exist in too many dimensions for humans to comprehend". Everything Q has ever done, ever shown anyone, the civil war, etc - also exists in other ways, in other dimensions, that are nothing like what humans have seen or could understand. One analogy I read once which make sense, was humans (in Star Trek) are merely characters in a computer game by Q standards, and a Q is the player in the 'real world'. The player may say things within a word balloon inside the game, but even if those statements were true, there would still be an entire universe outside the game world that the characters inside couldn't comprehend.
The only trouble with Q being an all out trickster is that he demonstrates real abilities, ones that couldn't possibly be illusions. There is definitely incredible power at his fingertips. But at the same time I think there's no question that he's a liar and has been caught making exaggerations. He is really more of a powerful prankster. He likes to have fun and tease/taunt other beings in a myriad of different ways that suits him for the moment. And you can bet anything that what he says about the continuum is likely an extreme exaggeration. Why would he confess real details? There's likely a risk of what the humans might be able to do with that knowledge. The unforeseeable, like stumbling upon the secret of Q's power. So, he's a charlatan, albeit a very powerful one.
What Voyager did to the Borg, they eventually did to the Q. They took all the mysteriousness out of the Q, just like they did with the Borg. I liked Death Wish, because of some of the little details they let slip about the Q, like their power may be just some type of advanced technology that humans don't understand. On the hand, the episodes after that went to far. Period. The Q aren't interesting any more, because we've seen too much of them. And it was really silly. The early TNG made the Q fascinating. The coolest thing I saw from them was when Q kidnapped the crew and made them play his little game on a fantasy world he created. Then later they were returned to exactly the same time before the whole thing started--they suspended time.
The best Q interaction ever was the expression on his face when Janeway was listing his track record with the Federation ending with the word 'pest'.
One of my favorite Q moments was actually on the otherwise terrible "Q-Less." Two of them, actually. The first is the awesome reveal as what appears to be a random Starfleet officer turns around and we notice it's Q and think, "This is gonna be awesome!" And then the rest of the episode was rather disappointing, except for Sisko punching Q in the face without hesitation.