The resolution in Death Wish

[Refuge]

Did Death Wish go one step too far? So suicidal Q is bored and wants to die. Being bored is such a good reason to die, I mean yeah like, why wouldn't you? Boredom is just golly, gee, whiz... intolerable.

When Janeway granted whiney Q the right for asylum, shouldn't that have been enough? Being exiled in claustrophic internment was cruel, but why couldn't he have died a mortal death? Let nature take it course. Having the other Q give him poison... were we supposed to interpret that as being noble?

 

[at Quark's]

I take that episode as a methaphor for being tired of life and realistically having no expectation of anything new beyond what one already got out of life. Whether committing suicide in that case could be morally justifiable and such could be an extremely thorny debate I'd rather not get myself into.

I find the role of Q ("our" Q) more interesting, actually. Why is he first trying to prevent Quinn being granted asylum, arguing that such a death would be a tremendous waste, damaging to the continuum, immoral, etc etc etc, only to assist him in committing suicide later? I know some dialoge in the ep is dedicated to it, 'explaining' it but still I find this sudden turnaround a bit unexpected.

 

[Refuge]

Well my interpretation having just watched it yesterday, was that our Q was slightly, for want of a better word, 'flattered' by over it Q. He was reminded he was once an entity that challenged others. That he had fallen into line. It just had a tinge of the shallow in the end. That our Q had decided he was going to be a rebel and aiding over it Q to die was a statement.

So typical of Q to make things about themselves. All that power and it comes down to that.

 

[Voth commando1]

Did Death Wish go one step too far? So suicidal Q is bored and wants to die. Being bored is such a good reason to die, I mean yeah like, why wouldn't you? Boredom is just golly, gee, whiz... intolerable.

When Janeway granted whiney Q the right for asylum, shouldn't that have been enough? Being exiled in claustrophic internment was cruel, but why couldn't he have died a mortal death? Let nature take it course. Having the other Q give him poison... were we supposed to interpret that as being noble?

He's an omniscient god that has seen and been and done nearly everything. He sees life as futile, the continuum staid and stagnant. When you live forever, can know and be everything and anything I imagine after billions of years life does become tiresome.

His suicide is an attempt to both shake up said staid status quo and as a sort of protest against the status quo.

 

[Refuge]

There is something about suicide for a healthy being I personally find unsettling. It was interesting though because I didn't think much about the Qs as a race until watching this. They believed in execution, so mortality was not foreign to them. A real God is eternal.

 

[Voth commando1]

Depends on what idea of god your referring to.

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is certainly, the Norse gods-aren't, the Greek gods well they can be imprisoned at least, in Buddhism gods go through suffering and reincarnation so not eternal, and I couldn't tell you enough about other world beliefs without being sure I was mistaken.

 

[at Quark's]

Regardless of the issues, this ep contains one of Tuvok's best lines (imho):

TUVOK: And you find nothing contradictory in a society that outlaws suicide but practices capital punishment.
Q-de-Lancie <after a few seconds of 'how do I get myself out of of this one'>: No.

 

[Refuge]

Perhaps over it Q should have done something that warranted his execution..

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Quinn was a person of sound mind and body, he wasn't clinically depressed, he was perfectly capable of thinking rationally. I think he should be in control of his own body, whatever he wants to do with it, though I may disagree with his decision. Part of living with freedom is accepting that other people will do things you don't agree with.

 

[Timo]

Exercising control over somebody else's body may be standard practice for maintaining coherence in human societies, but such a pursuit is sorta hopeless in this particular case. And unnecessary to boot, considering Q isn't part of the human society.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paul Weaver]

Depends on what idea of god your referring to.

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is certainly, the Norse gods-aren't, the Greek gods well they can be imprisoned at least, in Buddhism gods go through suffering and reincarnation so not eternal, and I couldn't tell you enough about other world beliefs without being sure I was mistaken.

Klingon gods were all killed

 

[Voth commando1]

True-but it's open to interpretation if they were "real" as the Q are.

 

[Gaith]

A real God is eternal.

A curious statement. Gods are fictional constructs,
and thus unbound by natural rules.​

(The above words are mine, not Tuvok's. Unless... he said them offscreen? In a fanfic I wrote, or didn't write? WHO'S TO SAY?! )

 

[Refuge]

Qs are not Gods because they can be killed. They just think having power is what makes a God.

Me: April 21 2017

 

[Trekkin]

Qs are not Gods because they can be killed.

Tell that to the vast majority of human religions and mythologies that involved deities.

Including the Christians.

 

[at Quark's]

Hmmm... a new form of the famous paradox.

Would God be capable of ending his own existence?

(to be fair, not that new. I asked my parents that exact question when I was a child. Got reprimanded for asking such a blasphemous question, too.)

 

[Refuge]

I'm very simple minded. Mortals can be killed. God cannot. Something about eternity. I'm not believing in the concept of a God that isn't existence.

It is not in the God handbook to want to or be able to end his own existence. You know you got reprimanded probably because you asked a cheeky question

 

[at Quark's]

You know you got reprimanded probably because you asked a cheeky question

No, it was not. Perhaps they perceived it as such, but that is irrelevant.

As I remember, I was really wrestling with the problem that if God is almighty, he should also be able to end his own existence. But then, since he would no longer exist, and almigthiness should by definition stretch eternity, he never could have been said to be truly almighty in the first place. Or so I reasoned.

It was in fact the same paradox I read about a few years later in the famous question 'can God make a stone that is so heavy that he can't lift it himself', which may sound like a 'cheeky' question, but in fact says nothing about 'god', but simply points out that there are logical problems with our human comprehension of a concept like 'almightiness' .

 

[Refuge]

I was teasing.. cheeky is a word I think of when kids ask the hard questions.

To me a paradox needs to have a contradiction. I don't see it in the God example. God cannot kill eternal life.

God can lift any stone he makes.

Make it so Number One.

 

[marlboro]

It would have been interesting to follow up on this episode. You have this episode where it's argued that it's ok for a "god" to kill himself because he's bored. Maybe have Q pop into season 5's "Night" with a noose and a bottle of sleeping tablets to encourage Janeway to cure her case of the sads.Clearly, she has that right no matter the impact on her crew, right?

Since the Q are all knowing, didn't they know how this story was going to end? Were they just playing out this little drama for the benefit of the Voyager crew?

Wouldn't the most logical conclusion to be for the Q to strip him of his omniscience? Still alive, but without the boredom of knowing everything before it happens.

Q should have asked Tuvok if Voyager had ever taken any lives. If so, why is not contradictory for people who say life is precious to keep killing countless aliens to save their own skins? It's because "some lives are more precious than others." Suicide is against the law because life is precious. Murderers are executed to prevent them from killing again and to act as a deterrent for anyone else who might want to take a life. That's a legitimate POV. Whether you agree with it or not, it's at least debatable and the discussion would make for an interesting episode. But Q just kinda shrugs his shoulders because the writers message is anti death penalty and pro assisted suicide.

Trek has always sucked at "message" shows with a few exceptions.