Was Q prepared to intervene at Wolf 359 / Earth?

Not that Q is a particularly moral being, but he did have a soft spot for humans and Picard specifically. And he knows he was the one who brought them in contact with the Borg.

Was he confident that humanity (and the Enterprise) would succeed? Was he confident that they could rescue Picard?

Or did he just treat the whole thing as another test for humanity and was prepared to see them get assimilated if they failed?

Or did he just not really care at all?

 

Q is just an asshole. That’s all we really need to know.

 

Q would not have intervened to save Picard. He knows as well as anyone that the Federation can't afford to count on him to reverse any bad things that may happen. That way lies complacency and stagnation.

Q may be harsh and abrasive at times but I really do feel he has the Federation's (and even Picard's) best interests at heart. If not, he'd never have flung the Enterprise out to meet the Borg in the first place.

 

One might argue that Q flinging the E-D out to meet the Borg was his intervention.

The Borg were already active near the Romulan neutral zone; just imagine what would have happened if they'd decided to visit the AQ and the E-D hadn't encountered them previously.

Not that encountering them previously seemed to do a great deal of good, but it certainly didn't hurt.

 

Q might have known how things would play out and that there would have been no need to interfere. So this question wouldn't even arise for him imo

 

I think the point was Q giving them prior knowledge of the Borg was what did save them.

 

He would not have intervened, as we saw in the alternate universe in "Parallels," where the Federation was gone and the Borg were everywhere. But perhaps in that universe, Q had future knowledge that the Borg would be defeated anyway at a later point by a different galactic power, and humanity (as ex-Borg) would go back to realizing its potential as hinted at by Q.

Q allowed the Federation to glimpse its existential threats - as in "All Good Things" - thereby allowing humanity to act on its own behalf to save itself, but that was the extent of his intervention. If humanity didn't seize the opportunity, then it was game over.

 

No. Why would he care?

 

This. Seriously, why would he really care?

 

Why NOT?

 

Q probably stood on the outer hull of the Borg cube, eating popcorn and enjoying the carnage.

 

Probably for the same reason he didn't stop the Dominion war or any of a number of other threats to the Federation. He's not the Federation's fairy god being.

 

Exactly. As I said, the Federation can't afford to depend on Q to smooth everything over.

But as we all saw, Q did bother to introduce the Federation to the Borg. That proves he cares. If he didn't care, he wouldn't have done anything at all.

 

I love how many different ways Q's actions in "Q Who" can be interpreted.

-He brought the Federation to the Borg's attention.
-He brought the Borg to the Federation's attention.
-The Borg wouldn't have invaded if Q hadn't intervened.
-The Borg were already going to invade.
-Q only introduced the E-D to the Borg because Picard dismissed Q's claims that they weren't ready for what they were going to face.
-Q had more motivations to his intervention than are immediately apparent, perhaps even in retrospect.

It would be fascinating to see how things unfolded in the timeline where Q didn't introduce the E-D to the Borg.

 

The Borg were already headed in the Federation's direction, because they picked up the signal from ENT's "Regeneration".

You probably think I'm joking.

 

I think we don't have a way to know that's the case. Couldn't we just as easily argue that it was the run in with the Raven that piqued the Borg's interest? Or the Romulan neutral zone incident?

Obviously TPTB hadn't come up with that plot point at the time either, so one could even argue that from an out-of-universe standpoint Q's motives may have been retooled.

 

I'm not sure that he cares. I don't think he cares about much except himself. He could easily have let the borg destroy the Enterprise.
And besides, the borg knew about the Federation before that episode.

 

Again: Then why did he bother introducing the Federation to the Borg?

If Q just wanted to watch the Borg destroy the Enterprise, he would have done nothing. The Borg would have eventually caught up to the Federation, and the resulting carnage would have been a thousand times worse than Wolf 359.

Q obviously cares enough that he's willing to give the Federation a fighting chance. That's the whole reason he did what he did in "Q Who".

 

I thought that was all about putting Picard in his place and teaching him that contrary to what he believes, there are aliens out there he isn't ready to deal with.

 

I don't think that happened in the original timeline. After all, the events in Regeneration were a consequence of First Contact, which involved the Borg meddling with the timeline, so the timeline was altered for sure. Also, Scorpion happened later than First Contact in both Stardates and airdates so the Hansens searching out the Borg 20 years before may have been part of that altered timeline, too.

So it's perfectly possible the first Borg contacts in the original timeline really were the incidents referred to in the Neutral Zone and what we saw in Q Who.

That's a possible interpretation of why Q did it, but we don't know for sure. Picard himself gives a different interpretation in Q Who, stating that 'perhaps Q did the right thing for the wrong reasons', apparently believing him to be more of a capricious and vindictive person.

I'll agree though that in All Good Things, Q seemed (almost) sincere in desire for Picard to pass the trial. But the Q in Q Who is still a lot closer to the Q of Encounter at Farpoint.