Limit your advancement opportunities...but regain your individuality. Tough call.
What were the original plans for Guinan in TNG?
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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Limit your advancement opportunities...but regain your individuality. Tough call.
I really wish I could draw that...
All Good Things
<observation lounge>
LAFORGE: I don't believe him. This has to be another one of Q's games. He's probably listening to us right now, getting a big laugh out of watching us jump through his hoops.
PICARD: Normally I would agree with you, but this time I feel that somehow it is different. There was a deadly earnestness about him. I think he's serious. Which means that in some fashion, I am going to be the cause of the destruction of humanity.
GUINAN (sticking her head around the doorpost). Nope. It's all still hogwash and illusions. Do you honestly think the Continuum would allow him to do such a thing? Even if you deliberately tried to cause the end of all humanity, nothing would happen. I would just try to have some fun at Q's expense if I were you.
aaaaand thank you, Guinan for spoiling a perfectly good episode ... (no wonder she wasn't in the finale!).
I'm not sure Guinan would be story appropriate in the movie "Insurrection" because the plot had such a heavy influence on the "Indian Removal Act" and was already AT THE TIME a very tired theme fully explored with the Maquis. Since there was this sense of the character having hints she's tinkered with time and space; I would believe "Generations" was the movie best fit for her. They blew an interesting opportunity on the character being part of Zephram's Montana people in FC. Guinan should've been the Alfrie Woodward character.
The fact was TNG movies wasn't interested in tackling far out tales of the reaches of exploration, something I thought the series just scratched the surface. Data should've been more like his Professor counterpart in "All Good Things..." but instead he's this deconstructed ass-clown who had waaaaay too much screen time. The rest of the cast seemed to fall under archetypes, the guy with the X-Men eyes eww AHHH - so he has to see from a far or strange things on a mountain. The Doctor and Counsellor, who are women, so they have to talk about their boobs or better yet be drunk or the R-Word. The Space Wolf-Man has to be the vicious and awkward person, and the first officer has to be the golly-gee guy because... he's directing the thing and he'd already convinced himself viewers want to see more of the gold a$$-clown.
As for Generations, oh man, wtf was going on in that movie??? THAT was not a way to gear audiences for TNG of adventures... what a dud? Guinan having more of a presence in the movie along with Soran would've had a better sense of understanding their race and create some actual character tension on their ethics and center upon the real aim for what this thing should be about. Revenge seeking to kill the Borg.
Guinan: I mean, think about it! Even with the Borg that was just the rest of the Continuum allowing him to warn you of a foe that was already coming for you!
I think it would have been cool had she been from the race rom the Survivors, but she is a pacifist. And one episode she would have a dilemma on whether to use her powers or not
How about this: since she's supposed to be from a species of "listeners"...what if she's exactly that?
Maybe she's from a species that's like the Watchers from the Marvel Universe, that observes and records all events in the universe?
That would fit with her being immune to Q's powers and being able to see through his illusions, as well as her being able to sense if there's something wrong with reality. If her species is dedicated to record history as it is, then they ought to have ways to recognize and work against illusions and reality alterations.
And it would also justify her not using her powers to save the day all the time, since her species would probably be very passive with their power-use in fears of exerting too much influence on the "natural flow" of history.
Maybe she's from a species that's like the Watchers from the Marvel Universe, that observes and records all events in the universe?
That would fit with her being immune to Q's powers and being able to see through his illusions, as well as her being able to sense if there's something wrong with reality. If her species is dedicated to record history as it is, then they ought to have ways to recognize and work against illusions and reality alterations.
And it would also justify her not using her powers to save the day all the time, since her species would probably be very passive with their power-use in fears of exerting too much influence on the "natural flow" of history.
Do you think Guinan has the ability to spare herself from Q's powers?
One rhing aboht her which was odd but I hoped it would be more. She always wore these large hats with a tilted disk at the back. I wondered if those were to cover an unusually shaped feature on the back of her head, like the Mimbari crests in B-5. Turned out she just has a odd taste in hat designs...
I always got that sense that,
A) Q can't directly affect Guinan: no unwanted shapeshifting, for instance. However, if Q somehow rewrites reality so that, say, sentient/sapient life across the galaxy never evolved, she'd be gone with everyone else.
and
B) Guinan has a memory that is resistant to/removed from temporal alterations to a degree; she will always at least sense that something is "off".
Perhaps A is true, but Guinan apparently at least still needed to actively defend herself if Q threatened to do such a thing. Otherwise, her defensive posture in Q Who wouldn't have been necessary, so apparently she isn't totally impervious to such an attack.
Think that's very likely. She wouldn't have attacked him in "Deja Q", if he could harm, manipulate, kill or even erase her with his powers.
He had lost his powers back then, but she couldn't expect that he wouldn't get them back eventually...
I think the original plans were something like:
“Whoopi has expressed interest in appearing on the show, let’s find her a role.”
“How about bar tender? Then we can get her in for more episodes if she wants to come back”
“Yes!”
And then they made it up as they went along. I’d bet money on Guinan's bible entry saying something like:
“Ten Forward’s personable yet enigmatic bar tender from the El Aurian species. Not much is known about her past but she is as insightful as an empath and subtly wise.”
“Whoopi has expressed interest in appearing on the show, let’s find her a role.”
“How about bar tender? Then we can get her in for more episodes if she wants to come back”
“Yes!”
And then they made it up as they went along. I’d bet money on Guinan's bible entry saying something like:
“Ten Forward’s personable yet enigmatic bar tender from the El Aurian species. Not much is known about her past but she is as insightful as an empath and subtly wise.”
I don't think they came up with the term 'El-Aurian' when originally creating Guinan's character. It was first used on screen in an episode of Deep Space Nine to describe another person of her race (originally the character was supposed to be one of Guinan's sons, but that aspect got dropped.) Although I do remember seeing the term used in one of the novels possibly before it was used on screen, but I'm not 100% sure about that.
