Why is Picard responsible and not Q in All Good Things...?

[eepruls]

Just watched All Good Things... again for the upteenth time and had a question. Q tells Picard that he is responsible for the time jumps but that Picard is responsible for the destruction of mankind (because of the anti-time spatial anomaly growing backwards).

Isn't the reason Picard initiates the scan in all three time periods because he's shifting in time? Or did Picard in the future just suddenly decide out of nowhere that he needs to go to the Devron system? I had always assumed he wanted to go to the Devron system because of the present time frame and the Romulan threat along the Neutral Zone. So I guess my question is, how would this have happened if Q hadn't have initiated the time jumps? I always see Q as the reason everything is happening, not Picard.

 

[Deks]

That's what made the thing puzzling for me as well.
Q was the one who was responsible for Picard shifting back and forth in time.
Also, the scanning beam which created the anti-time distortion was a result of what Picard saw in alternate time frames because he was actively looking for the distortion that he saw thanks to Q.

Picard in the future probably might have gone to the Devron system due to Romulan or Klingon activity, but I do not think that anything of that nature would be enough to prompt him to initiate the scanning beam that would rupture space-time and create an anti-time distortion.

 

[JarodRussell]

The Q Continuum intended Picard to be in the present only. Q was the one who decided to help Picard a bit by showing him past and future, too. Picard would have been responsible, even without Q's intervention. It was just a giant cosmic mystery game anyway. It didn't happen for "real".

 

[Finn]

The Q Continuum intended Picard to be in the present only. Q was the one who decided to help Picard a bit by showing him past and future, too. Picard would have been responsible, even without Q's intervention. It was just a giant cosmic mystery game anyway. It didn't happen for "real".

I agree. Q was just messing with Picard.

It shows when Troi in the present said she didn't remember Picard shouting orders when he first stepped off the shuttlecraft with Tasha seven years before.

 

[doublegoodprole]

Ahh, you're all missing the point.

Picard was responsible for the time shifts. Intuitively--subconsciously--Picard knew shifting through time was the only way to solve the mystery...even before the mystery was clear to him.

In his conscious mind, he couldn't break out of his three-dimensional "space explorer" mode. But in his subconscious, he was embracing the potential Q was talking about--he was thinking (and acting) in a non-linear fashion.

Charting the endless possibilities of existence and whatnot...Picard was just doing what humans are capable of doing in the Star Trek universe, albeit unknowingly and with the "assistance" of Q.

 

[Saga]

'you're not thinking 4th dimensionally!'

 

[submachine]

I am still doing the Picard manuver

 

[doublegoodprole]

I am still doing the Picard manuver

Due to our current lack of faster-than-light propulsion technologies, I find this highly unlikely.

 

[KobayashiMaru13]

Ahh, you're all missing the point.

Picard was responsible for the time shifts. Intuitively--subconsciously--Picard knew shifting through time was the only way to solve the mystery...even before the mystery was clear to him.

In his conscious mind, he couldn't break out of his three-dimensional "space explorer" mode. But in his subconscious, he was embracing the potential Q was talking about--he was thinking (and acting) in a non-linear fashion.

Charting the endless possibilities of existence and whatnot...Picard was just doing what humans are capable of doing in the Star Trek universe, albeit unknowingly and with the "assistance" of Q.

This. And either way, Q just likes to mess with his mind.

 

[Cyke101]

I am still doing the Picard manuver

Due to our current lack of faster-than-light propulsion technologies, I find this highly unlikely.

He could mean the act of pulling down your shirt to adjust it, too.