Amanda Rogers, the Q & The Grey, ST:FC

[USS Triumphant]

In the Voyager episode "The Q and The Grey", Q says that it has been thousands of years since the Q had offspring. And yet, we saw Amanda Rogers and heard the explanation of her birth on TNG. Going by release date, "The Q and The Grey" came 5 DAYS after the 24th century portion of events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact. So can I see this as proof that the past events in that movie changed the timeline at least enough that Amanda Rogers was never born? (And yes, I know the real answer is crappy writing, but I'm trying to avoid meta answers here. )

 

[F. King Daniel]

Perhaps from Q's point of view, being able to move through time and space entirely at will, "The Q and the Grey" happened before "True Q"?

The Voyager novel The Eternal Tide gives another explanation, that Amanda was erased from the multiverse somehow or other.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Amanda was conceived like a normal human (i.e. her parents were in human form and had human sex), so perhaps she doesn't count as a real Q offspring.

 

[MacLeod]

^This

 

[Lance]

Yeah, I'll buy that notion too.

Isn't it stated that Amanda's parents were in exile? Possibly they didn't even have powers, and when Amanda starts experiencing them it's more like her latent Q-ness coming back to the fore.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Amanda's parents weren't exiled - quite the opposite, they rejected their Q-ness and willingly lived as humans.

The Q found out, and sent a tornado to the Rogers' home to kill them.

 

[The Wormhole]

In the Voyager episode "The Q and The Grey", Q says that it has been thousands of years since the Q had offspring. And yet, we saw Amanda Rogers and heard the explanation of her birth on TNG. Going by release date, "The Q and The Grey" came 5 DAYS after the 24th century portion of events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact. So can I see this as proof that the past events in that movie changed the timeline at least enough that Amanda Rogers was never born? (And yes, I know the real answer is crappy writing, but I'm trying to avoid meta answers here. )

Honestly, I always went with the above mentioned idea that since Amanda's parents took human form to have her, so she doesn't really count as a Q offspring.

Or another thought, in Q2 we learn that time progresses quicker in the Continuum. For example, Q returns after ten minutes to tell Janeway her idea that he should spend more time with his son failed. Janeway says it's only been ten minutes, to which Q says "on your temporal plane, maybe. In the Continuum it's been several years." So perhaps, in the Q Continuum, The Q and the Grey really is several thousand years after True Q?

 

[Lance]

Amanda's parents weren't exiled - quite the opposite, they rejected their Q-ness and willingly lived as humans.

The Q found out, and sent a tornado to the Rogers' home to kill them.

Hmm, true, I couldn't really remember. If as others suggest they were living as humans, then maybe they willed themselves to give up their powers and become human. Amanda doesn't start exhibiting her latent Q-ness until puberty.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Individual Q can't give up their own powers. They can stop using them, but they will still have them - they'll still be Q unless the continuum *itself* takes their powers away. (We saw this with Q/Quinn in "Death Wish" - Quinn wanted to become human but Q had to make him one.)

 

[Silvercrest]

Maybe they took away each other's.

 

[Vandervecken]

Amanda was conceived like a normal human (i.e. her parents were in human form and had human sex), so perhaps she doesn't count as a real Q offspring.

When Q was referring to Qs having children in the distant past, I assumed he was talking about when they were still entirely corporeal in their default states.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Maybe they took away each other's.

"Okay, are we snapping on 'go' like 1..2..3..GO, or are we snapping ON 3?"

 

[JD5000]

Re: Amanda Rogers, the Q & The Grey, ST:FCybrid s

I always just assumed as others have stated, that since Amanda Rogers wasn't born in the Q Continuum, our buddy Q doesn't count her in his description of the Q's lack of offspring. One of the reasons he was investigating Amanda was to find out if she was a 'True Q' or some sort of bizarre hybrid. We see how Q mate in 'The Q and the Grey', I assume Amanda's parents did it the old-fashioned way.

Which begs the question - when a Q takes another form, does he/she actually BECOME that form? Like down to DNA and everything? Q's concern about Amanda's possible hybrid status would seem to suggest that they do.

 

[T'Girl]

Perhaps from Q's point of view, being able to move through time and space entirely at will, "The Q and the Grey" happened before "True Q"?

Time in the Q Continuum runs backwards (the way it is suppoed to), a process we puny Humans could never understand.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: Amanda Rogers, the Q & The Grey, ST:FCybrid s

when a Q takes another form, does he/she actually BECOME that form? Like down to DNA and everything? Q's concern about Amanda's possible hybrid status would seem to suggest that they do.

I can only assume that they do, otherwise Amanda couldn't exist. She was born as a human because her parents were human when they conceived her...humanly.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: Amanda Rogers, the Q & The Grey, ST:FCybrid s

when a Q takes another form, does he/she actually BECOME that form? Like down to DNA and everything? Q's concern about Amanda's possible hybrid status would seem to suggest that they do.

I can only assume that they do, otherwise Amanda couldn't exist. She was born as a human because her parents were human when they conceived her...humanly.

I think they can probably become whatever degree of completely that form that they wish - anything from just altering what people around them think they are perceiving to actually altering the light/sounds/smells they are emitting (like holodeck characters) without any real substantive change to altering their own surface appearance and all the way through to being completely "really" that form, genetics and all. That being the case, if Amanda's parents wanted to give up being Q and become human, I would assume they took that final approach.

Also, maybe I'm just not remembering a key line right, but I can't recall anything that definitively says that they gave up their powers or otherwise had them stripped. Perhaps they actually exercised self-control! (I don't really believe this, though, because it sets up a catch-22 as far as I'm concerned - It would require self-control beyond that which I believe a human could exercise not to use such powers when people you care about are threatened or have serious problems, so if they had that level of control, they weren't fully human after all.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Technically, the Rogerses didn't "give up" their powers, they just didn't use them. So yes, self-control would be the proper term for it.

And since they were Q - who knows how old they actually were - maybe they simply *enjoyed* being human. They were probably as bored with Q life as "Quinn" was.

Just thought of something else, actually: Since Amanda's parents were killed by a simple tornado (albeit one that was sent by the Continuum), their human form must have been genuine, as a mere tornado would never kill a 'regular' Q. So it would seem that if a Q receives life threatening injuries and doesn't use their powers to remove them, they'll die.

 

[JD5000]

I suppose it's possible that their powers were stripped by other Q at some point between Amanda's birth and their death as well...obviously they would have had to have still had them when she was conceived. Other possible for the tornado thing 'is that it possibly just appeared as a regular tornado, while really being some manifestation of Q powers. 'Q and the Grey' does show that Q can injure one another.

 

[UssGlenn]

Or another thought, in Q2 we learn that time progresses quicker in the Continuum. For example, Q returns after ten minutes to tell Janeway her idea that he should spend more time with his son failed. Janeway says it's only been ten minutes, to which Q says "on your temporal plane, maybe. In the Continuum it's been several years." So perhaps, in the Q Continuum, The Q and the Grey really is several thousand years after True Q?

Well, if 10 minutes is, say, 4 years for them and there are 4 years between episodes we are looking at a gap of over 800,000 years, assuming my math is right.

 

[Nebusj]

Amanda was conceived like a normal human (i.e. her parents were in human form and had human sex), so perhaps she doesn't count as a real Q offspring.

I think we're all overlooking the obvious: Amanda was adopted.