As a bartender, I can definitely vouch for that.
Did Guinan EVER did or said something useful?
- Thread starter xvicente
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As a bartender, I can definitely vouch for that.
Probably my fanwank...but I interpreted that scene as:
Guinan: "(Something good and prophetic sounding)"
Picard: "Really? (getting his hopes up)"
Guinan: "(Not what Picard was wanting to hear)"
And look on their faces as the Borg Depth Charges start hitting. Awesome.
I agree this is one of the great unresolved loose ends never resolved in Trek. Seriously.
I felt like there was more unresolved between her and Picard's history also. Stuff not solved by the Mark Twain story.
Well, Guinan was from a race of listeners.
She helped Wesley in Evolution without saying much of anything.
She helped Wesley in Evolution without saying much of anything.
In Night Terrors she maintained sanity in Ten Forward by threatening people with large rifles.
Guinan's role wasn't to actively get things done, it was to bring out the best qualities in the people around her.
Guinan's role wasn't to actively get things done, it was to bring out the best qualities in the people around her.
Well, let's put it in context with the actual dialog:
PICARD: You know him?
GUINAN: We have had some dealings.
Q: Those dealings were two centuries ago. This creature is not what she appears to be. She's an imp, and where she goes, trouble always follows.
PICARD: You're speaking of yourself, Q, not Guinan.
Q: Guinan? Is that your name now?
It's not a matter of her holding her own. Q was probably taunting her kind the way he taunts the Enterprise crew. He could dispense with her as he could with anything else. But within the boundaries of not eradicating her, she was able to surprise and fool Q to some degree.
Something I'd like to understand as well. Guinan says how she and Picard have a special relationship that "goes deeper than friends." Lovers? Not so sure about that. In any event, I suspect there was supposed to be another back story episode to cover it and they weren't able to get to it before the series ended.
If it weren't for Guinan, Picard would've run things per usual and the timeline would never have been reset. Essentially, Guinan saved billions of lives. There's something to be said for that!
Thing is, when you put it like that, it just shows up what an utter failure Troi was as a character. Most of that - between her medical-dept job and her empathic powers - should have been her role, and if she'd been better-handled they wouldn't have had a gap for Guinan!
The thing to remember about Q is that powerful as he is, and as terrible a person as he ultimately is, he's fundamentally more mouth than trousers. He taunts, he annoys, and occasionally stings, but he enjoys playing the trickster too much to actually bring his power really to bear. So, like the archetypical bully, even a tiny little fleabite at his own dignity by an 'imp' hurts a lot.
Works in reverse too - from a strictly utilitarian POV, resetting the timeline probably remade more lives than it unmade, true, but there are certainly "reverse" Tashas who lived in the YE timeline and died in the Prime timeline, not to mention kids who were never born because their parents never met and so forth...
Sometimes man will tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor.
Troi could never fill the role of Guinan because Troi is Starfleet through and through, the problems the crew faces are her problems. She is not the outsider that Guinan is. Geordi would never go to Troi for advice on picking up women, Data would not depend on Troi to teach Lal about humanity.
Picard goes to Deanna when he needs close-up focus on an issue, he goes to Guinan when he needs to back away from the trees to see the forest, when he needs perspective.
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