Guinan in "Q Who"

[sonak]

Agreed that her powers issue was a "dropped the ball" element with Guinan. Her pose and readiness to fight Q clearly indicated that the writers had it in mind for her to be a MUCH more powerful character than she really turned out to be. Maybe they didn't want her to be a deus ex machina character where she could potentially bail the crew out of danger or something. Or they were just lazy and didn't develop the idea.

 

[Praxius]

Agreed that her powers issue was a "dropped the ball" element with Guinan. Her pose and readiness to fight Q clearly indicated that the writers had it in mind for her to be a MUCH more powerful character than she really turned out to be. Maybe they didn't want her to be a deus ex machina character where she could potentially bail the crew out of danger or something. Or they were just lazy and didn't develop the idea.

I always considered her and her species as very powerful in some ways, but they were a more passive species and only use their powers for self defence, while Q would use their powers for whatever they felt like.

Back in Time's Arrow, she was injured and needed Picard's help.... that's evidence that her species isn't immortal like the Q, nor can they wave their hands to fix problems.... but they live for a very long time and the Q show some level of concern towards their species for some reason which I would conclude stems from their species being able to thwart some of the Q's abilities in some manner.

Here's what Memory Alpha has to say about her species, which are dubbed as "Listeners" (sounds to me as passive):

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/El-Aurian

El-Aurians were a humanoid species of "listeners" originating from the El-Aurian system. Data once speculated (going from appearances) that El-Aurians have an awareness that supersedes the normal flow of time and space......

..... El-Aurians pride themselves on being a race of listeners, and appear to have a form of limited empathic ability. Some have used this to help others, acting as advisors or confidants. A few have turned their talent to more dubious pursuits, becoming con men and tricksters, such as Martus Mazur, while Dr. Soran used his abilities to help bring his genocidal plan to re-enter the Nexus to fruition.....

..... Much of their seeming reticence comes from the El-Aurian racial character. They appear to be natural lore-keepers, and use their phenomenal lifespans and memories to collect the stories and life experiences of various sentient beings. They preserve this knowledge for their own kind, and only occasionally share it with non-El-Aurians. They are a highly personable and empathic race, and as such are very willing to help other sentients work out their problems. It is possible as an offshoot of their prodigious memories and mental facilities that El-Aurians are extraordinarily sensitive to the space-time continuum itself. In 2366, Guinan was able to perceive an alternate timeline which occurred because of a disruption in the starship Enterprise-C's history......

(It was unclear if Guinan's special abilities and perceptions in regard to time and her ability to perceive Q were completely the result of her lineage, or if they were an extra side effect of her experience with the Nexus. According to the recent novel The Buried Age, Guinan's abilities were due to the echo of her left within the Nexus. This concept originated in an unfilmed scene in the Generations screenplay.)

Externally, the El-Aurians are physically identical to Humans, in structure and even the range of racial phenotypes. The only significant physical difference between Humans and El-Aurians is in the aging process, as the extremely long-lived El-Aurian lifespan covers many centuries.
El-Aurian names typically have two syllables.

So there were three El-Aurians in the ST series.

 

[Too Much Fun]

The weirdest thing about this episode was when Guinan and Q were about to duke it out and Guinan's pose looks like she's going to claw Q's eyes out.

That's just a cute visual reference to an 'iconic' pose she makes in the movie "The Color Purple". And the reason she's so vague about the Borg is just to make them seem more ominous with her dialogue. I think we're overanalyzing a bit here.

If she actually gave them a detailed, logical rundown about the Borg right off the bat, it wouldn't get across the basic message of 'the Borg are supreme badasses and the crew is in some deep shit now' quite as powerfully as, "all I can tell you is you better start heading back RIGHT NOW".

 

[SchwEnt]

"all I can tell you is you better start heading back RIGHT NOW"[/I].

Eh, probably right. But then it's all strictly for dramatic purposes. Yeah, she COULD tell them who and what the Borg are and what they do, but... nah, let's save it for an exciting and dramatic reveal in Act Two.

Yeah, it makes for a great eps. But hard to understand in RL terms.

The Enterprise being tossed into Borg space unawares was essentially a certain-death situation, unless they were lucky to leave RIGHT NOW.

I think of other RL situations where one might be in a certain-death situation (Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th, Mexico City earthquake, Hiroshima, and so on)
If you knew the situation was pretty grim and people asked you for help and info, and you KNEW the circumstances, wouldn't you offer something more than "you'd better leave RIGHT NOW" ?

If you knew the circumstances, wouldn't say right away "there's a huge tsunami coming" or "a terrible bomb will go off today" or "an air attack is headed towards us"
or "a tremendous earthquake will destroy us" ?

I still think Guinan should have spilled the beans about the Borg from the get-go. Less dramatic, sure. But seemingly more reasonable to me.

 

[Finn]

So there were three El-Aurians in the ST series.

I might be missing something, but who's the third?

Guinan, Soran and....?

 

[DonIago]

He's in the DS9 episode "Rivals" - An El-Aurian finds what he thinks is a game-of-chance and opens an establishment that rivals Quark's. It's a fairly forgettable episode.

 

[FormerLurker]

One of the other reasons I find it difficult to accept Guinan as an El-Aurian. She's so much more than the others.

 

[JoeFromEarth]

We now the Q are not invincible. They can kill and strip the powers from their own kind. As we saw in Voyager, non-Q's can hold and use Q weapons, thus becoming lethal to an individual Q. I do not find it surprising, then, that Guinan, and perhaps other El-Aurians, have, throughout their centuries if not more of listening, learned of defense techniques against the mighty Q.

 

[Tulaberry whine]

If remember correctly, Guinan warns Picard to leave almost as soon as they get there. We then go to a commercial and when we get back Picard's decided to go exploring. Who knows what was said by who in the meantime? But I'll give Guinan the benefit of the doubt as Picard has proven to be quite stubborn when he wants to be. And once he's made up his mind, what can she do? (I mean, he's just ignored a warning from a person who is apparently beyond friendship and family - this was a man whose mind was not going to be changed.)

I also don't necessarily think Guinan knew the Borg were in the area - she just knew that
that part of space was not a particularly friendly place for lost Federation starships.

BTW, I don't think Guinan was ever used as effectively again as she was in this episode.

 

[Basill]

Indeed... sure he'd be somewhat responsible for a few deaths here and there on the ship, but they was usually to help drive home his point (like those sucked away by the borg when they started hacking up the ship)

A lot of people, both inside the ST universe and outside as viewers, considered Q as a trouble maker who only wanted to torment lesser species simply because he could and it amused him.... but just about every time he was on an episode, he was also proving a point or teaching a lesson...... of course in his own entertaining way.

The Q. Followers of the "tough love" approach.

Who knew?

 

[dodgy_unicorn]

Waaaayyyy back in Ten Forward, Guinan should have said right then and there "[...] They are relentless. You cannot defeat them, you cannot reason with them. They will destroy you. Avoid them at all costs."

Why in the world would she say that? Apparently, the awesome power of a few phaser shots are enough to rip a Cube apart leaving it totally disabled. Not to worry.

 

[Noname Given]

A lot of people, both inside the ST universe and outside as viewers, considered Q as a trouble maker who only wanted to torment lesser species simply because he could and it amused him.... but just about every time he was on an episode, he was also proving a point or teaching a lesson...... of course in his own entertaining way.

Personally, I HATED Q episodes - until this one. This was honestly the only one I liked the Q concept in the series (and my dislike had nothing to do with how John DeLancie played the character - just that most times the character was written stupidly, or very annoyingly).