Please help me understand the Q

[YARN]

I have the benefit of knowing how TV shows work.

I have the benefit of knowing how words work.

What you have in this proof is an ambiguous example. It seems likely that Q intervened, but we don't know.

Even if we to accept this as an clear-cut example of Qs benign intervention, we still have to consider the overall character which is demonstrated in the course of these episodes.

If the Q really was only pretending to be a tormentor/trickster with the EQ of a 13 year-old school yard bully, we have to consider scenes where we have seen Q speaking and acting without humans around. In scenes with humans, we might suppose that it is all an elaborate act for their ultimate benefit (of course, this interpretation involves speculation beyond what we're shown on the show). Consider, for example, that private scene in the shuttle craft where Q is interacting with another Q. As another poster noted, this scene reveals that the Q really are bratty.

At most, Data's characterization is most apt. Q tends to look out for Picard like a favorite pet - Picard is an ongoing amusement for Q.

 

[Mojomoe]

That's actually a really good point.

Then again, in hindsight (remembering this episode loosely from the months since I've seen it), Q wasn't being bratty but merely aloof and disinterested, while Q was doing his best impression of an obnoxious Q.

That is to say, our Q (Q) was acting sheepishly like a fellow who's been caught with his pants down but feels he has to keep putting on an act, while the other Q (Q) struck me as a bored bureaucrat who was aware of Q's charade but was kind enough not to call him on it.

Spose what I'm saying is that it could just as easily be a case of them both continuing to play the parts they've been playing, without the conviction. After all, they're speaking english and dallying in the forms of hairless apes while pretending to breathe air, so it's not like they wear their true feelings on their simulated sleeves.

I guess it would be the equivalent of having a real conversation with a buddy while you were both signed into, oh, an MMORPG or somesuch. Having a conversation that transcends the game, but still half playing a role.

 

[CaptainMatt]

It's something the Original Series higher life-forms would have never done, except for trelan but he was a child of higher evolved beings. The Q are more sinister in motivation and scheming than the kind of evolved beings Captain Kirk was used to meeting.

 

[Vanyel]

The Q could be seen as bratty and and as what I believe was meant to be the IQ of a 13 year old bully, because they are as far above us, on the evolutionary scale, as we are above Plesiadapis. Yes, I looked that creature up. It looks like a squirrel.

Squirrel!

 

[Mojochi]

The more I think about Deja-Q, the more I think that if I were Q, I'd have asked to be given an android body exactly like Data's, but of course not a mirror resemblance

 

[Alrik]

^

Interesting thought, but one that probably wouldn't have occurred in that fraction of a second that he had to decide. He didn't have much interest in Data until Deja Q.