The curse(?) of small universe syndrome

[Christopher]

Talking about more than power source. In fact I wasn't talking about that at all.

Which is why I offered a countering perspective. Yes, it is self-evident how Trelane and Q are related as characters in a work of fiction, but from an in-universe standpoint, they have so little in common that it's not even remotely "natural" to suggest a relationship.

 

[korblborp]

as i recall, unless it's a different novel than the one i am thinking of, trelane was NOT presented as a Q, but part of a "bad crowd" of similar beings that Q (De Lancie) fell in win when he was a "teenager", which included "god" and the thing the Galactic Barrier was made to keep out.

 

[Forbin]

as i recall, unless it's a different novel than the one i am thinking of, trelane was NOT presented as a Q, but part of a "bad crowd" of similar beings that Q (De Lancie) fell in win when he was a "teenager", which included "god" and the thing the Galactic Barrier was made to keep out.

I think he's referring to Q-Squared.

 

[Christopher]

as i recall, unless it's a different novel than the one i am thinking of, trelane was NOT presented as a Q, but part of a "bad crowd" of similar beings that Q (De Lancie) fell in win when he was a "teenager", which included "god" and the thing the Galactic Barrier was made to keep out.

You're thinking of Greg Cox's The Q Continuum trilogy, which featured the Sha Ka Ree "God," the "Day of the Dove" evil pinwheel thingy (called "(*)" in the text), and Gorgan the Friendly Angel.

Peter David's Q-Squared definitely did present Trelane as an immature Q, which was a conceit I never found plausible, though the novel itself is probably my favorite of Peter's novels in spite of that.

 

[Starflight]

Even if Trelane were biologically godlike instead of getting his power from a special mirror (lol), I don't see why he'd necessarily be tied to Q. There's other species like the Daud or even, to an extent, Apollo's race who have similar abilities.

Their ideologies don't even seem to be the same - Trelane is a dick but never hurts anyone (and arguably doesn't intend to, even when hunting Kirk), and his parents are furious at him for messing with other lifeforms. Meanwhile Q throws the Enterprise into Borg space and watches as 18 people get dragged away and assimilated, then makes Picard beg for mercy, which feels a little bit different from Trelane's mischief, to put it mildly.

SNW's decision to make him a Q did inordinately annoy me not because I care that much about Trelane, but rather because it speaks to a certain mindset. TOS' approach is "space is operatic and mythic, anything can happen, there's all kinds of unknowable weirdness out there" while SNW's ethos feels more like "the galaxy consists chiefly of things James Kirk saw, many of which are connected to each other", and the former approach to the setting seems so much more interesting to me.

 

[Christopher]

Even if Trelane were biologically godlike instead of getting his power from a special mirror (lol), I don't see why he'd necessarily be tied to Q. There's other species like the Daud or even, to an extent, Apollo's race who have similar abilities.

Exactly. The galaxy is over 13 billion years old, and humans are newcomers. Logically, species immensely more ancient and advanced than humans should greatly outnumber species at a comparable level to humans. So there's no reason to assume any given two super-advanced species are related; statistically, it's vanishingly unlikely. And it makes especially little sense with Trelane's species and the Q, when every specific detail about the respective species' nature and abilities is different and the only similarity is one of personality between a single individual of each species.

SNW's decision to make him a Q did inordinately annoy me not because I care that much about Trelane, but rather because it speaks to a certain mindset. TOS' approach is "space is operatic and mythic, anything can happen, there's all kinds of unknowable weirdness out there" while SNW's ethos feels more like "the galaxy consists chiefly of things James Kirk saw, many of which are connected to each other", and the former approach to the setting seems so much more interesting to me.

I agree that "Wedding Bell Blues" was a terrible idea, but to be fair, it never explicitly said that the "Wedding Planner" was Trelane or that the parent voiced by John deLancie was Q; it just implied it strongly. So we don't have to take it as fact if we don't want to. The Planner could've been a different member of Trelane's species, and a voice is just a voice. James Doohan voiced Sargon, but that doesn't mean Sargon was actually Scotty.