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Why didn't Q bring back to life the 18 crew people killed by the borg

Q sees humans how humans see animals. He doesn’t care if the herd loses a few sheep as long as they collectively learn to survive.
 
Q sees humans how humans see animals. He doesn’t care if the herd loses a few sheep as long as they collectively learn to survive.

Well, he does seem to have a particular interest in Picard as a person... why else put him through all the things happening in Tapestry when (according to Q's own words) little else was affected than just his life?
 
Q really isn't into this resurrection business.

Unless it's Jean Luck

To borrow from Garak, it was all real. Especially the parts that weren't.

Death in Starfleet is apparently considered part of life, so much in fact that a procedure to reverse death is so rare and special that it warrants being called "code white resuscitation". That is, Starfleet can resuscitate the officially brain-dead (for up to two minutes after said death as of the 2370s state of the art), but as a default will not unless specifically being told "code white".

Huh?
 
Twice in Trek so far, the heroes have trusted a life on a gambit where they go clinically dead and then spring back to life through UFP medical expertise ("Code of Honor", "Initiations"). The first time around, the type of death inflicted was well known in advance, and involved a specific toxin with supposedly well-known effects on the victim; the resurrection there might not have been all that different from the original death gambit, "Amok Time", where the "death" was faked through chemicals. The second time around, Chakotay was to receive severe bodily damage from an alien handgun, though - presumably a big hole in his chest. He was confident enough to only worry about his brain getting its oxygen supply back in time, not about the bit where he'd get a replacement lung, heart, liver, spleen and spine.

I'd say the late 24th century heroes are entitled to an attitude where death is universally avoidable and for that very reason customarily never avoided. Unless they faced the universe with the acceptance that there is a time for everything, there wouldn't be space for anything or anybody soon enough!

Timo Saloniemi
 
Arguably Picard in "Tapestry"?

(But that one also sets up a number of arguments on a number of issues (e.g. anyone who isn't a captain just like him is a mud puddle boring dullard of a wastrel so far beneath the deckplate and his nose, which is one of many possible takeaways people have praised and/or criticized the episode for being from time to time... the basic thing of persistence is a robust message but the way Picard stood up for himself was... oops? ))

Perhaps it's possible to see this as a "message" of this episode, but I don't think it's what Picard meant (not saying you say he did, you only give it as a possible takeaway). He complains not about his position, after all. He complains about " I can't live out my days as that person. That man is bereft of passion and imagination. That is not who I am." He therefore is not saying anyone in such a position has no passion and imagination (and is beneath his contempt), but simply that he only could get stuck in a position like that by betraying his true passions, settling for less and gradually snuffing them out in his life 'because he wanted to play it safe' etc.

Just like what can seem a dull administrative job to one one person, can be an exciting job for another person (e.g. in a position where you have to think of all kinds of ingenious financial constructions to stay within the law and still accomplish what you want).
 
I’ve often thought that Q finger-snapping the Ent-D back to the Alpha Quadrant right as the Borg were about to catch up to them would have made the Borg extremely curious about the technology the ship used to make such a sudden acceleration (while going sideways no less!) In fact this might have been why the Borg sent another cube in BOBW.

Maybe Q didn’t want to intrigue the Borg even further by having the bodies in the captured piece of the saucer section suddenly vanish? This impressive transporter technology might have even prompted the Borg to send more than one cube to the Alpha Quadrant to capture it. So Q had to leave the bodies there rather than tempt the Borg even more.
 
Maybe Q didn’t want to intrigue the Borg even further by having the bodies in the captured piece of the saucer section suddenly vanish? This impressive transporter technology might have even prompted the Borg to send more than one cube to the Alpha Quadrant to capture it. So Q had to leave the bodies there rather than tempt the Borg even more.

A second snap with the finger, and the fact that there were bodies in the sliced off section is erased from Borg memory ....
 
The Borg killed those 18 crew members, not Q.
Q did throw them to the other side of the galaxy but apparently that's the risk when serving in Starfleet.
 
Q didn't kill those crew members....

That creates an interesting question of the limits of the knowledge of Q.

Wouldn't he know that they are dead by bringing them here? Didn't that effectively mean he is partially responsible? Or is this a probability game that he doesn't view in those terms?

Dunno.
 
Some would also argue that a lot MORE people would have died if the Federation had just stumbled across the Borg on their own.

Q gave the Federation a bit of a heads-up, time to prepare for the inevitable conflict. I'd say the Federation OWES him one.
 
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