Why was Q scared of Guinan?

[Arpy]

I think Guinan was going to be a Q/Trelane/Kevin Ukbridge/etc-like superbeing spending some time among the humans now but who ultimately had to be nomadic. Once her powers were exposed in some later season, she'd be off to someplace new.

If the El-Aurians were not to be quite as robust, what if Guinan herself wasn't El-Aurian? Maybe she was a shape-shifting lifeform of a sort...she shifted to El-Aurian and took on the characteristics and history and regret of an El-Aurian, but she was a more dangerous creature than Picard knew as Q said.

Or what if in the centuries of life since she left her fellow El-Aurians, she stumbled upon things in space that made her personally more dangerous? Maybe some ancient archive or energy being. Maybe she was Companion to Q's Dr. Who and she learned a thing or two from him.

 

[Melakon]

Q might simply be a xenophobic bigot. His first contact with humans was to teach them a lesson, he tormented other species simply because he could get away with it.

 

[Terok Nor]

Q putting the El-Aurians in the path of the Borg makes the most sense. Maybe he offered them the same chance to ask for his help but they were too proud to accept and that's when the Borg wiped them out. Perhaps Guinan found a way to get revenge on Q and that's why he fears her. I doubt the writers had any idea.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Well in Time's Arrow we learn Guinan was on old Earth and knew people like Mark Twain. So she could time travel or was just very, very old. I wonder where her ship was parked on old Earth.

 

[T'Girl]

Why is Q scared of Guinan?

Not all species have their genitals in the same place, and Guinan knows where Q's are.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Well, he and the female Q did conceive by touching the tips of their index fingers together, so...maybe...

 

[svenden]

Why is Q scared of Guinan?

Not all species have their genitals in the same place, and Guinan knows where Q's are.

Nice one. Oh I've got all sorts of dirty scenarios running around in my brain now...

 

[svenden]

Okay so I literally dropped that last comment, moved over to my RSS reader and saw this. As if on Q...

http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-guinan-q-bobble-heads

 

[horatio83]

I read the scene as a foreshadowing of Guinan's extraordinary capibilities which we witnessed in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and not really as a "Guinan vs. Q = stalemate".
Q is powerful but not omnipotent and El-Aurians might simply be able to resist his skills better than other folks. It's like with Betazoids and Ferengi. Just because the former cannot read the minds of the latter doesn't imply that Ferengi are super-powerful.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

It's a shame that they never gave any payoff for all the hints they dropped about Guinan's background. Mysteries aren't too intriguing when there's never any promise of knowing. Thank God DS9 avoided that particular pitfall with Odo -- and managed to expand the show's mythology while they did it!

 

[Iamnotspock]

It's a shame that they never gave any payoff for all the hints they dropped about Guinan's background. Mysteries aren't too intriguing when there's never any promise of knowing.

I'm reminded of Doctor Who, and the decision to start exploring the character's backstory partly for that very reason, despite the series' title.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Why is Q scared of Guinan?

Not all species have their genitals in the same place, and Guinan knows where Q's are.

Ooooh hahaha..... love it.

 

[Vandervecken]

I could hear Guinan saying, "naaahhh, I saw an old earth Kung Fu movie, thought I'd give it a shot."

 

[Tim Thomason]

The El-Aurians are a Delta Quadrant species who were exploring Alpha Quadrant planets (19th-century Earth at least) hundreds of years before the show. That suggests a technology far in advance of any of the major ones we encountered throughout the series. But Martus Mazur and Tolian Soran showed us that there doesn't seem to be anything special about your Joe Public El-Aurian.

But as for Guinan, I like to think that all her "powers" were attributable to the Nexus. It's a retcon of course, but it's neat to think that having oneself pulled out-of-time and placed back with an echo gives one more awareness of temporal anomalies and perhaps other planes of existence (Q Continuum?).

Q himself may have been banned (by the Continuum) from interfering with Guinan's powers after some unseen incident. It's my theory, then, that Guinan had herself assigned to the Enterprise-D after she heard that Q had taken an interest in Picard ("Encounter at Farpoint" & "Hide & Q") and was there to keep a tight reign on things and make sure he didn't muck things up too bad for humanity and the Federation.

Soran should have had the same awareness, but perhaps the Nexus effects different people in different ways (it drove him a little mad instead). It's a curious thought to have that Picard post-Generations might begin to develop some extrasensory awareness of the timeline or other realities. Maybe he didn't have a handle on it yet in Star Trek: First Contact and went a little bonkers during the film.

 

[Terok Nor]

The El-Aurians are a Delta Quadrant species who were exploring Alpha Quadrant planets (19th-century Earth at least) hundreds of years before the show. That suggests a technology far in advance of any of the major ones we encountered throughout the series. But Martus Mazur and Tolian Soran showed us that there doesn't seem to be anything special about your Joe Public El-Aurian.

But as for Guinan, I like to think that all her "powers" were attributable to the Nexus. It's a retcon of course, but it's neat to think that having oneself pulled out-of-time and placed back with an echo gives one more awareness of temporal anomalies and perhaps other planes of existence (Q Continuum?).

Q himself may have been banned (by the Continuum) from interfering with Guinan's powers after some unseen incident. It's my theory, then, that Guinan had herself assigned to the Enterprise-D after she heard that Q had taken an interest in Picard ("Encounter at Farpoint" & "Hide & Q") and was there to keep a tight reign on things and make sure he didn't muck things up too bad for humanity and the Federation.

Soran should have had the same awareness, but perhaps the Nexus effects different people in different ways (it drove him a little mad instead). It's a curious thought to have that Picard post-Generations might begin to develop some extrasensory awareness of the timeline or other realities. Maybe he didn't have a handle on it yet in Star Trek: First Contact and went a little bonkers during the film.

I like this theory

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The El-Aurians are a Delta Quadrant species who were exploring Alpha Quadrant planets (19th-century Earth at least) hundreds of years before the show. That suggests a technology far in advance of any of the major ones we encountered throughout the series. But Martus Mazur and Tolian Soran showed us that there doesn't seem to be anything special about your Joe Public El-Aurian.

But as for Guinan, I like to think that all her "powers" were attributable to the Nexus. It's a retcon of course, but it's neat to think that having oneself pulled out-of-time and placed back with an echo gives one more awareness of temporal anomalies and perhaps other planes of existence (Q Continuum?).

Q himself may have been banned (by the Continuum) from interfering with Guinan's powers after some unseen incident. It's my theory, then, that Guinan had herself assigned to the Enterprise-D after she heard that Q had taken an interest in Picard ("Encounter at Farpoint" & "Hide & Q") and was there to keep a tight reign on things and make sure he didn't muck things up too bad for humanity and the Federation.

Soran should have had the same awareness, but perhaps the Nexus effects different people in different ways (it drove him a little mad instead). It's a curious thought to have that Picard post-Generations might begin to develop some extrasensory awareness of the timeline or other realities. Maybe he didn't have a handle on it yet in Star Trek: First Contact and went a little bonkers during the film.

I like this very much too.

 

[T'Girl]

It's my theory, then, that Guinan had herself assigned to the Enterprise-D after she heard that Q had taken an interest in Picard ("Encounter at Farpoint" & "Hide & Q")

I think that Guinan was aboard the E-D from the time it left Earth prior to Farpoint. She didn't arrive later.

 

[bbjeg]

Guinan was Q's crazy ex girlfriend.

That was a theory of mine in a thread I made a while back similar to this one.

 

[Drone]

It's just another abandoned storyline, like what was done with Wesley Crusher and Kes.

Well, that's silly. What would Wesley and Kes even have to talk about?

"So they half-heartedly turned you into a superbeing because they weren't sure where your storyline was going, too?"

"Yep."

Except for Kes, it was only done at the very last, as the most expedient and simplest way to bid her arrivederci, the decision for her departure having already been made.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Guinan was Q's crazy ex girlfriend.

I waaaaaas...
Working hard as a bartender
Making credits but it made me blue
One day I was crying a lot
And so I decided to move
To 1701, Enterprise-D
Brand new crew and new career
It happens to be where Q lives
But that's not why I'm here!
She's the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!
(What? No, I'm not!)
She's the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!
(...That's a sexist term!)
She's the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!
(Can you guys stop singing for just a second?)
She's El-Aurian inside!
(The situation's a lot more nuanced than that...)
C...R...A...Z...Y...
(OKAY! WE GET IT!!!)
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!!!

Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzY3EaJTuJk