I'm glad he went that route. I remember when I first saw Q in TNG, I thought "That's got to be a member of Trelane's race." I was glad to see I wasn't alone.
Would Q allow humanity or federation to be dstroyed?
- Thread starter TheSubCommander
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I'm glad he went that route. I remember when I first saw Q in TNG, I thought "That's got to be a member of Trelane's race." I was glad to see I wasn't alone.
Except that Trelane and Q have nothing in common besides attitude. Trelane needed technological assistance to do his tricks -- aside from the whole incorporeal thing, there's no indication in "Squire" that he had any powers of his own rather than using his "instrumentality" to do it all. He also fell vastly short of the omniscient perceptions of the Q, since his observations of Earth were limited by the speed of light and he was unaware of the intervening passage of time. Plus the illusions he created had only form and no substance -- they were more like holodeck constructs than the "completely real" creations of Q. Given that he needed machines to make them, they may have been quite literally the product of holotechnology or replication. Indeed, aside from moving Gothos around, Trelane didn't do anything that couldn't be achieved with 24th-century Federation technology. His abilities were parlor tricks compared to Q powers.
Also, VGR: "The Q and the Gray" established that the Q had never procreated before. Since Trelane had parents, that's incompatible with the idea of Trelane being a Q.
Also, VGR: "The Q and the Gray" established that the Q had never procreated before. Since Trelane had parents, that's incompatible with the idea of Trelane being a Q.
^^^One of my favorite trek books of all time and not just for the perspective on Q. I won't spoil, but the captain of the Enterprise D is not Picard.
I won't scream non-canon... I really like the Trelane Q tie-in. Playing what if for a sec, I agree that T's parent's show benevolence on behalf of the continuum.
In the book, that is completely explained. Remember, Trelane was a child, which is the explanation David gives. As Q live billions of years, a child of theres would have an immense childhood. Without his equitment, Trelane's powers would be even more limited.
Also remember that when Trelane's parents came, they were most definently omniscient.
As for the "child" thing, it isn't the only discontinuity in Trek....
And David is, in my opinon, one of the best Trek writers to walk the face of the earth, so don't go insulting his work......
"Insulting?" What are you talking about? I think Q Squared is a brilliant novel. It's probably my favorite thing Peter's ever written. I just don't agree with its interpretation of Trelane. Disagreement is not insult, even if most people on the Internet don't seem to understand that.
Trelane as a Q child appears in non-canon trek lit, blatantly contradicting trek canon. It's out.
As for Peter David - there are other opinions. His 'New Frontier' series is the weakest trek lit series in recent memory.
I apologize.
Have you ever read Imzadi?? Another great novel....
Edit- I don't consider Q-Squared as non-canon, but I agree that the New Frontier was rather weak.....
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^All tie-in novels, comics, etc. -- including mine -- are non-canon by definition. "Canon" means the shows and movies, the core work as distinct from derivative works. A tie-in may or may not be consistent with canon, but it still won't be part of the canon.
I knew all that, but I figured Trelane was like an infant Q just starting out.
I never watched much Voyager at all, so I did not know this. That blows my entire theory out the airlock.
Also, the "infant Q" we did see in "The Q and the Grey" seemed far more powerful than Trelane right off the bat.
Which was a strange thing for Voyager to do given that a previous TNG episode establish that a pair of Q did produce a child. The Q child didn't realize she was Q, until Q pointed it out to her.
While the Q parents gave up their power prior to creating a child, it shows that Q can change themselves in order to reproduce.
And it might not have been necessary for them to have given up their powers.
^Yeah, the producers pretty much swept "True Q" under the rug, and I can't entirely blame them. But the usual rationalization is that her parents had renounced their Q-itude and were human when they procreated. There had never been a Q child born within the Continuum, as part of Q society, before.
Okay, okay, you could use that to argue that Trelane's parents were also former Q who'd renounced the Continuum in order to become glowy balls of light, but if you have to divorce them that much from the Q in order to justify the connection, why even bother making the connection? It's just small-universe syndrome. The universe is vast and ancient. Given what ST has shown us about the prevalence of godlike superraces and the relative ease with which humanoids can evolve into them, it seems likely that they hugely outnumber humanoids by now. So connecting two largely dissimilar superbeings to one another just because they have similar personalities seems like a huge stretch to me, and a completely unnecessary one.
Mainly I just resist the tendency to treat all beings more powerful than humanity as if they were equally powerful. More realistically, there'd be quite a hierarchy, a lot of levels between human ability and Q ability, and thus a lot of different types of powerful alien, rather than just some blandly homogenized mass of godlike blobs of light. I mean, I've even seen people interpreting the Metrons from "Arena" as incorporeal energy beings, even though there's absolutely nothing in the episode as scripted that suggests that. I think they're basing it on the sparkles of light that surrounded the Metron we saw, but that was just sunlight reflecting into the lens off Carole Shelyne's shiny tunic. Yet some people just assume "race more advanced than humanity" = "godlike energy being," and I think that's oversimplifying. So I don't like to ascribe powerful aliens with any more power than the evidence clearly indicates. The Q, to all indications, are at the very top of the power hierarchy, so I'm reluctant to assume any other being is a Q without a compelling reason.
(And who's that in your avatar?)
How does Trelane as a Q child blatantly contradict trek canon?
As I explained already, Voyager: "The Q and the Gray" established that the Q had never conceived children before. It was a radical, revolutionary idea to them. Also, VGR's depiction of Q's offspring suggested that he had a full suite of Q powers from the start and didn't need technological assistance the way Trelane did.
Got it. Thank you.
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