I was talking with a friend, and the topic of platypus (platypodes? platypuses?) came up (don’t ask). Somehow, it came into my mind, and I said, “Ah, yes, Q’s contribution to the creation of Earth.” To which my friend replied, “What the hell are you talking about?” She’s familiar with Star Trek and knows Q; she did not know of any reference to Q creating the platypus.
So later, I asked my dad, who I’m pretty sure has seen every episode of every Star Trek series. “Dad,” I say, “Didn’t at some point Q tell Picard that Q was involved in creating the Earth and specifically created the platypus?” Dad said, basically, “What the hell? I don’t remember that ever happening.”
I could absolutely swear that at some point there was an exchange between Picard and Q, about earth, where Q claimed to be responsible for the platypus. On the one hand - it’s as good an explanation as any for the platypus, and seems like a Q-ish thing to at least lay claim to. On the other hand, I’m apparently the only person in the world who remembers this. Google is giving me nothing, but “Q” is kind of a tough search term.
So…am I for some insane reason imagining this, or does anyone else remember this? I couldn’t possibly guess at a specific episode or even season, but I do seem to recall it being a conversation between Q and Picard.
I’ve seen every Star Trek episode there is, and don’t remember anything about the platypus.
Maybe you’re conflating something Q did with a memory of some other non-Star-Trek person. There’s a title sequence in the beginning of the Kevin Smith movie Dogma which proves that God has a sense of humor because he invented the platypus.
Q did bring Picard back to the origin of life on Earth in All Good Things…, helpfully pointing out that it originated “right here, in this puddle of goo.” But then it didn’t, because of a temporal anomaly.
I do see to recall some conversation about Q having something to do with Earths creation, though the platypus part I dont recall. And I also seem to remember having the impression it was Q bragging about and INFLATING his contribution to the whole thing (kinda a god like version of your irritating coat tail riding cow workers). Like in reality he was mostly just there and moved one rock or something.
No, I remember this as well. It was the episode in which Picard’s mechanical heart failed, and he found himself in the “afterlife” with Q. Picard insists that Q is not God - the universe is not so badly designed, after all. Q points out that, after all, someone had to create the platypus.
Q
(impatient)
Yes, yes. The conference, the
unexpected attack, the compressed
teryon beam... the bottom line is,
your life ended about five minutes
ago under the inept ministrations
of Doctor Beverly Crusher.
Picard takes a moment to think about this. He pushes
away the idea that Q might be telling the truth.
PICARD
No. I am not dead. I refuse to
believe there is an afterlife
which is run by you.
(beat)
The universe is not that badly
designed.
Q gives a bored and frustrated sigh.
Q
Very well. If you really require
more evidence of your post-mortem
status, I'll just have to provide
some...
Suddenly, Picard hears a deep VOICE coming from behind
him....
I don’t have my TNG DVD’s in front of me, but Star Trek rarely deviates from the script.
If Q had said something funny about the platypus, it would surely be in the “memorable quotes” section of the Memory Alpha page for Tapestry, but it isn’t. (Picard’s burn is there, though.)
Aha! I, uh, went through a Star Trek novels phase in high school, which I’ve thankfully grown out of because honestly most of the books are pretty much awful. But I knew I wasn’t totally imagining this. Thank you, Lobohan, for tonight I can semi-triumphantly prove to my father that, fine, maybe it wasn’t in any episode, but I wasn’t making it up, either.
There was a time where this was true but for a period from the mid 90s until recently there was a lot of good stuff. It is only just recently I have noticed a drop in quality.
Peter David’s pretty good, and John de Lancie reads many of the Q-based books in audio form. That alone makes them worthwhile, even if they are abridged to hell and back.
I haven’t read one in quite a while (I think my last was the not-bad Pandora Principle, 1990). It was a few years later that I first heard the term “Mary Sue” and realized it could easily be applied to several novels I’d earlier read (and, to my shame, several fanfics I’d already written), probably most egregiously one instance whose surrounding text I can barely remember in which a woman representing Starfleet Intelligence or something comes aboard and is instantly “by far the most beautiful woman Kirk had ever seen” (seriously, that’s the quote as I can best remember it). She had a super-nifty black uniform or something, and a wrist-mounted explosive device she would trigger (destroying the ship) if the disease or anomaly or whatever looked like it was getting out of hand, or possibly just to prevent herself from being captured because she knew a vast amount of Starfleet top-secret info.
Diane Duane and Peter Morwood were (still are, I assume) pretty good. A.C. Cripsin, too. Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath were good for unintended comedy.
If you are interested, some good authors from the modern era include:
Christopher L. Bennett, Keith R.A. DeCandido, David R. George III, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and Dayton Ward.
No, wasn’t her, but she’s a good example. Those books are unusual (for Trek novels) in that they’re written in the first person, which I actually found jarring with the repeated descriptions of how Piper could be moved to violent anger over fairly trivial slights. The first-person narrative is usually a pretty calm story form, which undercuts the whole “…and then it took six people to pry my fingers off his neck.”
Well, that and the fact that she never describes (that I can recall) anything along the lines of “I lunged at him in fury and he said something like ‘Back off, you crazy bitch,’ and swung his fist at me, after which everything went black for a while.”
The wiki summaries of the novels are mostly pretty scant, but the novel I was thinking of was probably “Triangle” by Marshak and Culbreath in which, apparently, Spock and Kirk both fall in love with Federation Free Agent Sola Than. The less-than-glowing reviews here add reinforcement.
