To quote Wiki, “He is a being of unknown origin who is unconstrained by, and possesses immeasurable power over, normal human notions of time, space, the laws of physics, and even reality itself, being capable of violating or altering any or all of them in creatively unpredictable ways with a casual thought or hand gesture, limited only by his seemingly unlimited imagination.” Doesn’t that perfectly describe the writers of the series, relative to the plots and characters? From the characters’ point of view, aren’t the writers omnipotent creatures that have the power of manipulating reality and creating bizarre situations? Don’t the writers “play with” and test the characters and their situations, much the same way that Q does, limited only by their imagination?
And the Continuum. Wouldn’t that be the “powers that be,” the network “suits” that allow the writers their creativity … but only up to a point? Not to mention the ratings.
And doesn’t every good writer experience characters with minds of their own, who fight back against the omnipotence of the writer and try to keep him in check?
Think about it. If the Star Trek characters could meet the writers of the series, wouldn’t it be exactly like meeting Q?
Interesting thought experiment. And as good of a theory as any other.
But I’ve always thought of Q as being a way to give Picard an opponent whose only weaknesses are those of pure logic and the constraints of the fabric of the universe. In other words, the ultimate test.
In the Original series, Kirk would often face an opponent bearing absolutely no respect for the in-universe physics or logical framework – the Orion ship gong at warp 100, or the neutronium planet eater, or the gaseous entity that was in love with Cochrane.
Picard had to face the same. So they wrote Q. Just like Kirk once faced Trelane, and Charlie X and that angel thing that gave the kids fist-pumping superpowers. Thing is, John DeLancie nailed the character so well, they kept bringing him back, instead of creating another super-alien.
It works, but I don’t think that was remotely the original intent. Roddenberry just liked the idea of having super powerful aliens test our people. From there, Q became a trickster god and teacher, all the while still judging.
The one issue I have is simply that the universe continues to work even without Q involved at all. Q is more the ultimate anomaly, who can add things that otherwise would not make logical sense. Writers have to come up with an excuse to do that.
I’m pretty sure the idea was to create atheists by pointing out that the word “god” is just a reference to a very powerful alien who, if real, we would be able to fly up to and chat with. We see the same thing in Star Trek V.
I abandoned TNG very quickly, but what little I saw of Q impressed me as an incarnation of the writers saying,
Question: “What would we get if [COLOR=Navy]the Squire of Gothos’ race was more than just the bratty Trelane and his parents? What would happen if we (the audience and another Enterprise crew) encountered an older version of Trelane?”
Answer: A character that will be played by John DeLancie; not much more mature, still a self-absorbed little twit – and to emphasize the anomaly we’ll call the character Q rather than A because he’s such an enigma and we’re such clever writers to think this way. [/COLOR] :dubious:
–G!
Hmm…I think the martial arts class during that time-slot looks so much more interesting…
John Scalzi’s “Red Shirts” showed the characters meeting their writer.
Q is exactly as controlled by the writers as the other characters are. Q may be vastly more powerful than Picard et al, but he is, to an equal degree as the rest of them, powerless with regard to the writers.
That said, omnipotent characters are hard to write well. They tend to be remarkably uninteresting.
