What evidence do you have to believe that? (Not a snark just curious)
In the Voyager series I got the sense that the Q as a whole was way more reasonable and responsible than John de Lancie’s character alone. I agree that John de Lancie’s character didn’t give a damn but maybe the Q as a whole did.
Nope. You stop that. You stop that right now.
(As arbitrary as The Q seem, The Architect is somehow at once more arbitrary and less coherent)
So Q won’t zap Voyager back because he’s compassionate and cares about time lines, and besides he doesn’t care about Voyager?
Not wanting to screw with timelines isn’t necessarily compassion.
Also, I don’t get what people have against the Architect. I loved his scene - he explained so much AND in beautifully laconic terms.
What? Like Star Trek doesn’t? 
I like this exercise. Let’s run with it a bit more.
From the ant perspective, you’ve just made the cataclysm of rain vanish from their universe. Generations get to live free of the horror of drowning, of having entire tunnel systems wiped out of existence by an unstoppable disaster. With the most casual effort, you’ve accomplished something that ant-kind could never hope to do.
But you know that all you’ve done is shift the rainfall a little - now there’s more concentrated rain landing all around, making things worse there. If you built a structure to shelter the anthill forever, eventually the plants would die off for lack of water and light, and the colony would have to move or perish. There’s untold billions more ants that you’ve not done anything at all for, so what is it all accomplishing anyway?
The ants don’t know any of that, and they don’t even have the capability of knowing. How do you explain to them how an ecosystem works?
I think we should shift to dogs or possibly monkeys. Ants have very simple nervous systems. It’s a matter of debate whether they can even feel pain.
Well, I think this just bolsters my case by underscoring how un-Q-like I am. As you point out, lacking omnipotence I can temporarily help our hypothetical ants at best. Indeed, it would be far better if I could simply will the existence of a universe where everything enjoyed the benefit of rain w/o any of rain’s potentially harmful effects.
Bing! It is done. Grass grows, rivers flow, and ants have their day in the sun.
I challenge the notion that the Q are effortlessly omnipotent in the first place. Clearly, they have abilities far, far beyond human capability or understanding. However, that means the only source we have for an explanation of the scope of their powers is the Q themselves, and how could we possibly evaluate their credibility? To continue with the anthill example, suppose there are two possible humans: one who can protect the anthill from rain with a mere snap of his fingers, or one who has to physically go outside and shield the anthill. From the ants’ perspective, it would be virtually impossible to distinguish one from the other, yet the human who has to physically shield the ants from the rain would probably have a much greater disincentive to go outside.
Maybe Q can send Voyager home and then go fix everything in the timeline, but it’s just too much of a hassle to be worth it.
Good point. Death Wish Q (Quinn) does outright tell Tuvok the Q aren’t omnipotent. And implies their power comes from technology:
“But you mustn’t think of us as omnipotent, no matter what the Continuum would like you to believe. You and your ship seem incredibly powerful to life-forms without your technical expertise, it’s no different with us. We may appear omnipotent to you, but believe me, we’re not”
So the Q aren’t so much gods as Clarke’s third law on steroids.
That’s okay, you can just stash them at the prison colony on Lunar V.
See? This is why I ask you guys these questions. As I’ve indicated, I wrote-off Voyager as a series and only caught a few episodes here and there. But apparently, in addition to being a thoroughly middling contribution to the Star Trek universe, it also provided some useful Q exposition. If the bastard isn’t even omnipotent there’s not really a lot of value in exploring his omnipotence.
I guess the question of why the Qs didn’t exercise their limited power to occasionally do something nice for the people they persistently badgered isn’t nearly so interesting. Basically they were dicks or they were constrained by some Grand Design which compelled them to act like dicks.
Why are they dicks? The requirement to help out those less fortunate than themselves (especially with regard to a member of a different species) is not a Universal concept even among humans. In fact, it’s a relatively rare valued concept.
To carry the ant analogy further, while you sit there typing on the internet and stimulating your imagination and fulfilling whatever social needs you have, an ant could not begin to fathom computer networking, written language, grasping the abstract concepts involved in this fictional Star Trek universe (astronomy/astrophysics, governments, ethics/morality, technology, non-linear time, etc.), and (I know they can’t really form “thoughts”) wonder why you are apparently engaged in pointless or mysterious activity (it can see your hand/arm movements).
Your daily life (if the ant could observe it in it’s entirety) would seem confusing and possibly inconsistant from moment to moment, except for some brief periods of time (eating, defecating).
If we were truly as far from Q as ants are from us, than Q actions are not going to make sense, and applying human morality to it is pointless.
If you have beings that can change reality on a whim, move through time, than one reality is as good as another. One time is as good as another. Their material, morale and ethical value systems are more than likely going to be completely and fundamentally different from ours, possibly in ways we can’t imagine.
Q Who and Q2 do seem to imply the Q have morals of a sort, they just don’t seem to be very clear. Quoth Q: “the boy needs to display nothing less than exemplary Qness [to get back into the continuum]”. And they DID kick out de Lancie Q for some reason or another… and let him back in for demonstrating a selfless action.
The “dicks” portion of that post is a reference to the “persistent badgering” to which I alluded. Q obviously understood that he was annoying the dickens out of the crew of The Enterprise and delighted in tormenting them. That seems kind of like dickery to me.
The larger question, then: Was it pointless dickery (Q as semi-omnipotent Space Dick) or pointed dickery (Q as semi-omnipotent, purposely provocative, Observer of Humanity)?
“Seemed” to enjoy?
You do realise, of course, that Q-DeLancie is not humanoid, correct?
Anything his humanoid/meat puppet does is because he told it to. You think his facial expressions are indeed subconcious expressions of his thoughts and feelings? How quaint. 
Explains why he’s such a huge ham - it’s all an act!
Hey, if Q is the personification of Poe’s Law, it’s not my fault for confusing him with the genuine article. Also, since we’re here now… prove you aren’t a brain in a jar.
You never saw this?
[QUOTE= I forgot whose sig line this was]
“For all we know, we could just be brains in jars.”- excerpt from Jar 34B recommend immediate termination
[/QUOTE]
I cannot. But if I was imagining all this, I wouldn’t have given myself these love-handles. (or is that your fault?)
Stop this crazy jar, I want to get out.