An interesting take on knowing each other their whole lives.
Another possibility, in keeping with something we know Guinan can do, is that they were stuck in a time loop together. She could sense the loop and eventually found a way to get Picard to perceive it as well. They worked together for indeterminately long time to find a way out of the loop. Over time, they went through practically every variation a relationship could have. They loved, they hated, they forgave. They drove each other mad, and nursed each other back to sanity. But no matter what, they shared it, because there was no one else. In the end, they had shared so much that they were practically one person; their experience together outweighed the rest of their lives outside.
Then, with a final change to the timeline, they escaped…and they forgot. Almost.
Ignoring their possible backstory, she means a lot to Picard because she’s outside the chain of command and can relate to him as a peer, socially. To a lesser degree, so do Beverly and Troi.
Goldberg had hoped to be cast as Dr. Crusher’s replacement after Gates McFadden had left the show, but the producers didn’t think she was suitable for the role and cast Diana Muldaur instead. So she said she didn’t care what her role was, even it was just sweeping floors in the background. This inspired the producers to cast her as a bartender and her character was named after a Prohibition-era bartender named Texas Guinan.
Guinan was described as a listener. I took that to mean she had empathic abilities. That talking to her just made people relax and feel better. They never said, but I suspect Picard felt like he could be himself around her. She wasn’t part of Star Fleet. He didn’t have to play the role of Captain around her. He could be Jean Luc.
Well, Picard was in the (timeless) Nexus with some aspect of Guinan.
My fanwank would be that while the El-Aurians do not have Q powers, they have some level of resistance to Q powers. They can tell when Q has altered the universe around them. Q cannot wish them to the cornfield. And sometime back in the past, she used those powers in some tricky way to be an obstacle to one of Q’s plans, big-time.
I’ve always assumed that her race allowed itself to be scattered by the Borg out of some principle of not using force. The Borg, by their nature, could not be shunted aside by empathy or cleverness, so if the only remaining alternative to using violence was capitulation, then capitulation it was. This tendency to non-violence may also be why the Federation-at-war universe of Yesterday’s Enterprise felt especially wrong to her.
Recall also that in Insurrection that it was mentioned that Picard caught on very quickly to the “make time stand still/perfect moment” thingy…implying that he’s something of a savant when it comes to understanding matters relating to time and relativity. This has been hinted at numerous times by the series, and by Q…possibly due to Picard’s unwritten back-story with Guinan, as some have hinted at here.
Yeah, because Whoopi. Whoopi was known for some flamboyantly over the top roles.
True, there’s something we’re not being told about Guinan. But then we don’t find out exactly what it is. Perhaps that’s part of the mystique. Consider when George Lucas sort of wrecked The Force by coming up with all the biochem babble stuff to try to “explain” it.
I thought she was supposed to be Scottish, or at least was implied to be such in Sub Rosa.
That’s a hint that she wanted to jump his bones, not that she had cuckolded her husband. Wesley’s name isn’t even mentioned.
Picard’s a cape. Jack Crusher was his best friend. JLP would no more eff JC’s wife than Steve Rogers would boink Pepper Potts.
I’m sure you can come up with other examples, since there are so many.
Guinan had a talent for making people look inside and see their true selves. That’s a skill that Q would seriously unpleasant, but wouldn’t bother the Borg at all.