Jonathan Frakes Pitched Q For His ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Movies, Surprised It Didn’t Happen

The Star Trek: The Next Generation crew jumped from the small screen to make four feature films, including two directed by show star Jonathan Frakes. However, none of the TNG films featured the television show’s first iconic adversary, Q. Frakes and Q actor John de Lancie talked about Q’s roads not taken at one of two GalaxyCon TNG virtual panels held over the weekend.

Frakes wanted Q in the TNG movies

The character of unpredictable godlike being Q was introduced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot, and he would return throughout the series, showing a particular interest in toying with the crew of the USS Enterprise-D and its captain. John de Lancie appeared as Q in a total of eight episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and played a critical role in the season finale “All Good Things.” He also appeared in episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

John de Lancie as Q in “Encounter at Farpoint”

During a discussion of Q’s character development at the GalaxyCon event, the moderator asked the pair to clarify something he’s heard before, specifically that there was a plan for the second TNG film to be “the ultimate Q adventure.” Frakes, who directed the second TNG film (Star Trek: First Contact), said involving Q was his idea:

That was my pitch. Well, from my good fortune of getting involved with the movies. I kept saying, “When is our our finest nemesis is going to be in the movies?” I’m still surprised that wasn’t so.

In the end, the second feature film brought back TNG’s other iconic adversaries, the Borg, with Alice Krige playing the new character of the Borg Queen. Ironically, the Borg were introduced in an episode featuring Q (“Q Who”). In Frakes’ second TNG film (Star Trek: Insurrection) the Son’a were introduced, with the main adversary played by F. Murray Abraham.

De Lancie agreed it was surprising Q hadn’t appeared in any of the TNG films:

Yeah. I have no idea what the story is there.

Director Jonathan Frakes on the set of Star Trek: First Contact

de Lancie wanted real visit to the Q Continuum and has an idea

When a fan asked what Star Trek planet either would like to visit in reality, de Lancie took that as an opportunity to talk about what he saw as another lost opportunity for the character:

The place that they never got into it, which is too bad. Which was: What is the Continuum? Other than a road in the desert that goes on, and the shingle in the old gas station,

de Lancie’s comment about a road with a gas station refers to the Voyager episode “Death Wish,” which showed a version of the Q Continuum that humans could understand in the form of an endless dusty road with an old gas station.

The actor also revealed that he actually developed a story about the Q Continuum on his own:

I actually—which I’m not going to tell people, even now—I did create a backstory on that, which would have been really interesting. But I think it’s actually someplace that would require a great deal of imagination, and I think the audience would go. So I wish that they had gone there.

The Q Continuum from Voyager’s “Death Wish”


Keep up on all our reports on the history of the TOS and TNG feature films.

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Lets face it, god popping in for a visit in Trek V didn’t work out too well.

That’s very different though. And Q is one of the most known and popular characters in the franchise. I can’t count how many times I remember reading fans wanted Q in a movie. So yeah it is surprising it was never taken seriously, ie, someone at least attempted to write a script for it. I guess they thought maybe his presence could be too inside baseball for newbies or something but it is odd.

Even now people still want to see Q and begging for him to show up in Picard. We know we’ll get him, probably briefly, in Lower Decks though.

I think all the “Q tricks” that made him so much fun would make him actually look smaller on the big screen.

I like the character, but I feel like his home is the small screen.

Totally agree: he snaps his fingers and things appear. L.Q is very small screen, very much I Dream of Jeannie or Bewitched. Fun to watch for Trek fans , but would movie goers actually pay to see him? Big aliens, big ships, big battles is what we got- for better or for worse.

But that’s why Q is so fun, he can literally make all those things happen. He brought us the Borg first. He can snap them into whatever situation he wants. He can snap them into another galaxy or 5,000 years into the future. I don’t know how that would be ‘small’. He’s the embodiment of every crazy Star Trek story line ever conceived lol.

But if people don’t like the character or his ‘parlor tricks’ as Picard once called them, I get that too. But for me who loves Q and very very trippy Star Trek I would be the first in line if done right.

What are you talking about? That was the best part of the movie with my favorite Kirk line.

“Excues me…Excuse me! What does God need….with a Star Ship?!”

Also interesting tid bit. In the Novels, The entity that was trapped in the center of the Galaxy claiming to be God was actully imprisoned there by the Q for reasons I can’t remeber.

Nothing more terrifying to studios and their investment partners than hearing the word “imagination” associated with a 4-quadrant release.

All they have to say is that Q is Star Trek’s version of Marvel’s Loki, and they would all get onboard.

the franchise’s first iconic adversary

Why do so many writers at fan sites overuse that phrase without truly understanding what it means?

It doesn’t say Q was the franchise’s first, it says it was TNG’s first, and that is indisputably true.

Icon, a key to a portal, door or window, through which we can see another realm of being universe or g*d: not a bad fit for the manifestations of Q in Star Trek.

I hold out hope for a Q role in Star Trek: Picard — maybe its final season, as a way to give Picard-the-character a proper send-off; maybe one last trial for humanity. And it’s fine that DeLancie got old — let Q briefly show up de-aged in his first appearance, make a snarky comment about how old Picard looks (and/or how he’s an android now), then snap his fingers and look like John DeLancie today for the remainder of his appearances, under the pretext of letting Picard feel not *quite* so conspicuously decrepit.

I hope Q reversed that stupid Android-Plot and gives Picard his normal body back !

I wouldn’t mind that at all. ;)

Yes!

That would be stupid. Spending a whole season building up to Picard becoming an android, and then Q just snapping it away.

What was stupid was making him a synth in the first place.

He doesn’t have to just show up and snap it away. There could be an entire story behind it and a motive for why he does it in the first place. It’s NOT going to happen, so it doesn’t matter but yeah I would love for them to change it back.

Especially if Q gives him a new body that doesn’t have the condition that killed his first body.

That would be a pefrct role for Q to play on Picard. Make Pinnochio Picard a “real boy” again!

Surely the point of Picard becoming a synth was to show that its what is inside that counts?
The body being irrelevant but the mind and the actions taken being what matters.
Thats Star Trek 101 can’t see them running away from that.

Thank you. Well said.

Yes. Please.

YES YES YES!!!

TNG “Tapestry” 2.0 but this time Picard chooses the alternative !

…or at least let him have the advantages of an android’s body!

Excellent finale.

I can see Q bringing Picard into the continuum in the Picard series finale. Where he will live forever and become a god.

That would feel too much like what happened to Sisko.

Hmmm…. Didn’t think of that.

Actually, Sisko went to the Prophets, but do we really know what became of him from there ❓Who can say he didn’t move to another planet to fulfill his own Prophetic destiny on another world ❓

I know it’s not canon, but in the books, Sisko came back just in time to watch Kassidy Yates give birth to his child. Then lots of Drama ensued for the next 10 years.

Insurrection is always my ultimate “what if” turning point for Trek. I was so disappointed by the tame, childish, lumbering and cheap-looking film we got and its story that wouldn’t have gotten on the board as a TNG, DS9 or Voyager two-parter, yet it was a $58 million motion picture.

What if it had been a Dominion War movie to promote synergy with DS9 and explore that interconnected universe like how Marvel is oft-praised for doing? Trek invented it! A war-related mission would have removed the goofy humor, maybe even given Terry Farrell pause to quit DS9 if she could join Worf in the Enterprise.

What if it had been a Q movie? Part of what makes Trek movies so unusual is that all of them, bar The Voyage Home and The Motion Picture, feature a singular humanoid villain with a dastardly plan that needs to be foiled in 90 minutes with phasers and photon torpedos and classical Earth literature quotations. That’s not the case most of the time with the shows, but Q is the shining example of when that did happen, and he’s a funny character whose voice writers had perfected to much audience approval. Look, I love F Murray Abraham and Tom Hardy, but there’s no way in hell R’uafo and Shinzon were ever going to be more compelling to write for or to watch than Q as played by John de Lancie. It’s just a matter of finding a movie-worthy plot, which is admittedly hard. Of all his appearances, only Q Who, Q-Pid and All Good Things… stand out to me as the types of stories a movie would do well by, the rest are too frivolous or intimate. Still wish they’d tried!

and think what they could have done with a decent budget! Q could have wisked them to any point in space and time. not just a backlot set with stock costumes

I think it is underappreciated that the first Borg episode was also one of the first Q episodes so these two go nicely together. What if instead of Insurrection thr 9th movie had been a true sequel to the smash hit First Contact, including the Borg? This time, instead of the past, Q could have whisked the E-E away into a far future where the Federation has been completely assimilated by the Borg. Escaping that near omnipresent danger, getting back to the present and working to prevent that future would have been the meat of the movie. The idea that Q shows them the future to help them prevent it (or at least be prepared for it) instead of just toying with them or threatening them would nicely mirror the structure of Q Who.

I like the idea, but it might of been poorly received as too great a rehash of ST: First Contact.

technically it was a Dominion War Story.
The Sona are a producer of Ketra-Cell-White and the federation had all interest in lure them away from supplying the Domion with that drug.

Uh huh. Not a Dominion War story. One mention of the drug and Dominion negotiations and an offhanded mention of the Son’A in DS9 season 7 is hardly making full use of the story and synergy within the franchise.

The nice way that the production companies would answer that question would be that The Q has a lack of broad ranging appeal. The translation is that if The Q was on the big screen people would start saying that dude gay and maybe Picard is too.

It so pains me to say this but I believe that is true. I remember when TNG premiered that was some of the snarky homophobic comments around the office I worked in at the time. A lot has evolved since then but if you are in earshot of teenagers today you can still hear those kind of comments shouted without fear of consequences. Young people are the main movie audience.

I do however think “All Good Things” should have been the first TNG movie. It was so extraordinary I think it might have avoided that kind of reaction. The ideas of anti-time, the spark of evolution and timelines would have had an amazing reception.

Unfortunately in the movie series we end up with please-everyone-upset-nobody blandness. The last 2 TNG movies are almost unwatchable in their boredom.

Worse Paramount tried to make Nemesis interesting by bringing in a director who would “shake things up and appeal to new audiences” but who in reality was clueless about Trek and created a product that even the core fan base wouldn’t watch (more than once).

But it was still a good idea to change things up. The previous film was so bland and not well received by anyone it needed something. Besides, the last time they went to a new director who was less familiar with Trek we got The Wrath of Khan. Paramount’s reasoning was sound. And this fan felt the results were pretty darn good.

The shake thing up reasoning was sound. They just went in the wrong direction.

Agreed. I think having both a first time director AND new to Star Trek wasn’t the way to go.

Actually Nemesis was his 3rd feature. But is previous film as a director was 4 years before it.

OK thanks. I just went and checked and I noticed that was his third and last movie. Probably a good idea. ;)

It’s funny that AGT is so fondly remembered today. I loved it at the time and still do, but the consensus on the early internet was very negative. I recall when the script for Generations leaked shortly after it aired, there was a big discussion how “this should have been the finale instead of that garbage ‘best of’ special we got!”

Really? It recall it being pretty warmly received. Maybe that was just in my circles. All the Trekkies I knew liked it, and especially me!

I can’t say how widespread the feeling was but I vividly remember the discussion online (I only had text based internet at the time so it was all discussion) and the common refrain was that AGT wasn’t exciting enough and felt almost like a clip show.

And the STG script was being praised for uniting kirk with picard, an action driven story with stakes, and generally just being a story that felt worthy of being an “event” even if it turned out to be a fake script (it wasn’t).

Goes to show you how things can change over time, as well as how different things can feel on paper than on screen.

Like you though, I loved AGT.

For the record, I never cared for it. I felt it was a mediocre regular episode where Q spoon fed Picard the entire way. No one figured anything out for themselves, no one was in any kind of jeopardy (because we all knew Q would never allow it) and no character evolved or grew in any way shape or form. It was worse than Insurrection. Which itself was little more than a typical TNG episode.

Granted in my circle of Trek fans I enjoyed it the least but no one in my circle of Trek friends thought it was anything special. I concur that finale for some weird reason was seen in a better light over the years than it ever was when it aired.

Yes ML31, we are all very well aware of how much you hated the finale, the character of Picard, and pretty much everything about TNG. But I know you won’t ever waste a chance to get it on the official record.

And conversely we are all aware of how much you loved it and will never wasted a chance to say so, yourself.

And to clear things up, hate is a strong word. I was disappointed with AGT. And I also don’t “hate” Picard. I just find him a dull and unbelievable character made watchable only by the charisma of the actor who inhabited the role. And there were a number of very good TNG episodes, too.

Are you though? I’ve made two comments. I’ve been reading yours for years.

We all know how you feel about Picard. You find a way to say it in just about every article.

Wrong again Blastaar. Case in point, it was you who just brought up Picard. I didn’t.

I do not remember that at all. I was in college when AGT aired. There were MULTIPLE TNG parties for it in my dorm. Everyone seemed to really love it. One girl even cried watching the last scene. Maybe there were people on the internet that didn’t like it at the time, but I wasn’t on it much then and all the people around me, including myself, loved it. And since I HAVE been online, its still considered the best Star Trek finale 20 years later.

Even other filmmakers and producers still praise it today and have referenced it for their shows or movies like Damon Lindeloff and Kevin Feige. Feige said the time jump for End Game (spoilers ;)) was inspired specifically by All Good Things. Can’t get bigger praise than that in today’s geek world.

Wow. Of course, anything would have been better than Insurrection or Nemesis, but having a trippy space-time movie with Q would have been amazing. It could have been a different take on a Star Trek movie, with Q more of a story element than the antagonist. I would see Q like a Dungeon Master, guiding (and annoying) the characters, sort of like he was in All Good Things. Having a lot of deep, cerebral plot points and dialogue as opposed to phasers and fistfights. And of course, have the movie be character driven, not plot driven.

Q should had been the high-concept for the 9th Trek movie.

“Having a lot of deep, cerebral plot points and dialogue as opposed to phasers and fistfights. And of course, have the movie be character driven, not plot driven.

Q should had been the high-concept for the 9th Trek movie.”

And of course, that is exactly why it didn’t happen. Just look at the “rescue” of the movie franchise after the failure of Nemesis, the three Kelvin movies. Just big, loud and d!mb with evil cartoon villains plotting their revenge. Every single one of them. Studio suits STILL don’t understand their audiences, especially for Trek movies.

Yeah, I know the suits wouldn’t go for it. But it is to dream!

Too bad All Good Things already exists, because THAT would have made an excellent Star Trek movie, Q and all!

(I mean “too bad” as tongue-in-cheek, I am extremely grateful it exists and absolutely love it)

I always said AGT would be a great Trek movie. But THAT said I doubt it would’ve made it to a movie because it’s a bit too complex and cerebral for the general audience and I doubt Paramount would’ve ever went for it. They are willing to do straight forward time travel stuff like FC or TVH but anything TOO complex like AGT would definitely be for a movie then it wouldn’t get approved. And it would probably be deemed as too inside baseball as well.

But that’s why I think its funny, we act like the movies are the superior form of story telling when it’s the complete opposite for Star Trek. We can get stuff like The Inner Light, The Visitor, Far Beyond the Stars or even New Eden on a TV show. When it comes to the movies though, it’s usually much lighter on story or concepts much more about explosions, punching and running around, ESPECIALLY the Kelvin movies.

Ironically though I will say the first Kelvin movie certainly had a very thought provoking concept behind it about time travel and the multiverse. That’s just another day for TNG, TOS or VOY but it was nice to see it done for a movie as well. But then they LITERALLY had to dumb it down for the general audience because Orci said they were afraid they went too far with it they would confuse new fans. They had to make it sound more like a conventional time travel story even though it’s much bigger than that.

And that’s WHY the shows will always be more superior than the movies. You don’t have to dumb it down.

I personally love the Q novels we got, particularly “I, Q”, the “Q Continuum” trilogy and especially “Q Squared”. Only Q-starring novel I didn’t care for was Q-in-Law and even that one had its moments. It would be nice to see him return to Trek in some capacity, and would have been amazing to have seen him in one of the films, but the novels are quite good for anyone who needed another Q fix.

He’s better suited for episodic tv. Films need a character the crew can outwit at the end. Godlike beings don’t really work for that.

Q doesn’t need to be a typical villain. He’s a likable adversary with questionable motives. He antagonizes but sometimes helps, he never kills directly but sometimes leads the crew into harms way and death as a result, if they choose poorly. All the while being funny, witty and mischievous. He’s an appealing character who doesn’t have to be outwitted in the traditional sense. Audiences love atypical villains, anti-heroes and scene stealers.
His utility and nature makes a movie trickier to do that uses him front and center, but having him and Picard in a battle of wits and philosophies while a horrible fight for survival takes place involving the Enterprise because of Q is a damned good starting place. Shame it never happened.

And I agree. I just think it works better on the show.

He’s one of those characters that work best in small doses.

Star Trek IV didn’t have a character the crew outwitted in the end.

I dunno, Gracie the whale was pretty clever!

;-)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture also did not have a character to outwit per se.

v’ger turned out to be quite formidable, especially using its interface to snatch illia who became a crafty poker player as the probe towards the end.

True. And while I’m not saying the two things are connected (because they aren’t) it is the absolute worst Trek film ever made. About once a decade I check it out in fairness to see if I’ve changed enough to consider the film better. It never is. It’s still hard to watch to this day.

IV? Worse the V? Worse than Nemesis?

Infinitely. It’s no contest. The characters weren’t themselves, the humor was out of place and never landed, the plot was groan-inducing and the message was as subtle as a nuclear explosion.

Nemesis, on the other hand, while flawed was amazingly watchable. The nature vs nurture theme is interesting. The final act was the best in any TNG feature film. And it managed to do something that 7 years of the show and three other movies failed to do. Create some empathy for Data while wrapping up his character nicely. He really had nowhere else to go as his “growth” such as it were, had obviously reached its limit.

Roddenberry’s favorite one, you know…

Roddenberry hated the films. And if this was his favorite all one needs to do is realize that he hated Wrath of Khan. Easily the best of the Trek features. And in this case, it’s not just my opinion but seems to be the case among the many.

It’s not an absolute.

At the end of every Q story, he basically says “until next time”

It’s just not very action adventure oriented.

I thought an adventures of Vash & Q in space-time would have been an interesting spinoff series.

Wild. I never got why Vash was on the screen at all.

So, it’s interesting to know that others found her interesting. Goes to show how featuring minor and recurring guest characters can broaden the appeal of the series.

Sincerely, I thought that she was just a character to indulge Patrick Stewart’s wish to be an Indiana Jones style action hero and avoid the romantic arc with Dr. Crusher that Roddenberry had mapped out.

Her appearance in DS9 seemed more of a first season attempt to do something with familiar characters dropping through the station.

I think Stewart’s ideas for TNG and pet projects (Vash, “Starship Mine”, the Argo) and what fans actually liked about the Picard character (including the Crusher romance arc that never quite happened) goes to show that he is hardly an exception from the truth that actors should be kept away from writing their own character and let them identify with them too much, lest the characters morph into the actors (and not the other way round). As happened with Picard – the character, and the series.

I dunno. It’s also realistic to express that part of Picard – he has a sense of adventure he just doesn’t always express. The Argo is a bit much, but it’s great to see him having fun with a daring extrovert like Vash (and shirking when she comes to his place of work), being an action hero in Starship Mine (is there a large contingent of fans who don’t like that episode?) and fighting the Borg in First Contact (remember the rough draft had Riker on the ship.) We are often reminded of Picard’s reckless youth, he can’t have tamped it ALL down!

Not just the Argo… Look at Picard in the 4 movies. With his tank top physically dealing with the baddies. Swinging around engineering in First Contact, fighting Ru’afu in Insurrection and Soren in Generations.

A friend of mine really latched on to Vash for some reason. I didn’t hate her but never really liked her much either. At the time. I am rewatching the series for the first time in decades and now I find her to be even more hollow and one dimensional than ever. Weird…

Vash is fun but she is basically a one note character. She is very smart but doesn’t like to play by the rules…like Q. It’s why they got along. But yeah she’s not a layered character or anything but certainly fun to watch.

I always thought the TV budgets were holding the Q back in the TV episodes. Having a movie budget would have let the Q really loose and make them scary and humorous at the same time. I would have loved to see that.

I never found Q scary. Ever. The first time I saw him in Farpoint I thought it was ridiculous. And it was the sort of thing we saw a number of times in TOS. Beings so highly advanced that they appear to be doing magic to us. Yawn. Been there done that. They didn’t do themselves any favors with that awful “humanity on trial” silliness. But after that, when he showed up and just started clowning around with them… Only then was his character tolerable. And it was obvious he enjoyed humans. After all, on TNG humans were the most superior beings in the entire universe. Even the Q learned from us!

This is exactly my point though, there was a potential to make the Q really scary as species and you could read between the lines that they could be scary if the production allowed for it, but for I guess budget and story reasons they haven’t decided to go to that route. Now, we have a good opportunity to take this route and see a more unhinged, uninhibited, totally scary version of the Q on the screens. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.

I don’t know that I’d be on board with unhinged Q, but I agree that the small screen and limited television effects in the 90s did constrain the depiction of the Q.

Q Who remains an excellent episode not only because it introduced the Borg, but more because it burst the bubble of naive arrogance that Starfleet could handle anything it would encounter.

Q was shown to be a capricious trickster god-like figure in the spirit of many human religious pantheons, but all the more disturbingly scary for all that.

A cinematic feature could have taken the Enterprise beyond the boundary of the Milky Way galaxy or even normal space and put them in a dramatic situation that could give the audience a great 90 minutes.

We already had the “unhinged Q” idea. It was Trelane. And it is one of my favorite TOS episodes for a reason. Great mix of curiosity, comedy and cruelty in a villain (a child no less!) without all the tired revenge / destroy the universe shtick!

I was actually thinking about Trelane as well and you are right, my idea was closer to him, but a little more hard edged, perhaps “R” rated version of Trelane.

Wasn’t there a novel that basically said Trelane was actually a Q? I really love that idea too. Trelane was just a child and why he did what he did. Q is just a man child. ;)

I think there was but there were other omnipotent beings out there in Trek who were not Q. The Thelosians for example. The Organians are another. My thinking is that just because a being possesses abilities also possessed by the Q it doesn’t mean they are the same.

Obviously I know that. I was speaking specifically about Trelene and that someone wrote a novel saying he was directly part of the Q.

And I went and found it. The novel is called Q-Squared.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Q-Squared

Clearly its not canon, but that idea that Trelane was really a Q has been a fan theory for decades now. Someone just turned the idea into a story.

Back in the day I myself briefly entertained the idea of Trelane as a Q before I ever heard of the book. But it was just a fan thought.

I don’t think it possible with a species as advanced as the Q. The only thing that could be scary is that they were so powerful they could do ANYTHING to us at ANY time. And if they were like that there is no way the viewer could not believe they would just snap all the characters out of existence and move on with things the way we would bulldoze up an anthill and think nothing of it. So, no. The concept just wouldn’t work and didn’t work until they made a comedy out of it.

Well… I for one am thankful we never saw Q on the silver screen. He was more of a TV guy. Besides, the movies needed to be more dramatic and Q never worked well when he was being serious. He was at his best when he was a clownish figure not taking himself seriously. How would that have worked in a feature film? Sure we can take him once a season in a 44 minute episode. But a two hour feature with him? Unless it was just a short cameo to be played off for laughs for a moment I do not see it working.

Besides, they DID go with their biggest nemesis in the 2nd film. The Borg.

I imagine that if you brought Q into the movies that another member of the continuum would be the true villain with De Lancie being more of an antihero. The stakes of the movie could be high but Q could still be funny.

Wow great idea! An actual Q villain. We never seen that before. Q was just an antagonist. And he never actually wanted to hurt anyone. But a Q that was a villain that he needed to stop, that would be crazy! :)

That would be sincerely good.

Q loved humans. He talked like he didn’t care but it was pretty darn obvious he thought highly of humans. It’s why he held Picard’s hand and slowly walked him through everything in All Good Things. He essentially gave him the answers to the test because he didn’t want humanity screwed with by the Q. I wouldn’t even call him an antagonist. He was always on the side of humanity. And, as usual, the show presented humanity as better than the Q, too.

As far as the humans were concerned he was an antagonist. ;)

I will say at the beginning Q was more suspicious and mistrustful of humans, but you’re right, the more he came around, the more he started to respect them.

I disagree with your last part though because you’re comparing humanity against one entity of the Q; which they made very clear the continuum wasn’t represented by him (and why they booted him out for awhile). We really have no basis of what the Q is outside of a few threads we seen here and there. So it’s really hard to say that. They just considered Q himself as a nuisance, but they had practically no knowledge of the continuum itself to judge it one way or the other.

OK. But I say that because a recurring theme on TNG is that humans are the bestest beings in all the universe. Even Q learned from us.

Oh, and I honestly don’t think he was suspicious at all of humans from the start. He is omnipotent, you know. I think he already knew all about humans when he decided to start screwing with them. He was playing with a species he liked and respected already. But this was the first time the Q would be revealed to humanity so he opted to put on a show. I don’t think the Q have ever posed any real threat to humanity apart from being an occasional pain in the ass.

He was mistrustful of them, why he put humanity on trial. He said it himself, humans were becoming more influential in the galaxy and he thought they weren’t ready due to their past. That ultimately they will sucumb to what they are, violent and prejudice people. I mean he’s not the first omnipotent being in Star Trek to question humans and if they were peaceful or not. This was a theme throughout Star Trek.

I never agreed with the idea humans were the best or the show was saying that. The Q always looked down on the Federation in general as still primitive and small. Q did learn to respect them (they did save his life as well) but the continuum as a whole never saw them as more than that from TNG to Voyager.

So no clue why you think that? But people can see things differently I know.

I say it because it was subtext that appeared repeatedly throughout the run of the series. I picked up on it. And a number of others I have spoken to about it did too. Not everyone did, of course. But it is there. I think it was intentional.

On the flip side there was none of it in TOS at all. The Metrons didn’t think much of humans and didn’t bother to waste their time with us until we chased the Gorn nearby. But they didn’t learn anything from us. The only thing was they were impressed that Kirk showed mercy to his foe. And the Organians were sickened by us. But Q I really think was aware of humans, was impressed with us and decided to just put on a show upon first contact. He was never going to do anything to humanity. Now this wasn’t obvious in that episode but as we saw other Q episodes I think that became obvious.

Well I never did. And I watched the show multiple times over. They were proud of being in the Federation but treated everyone like everyone else.

Again, Q learned to respect humans but it was clearly not right away. He really did feel humans still needed to be taught a few things, hence sending them to the Borg. He literally go Picard to admit they weren’t prepared, not the other way around. How much more clearer can that be?

He may not have hated them but just listen to the guy speak, he clearly wasn’t that fond of them either. In Deja Q, he told Data being human was the worst idea he could desire and trying to be one made no sense to him since he considered them a minor species in terms of their place in the galaxy. So clearly while some grudging respect, he still saw humans pretty low on the totem pole. I’m just literally listening to the guys words. Where are you getting this idea he was ‘impressed’ with humans? The Q continuum as a whole never saw humans as anything but a low rated and primitive species.

The only time Q admitted he was impressed with Picard was when he solved the paradox in AGT. Everything before, he was constantly putting Picard in his place from Q Who to Tapestry. These arguments just gets tedious man.

I think the good thing about it is that they’d be avoiding the typical Khan clone villain but it could be a fun role to tempt a known actor/actress with mainstream appeal.

The Q thing was fine for TV, but general audiences beyond core TNG fans would have found it silly — I don’t think that translates well to the big screen.

Should of happened instead of Insurection

Should have. “Should of” is not a thing.

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️

A new or occasional poster drops in with a view, but you feel it’s essential to nitpick written grammar Bryant Burnette?

Hi Mike Thompson UK. Glad to have you join in. Hope you’ll have more to say.

It’s a common typo even in the UK, isn’t it ;) I think some pedantic posters also forget that at this day and age many of us type out our comments in a rush on a tiny screen while commuting (or god forbid, walking ;) so these things are easy to happen, especially with overzealous auto-correction!

Lol VS, the reason you see “last edited…” on so many of my posts is precisely because I usually need to do some inappropriate “auto-correction” . Worse, my keyboard mysteriously switches to French at least a couple of times a week and it can take a bit before I notice.

Don’t get me started on auto-correct…

Thanks TG47, much appreciated.

I’m hoping to see Q return & go against Captain Pike. A nemisis like Q would be perfect for Anson to show his acting chops. Love’m most when he gets all “twisty” and who better than Q to bring the worst/best(?)

Whilst there are creative ways of doing something like that you run into the Ferengi or Borg Star Trek Enterprise problems again. I personally enjoyed both episodes but I recall both receiving a bit of a backlash from large sections of the fanbase.

It’s very strange that this never happened. The only satisfactory explanation is that everyone figured there was no way to top “All Good Things…” so there was no need to try. But a good Q-based movie would have been an even bigger hit than “First Contact” was; you’d think sheer greed would have made it happen.

I don’t know about that… There were a great number of episodes in the series that topped AGT. Even a couple of Q episodes were way better than AGT.

I agree. I’m speculating that maybe the Trek producers didn’t think they could do better for a Q finale than that, so decided not to try. Either way, the fact that they never tried it is very much not a point in their favor.

Made with fans’ tastes in mind, Insurrection’s title was superficial in terms of the story and misleading in terms of a general audience’s expectations. On later viewings, it’s clear that it’s heart was i the right place.

What would have been funny is if Q became a crew member but it was never explained and left as a cliffhanger – he’s still a crewmember. Perhaps writing a diary. However, too much Q and we get Mxyplik.

trouble is the movies were not interested in the kind of wild cosmic stuff that was part of the tv shows and q in particular, merely war stories riffing off ‘khan’.

The Q character is a cop-out. Star Trek franchise needs real sci-fi writers. They have morphed the shows into nothing more than Space Soaps and comic book super hero sensationalism.

I’m glad it didn’t happen. Don’t need him there to Deus Ex Q the movies. TBH, Q is not my favourite character. Like the Holodeck, Q was simply created by TPTB as a way to do goofy things with the crew when the writers got sick and tired of just making the Enterprise go back and forth though the galaxy of the 24th century. I definitely don’t want him back for STP but it is probably inevitable at this point I guess.

I tend to agree. Q and the holodeck were go-to’s that felt like filler when they couldn’t get a decent script together. Every single holodeck centered episode was garbage. It begs the question, why O why is it even possible to turn off the safeties? One should NEVER be able to do that. Ever. It malfunctions so much it really ought to be taken off every single starship until they can fix those bugs. I imagine on other star ships crew have been killed in that thing.

If you don’t like Q, that’s obviously fine. But I admit, I’m pretty amazed so many on this board don’t like Q. This is the only place I seen so much division about him at all. He seems to be an immensely popular character most places. But of course it doesn’t mean everyone likes him but his episodes are some of the most popular as well. Well not so much Voyager episodes minus Death Wish. ;)

I said since before the TNG movies that Q wasn’t movie material.

I just don’t know how people can believe that though? Someone like Q isn’t ‘movie material’ but one note villains with the same repetitive motives like Krall, Shinzon and Nero are?

Q can just be so much more layered. And I don’t just mean OUR Q, but the continuum as a whole. There is just so much you can explore there versus seeing another angry uber-villain with a big ship vowing to blow up the Federation….again.

Imagine what someone with a wild visual imagination could do with the Q Continuum on a movie budget. That was what I was hoping would be shown in a Trek movie with Q.

Exactly! I think some people are just thinking about Q the character when others are thinking about Q as a species (it would also be easier to distinguish if they didn’t all have the same name lol).

Even for me, I just want to see other Q’s for a change. Everyone only talks about John de Lancie’s character as if that is the only Q we could ever see for some odd reason. Even this interview I know Frakes is really talking about that character, which I understand at that time. But now it would be nice to go beyond that and that character, especially with all the new shows we have.

We all know the Q will show up again at some point because it’s Star Trek, they ALL show up again eventually. Xb’s anyone? Of course that’s now confirmed thanks to LDS (but I don’t expect much from it outside of a fun cameo). But clearly the aging issue is what will limit John de Lancie himself from coming back much; although something like Lower Decks there is no issue.

But I don’t want the entire species to live or die by one actor alone no matter how great he is in that role. But the Q as a whole could be so interesting once you get beyond that character. Would love to see a Q on Discovery in the 32nd century for example. Why not? We know the Klingons, Romulans and Vulcans will all ultimately show up again there. (sigh)

Basically people seem to be saying they wanted a story where Q snapped his fingers and sent the crew somewhere interesting…. kinda Q Who redux.

First, I think the character evolved beyond that after season 3.

Second, I’d rather they just sent the crew somewhere interesting and cut out the guy who can’t stop changing costume and taunting “humans aren’t ready for what’s out here!!!!!!” like a greek chorus. It just doesn’t sound like something that would translate well a film, visually or dramatically.

I hate to yuk people’s yum, but it all seems a little played out and dated to me.

OK, I get your point. But that’s the thing though, if you ONLY see Q as that then we’re limiting what something like what the Q ultimately is, aren’t we? Yes I know that is what he mostly did as a character but that doesn’t define Q as a race. But that’s also the problem, for whatever reason, they were afraid to go beyond that. We did get some actual insight into the Q continuum on Voyager with Death Wish and The Q and the Grey (but I REALLY hated that one) but they can clearly do other things with them; they just didn’t most of the time.

Sometimes I’m just confused on how people see these things. We can have the 200th story about Klingons across 7 shows and multiple films, but twelve episodes surrounding probably one of the most mysterious but complex beings in Trek is already played out. Maybe it would be interesting if we can do a Q story that would actually be about them for a change? I would love to see that. I think a lot of people would beyond just testing humans.

Although yes, I do know if you do too much with some species you kill the mystique of them like the Borg, but don’t tell me the Q isn’t something you can do more with, especially in a movie when you can figure out how to make two movies starring Khan.

I agree with this and in fact this was part of my point above about the Q being more unhinged in the movies. I was actually talking about the Q as a species there. Imagine the visual and imaginative places we could go with the Q characters. The sky would truly be the limit, but unfortunately most trekkies here seem to keep the character in its limited TV scope. If there was one character that could benefit significantly from a 100 million dollar movie budget, it is definitely the Q, more than the Vulcans, klingons or romulans. I think we need to be more open minded of this and try to get our imaginations working instead of being stagnant and redundant with the character.

I hate to say this, but I’m always amazed how fans, Trek fans in particular, are so narrow minded about this stuff sometimes. We seen basically one Q the entire time. But because of that one, they seem to think he represents every Q out there or they all have to think and do as he does EVEN though the show has made it clear countless times that’s not how the continuum behaves in general and Q has always been seen more of a trouble maker within the continuum.

I doubt the vast majority ever goes around pestering other life forms and dressing up in their clothing. Most probably don’t give the Federation or anything they do a second thought, especially since we’ve never seen a single one ever bother anyone in the Federation except Q himself.

And like you, I would like to see, gasp, other Qs. Maybe some with vastly different personalities or even cultures just like we seen with other aliens. Maybe just MAYBE the Q is just as diverse and different from each other as any other species being billions of years old and all. We know practically nothing about them outside the little we learned on Voyager. Hell we don’t even have a clue what they look like. Maybe they are all-energy beings like the Organians or actually carbon based or something we have yet to discover. And you make a great point. We can have movies about unhinged Vulcans, Romulans, El Aurians, Augments and multiple Klingons so I don’t understand why a Q can’t be the same way? What kind of craziness could that bring??

On a movie budget you can go BIG and maybe they can finally do something more creative beyond just meeting some lonely angry dude who feels slighted over the Federation and have his big ship or ships pound on the Enterprise in a climatic scene like we seen in literally the last four damn movies. (sigh)

Completely agreed. Look at number of one-note boring villains the franchise has produced from scratch, with 3 out of 4 of the TNG ones IMO being entirely forgettable save for the efforts of a superlative actor doing his best with it. With Q you have a fan favorite character whose voice is established. He works well enough when he drops the crew into a terrible situation they must outwit, there’s no reason why that formula couldn’t have been adapted.

and he could have taken picard and co to truly cosmic places in the movies, things they refused to touch.

Sad. The only really interesting Alien character in Start Trek is Q. The possibilities are endless with what he can do. Quite frankly The Borg, Romulans and the usual adversaries are boring! No style and no real power whatsoever .. . they are the result of infantile imagination. Q is the only character that The Next generation met whom was ever worth watching and in any way gave the series panache! Without Q it is just a science fiction Tv programme without zest or much point..

That galaxy con live panel this article is talking about is on the dailymotion site. Go there and just search “GalaxyCon live star trek tng”

Oh dear, but Q was always the worst. He was used to create some of the best plots in the series, but I groaned every time he showed up. No offense to de Lancie: it was the nature of the character, not the actor.