The Q - Part 1

Yet another of the many new races added to the Star Trek universe by the coming of "The Next Generation". They make a very dramatic entrance in the pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint"; they allow the new Enterprise to show off its fast speeds and its ability to separate. Also, it allowed them to show off their new special affects with the web and the new (much improved on "The Original Series") orbiting and space shots. While not actually playing a major role in the episode, they give (in my opinion) the most interesting part of the episode. I feel that the court scene could be easily considered one of the greatest in the history of Star Trek; does anybody else feel this? Q puts humanity on trial for being barbarians. This is something which could be saved for a 3-hour philosophy discussion, yet I must take my hat off to the writers for what they did with the scene. Not only did they give us an insight into our history and how it could be viewed from a non-human perspective. But also an insight into our possible future, a post-atomic horror style world in which justice is irrelevant and where the military is controlled by drugs. It presents a bleak and distopic future. Their entrance paves the way for many other appearances by this unusual race, not only on The Next Generation screens, but also on DS9 and on Voyager. While their appearances on the other two series are good, the Q's home will always be onboard the Enterprise-D. They are a mysterious and omnipotent race; this is helped greatly by the acting of John de Lancie (the actor who plays Q). Bizarrely, they are very similar to the Borg, they are both omnipotent beings; who will "flaunt" their power at any opportunity. Also they both have a lack of individuality. While it is far more pronounced with the Borg, the fact is that every member of the Q is called Q. This is even worse than the Borg in some ways since even the Borg have names e.g. 7 of 9 unimatrix 0001. Another thing that is strange is the question "What are the Q made from?". Humans are carbon-based life forms, yet what are the Q, to the best of my knowledge they would have evolved into pure energy, this is very similar to the Orcanians in The Original Series (please correct me if I'm wrong, my knowledge of The Original Series is not great). AS a result of this they don't have a home planet as such, merely a "plane" of existence known as the Q continuum.

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