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Monday, September 5, 2016

Star Trek TNG Hide and Q




This episode shouldn't have happened.  Or, at least it shouldn't have happened so soon.  If you have to bring back an especially unique recurring character this fast, you're doing it wrong.  It's a terrible gamble to put all of the eggs in the basket of one actor to save the integrity of an episode.  Q is a strong character and can carry entire episodes, without a doubt.  But, seriously, what if he hadn't been so charismatic?  Still, he's the only thing that makes this bad episode enjoyable, so the gamble paid off in that regard.


It's the only bad "Q episode" though.  Obviously not because of Q.  DeLancie is amazing as always and never changes Q's personality for a second.  To start with we have this Q  space-net.  They stopped using it after this episode and it's probably for the best. 



I didn't make complaints about it in the first episode because they put so much effort into the pilot. This thing is a relic for sure... a copy from the TOS episode, The Tholian Web, and let's be honest, it even looked better back then.  


And then a nice desolate planet with no details.  It looks like an old cardboard set of the past as well.  After Farpoint Station and even the planet on Code of Honor, it seems very lazy.  That coupled with the bad Halloween masks of the fabricated "army" as well as the dialogue makes it seem like they weren't even really trying in this episode.  They used the. phrase "animal things" to describe the combatants repeatedly.  It's very embarrassing.  Roddenberry stopped doing the majority of rewrites after this episode, incidentally.  We'll see if it made a difference as we go along.


All the misplaced drama.  Misplaced in characters.  Misplaced in situations.  All very frustrating.



Humans being given god-like powers isn't a new concept to Star Trek.  It had been explored before in TOS and even in different ways other than the Q Continuum in TNG, so I can't legitimately complain of lack of originality.  It was the pace and the person in question that made this episode silly.  Riker's head swells considerably fast and implausibly considering his age.  He's an adult and the way he starts behaving after their rescue mission is not believable at all.  He behaves the way a teenager would behave if given the powers of Q.  It would have been better suited to put Wesley in this position in this case.  The subject is tackled again later on an improved upon in the episode True Q. 



The gifts sequence was the pinnacle of discomfort for the viewer, or for me anyway, and it was all capped off by Riker asking Picard, "How did you know?"  Really?  Really?  A grown man; a military man.  The protector of the captain (since they kept beating it into people's heads every other episode at this point that the 1st officer leads the away teams to protect the captain, blah, blah, blah.)  He's really too naive to see through Q's game?  No, this was wrong.  And the way Riker ended up developing, it's probably best that they tried this now, because nobody would be buying this nonsense even by the time they were halfway into season 2.


Oh yay!  Another teaser about rough Klingon sex!  Cuz that's totally what adults talk about on the bridge of a starship in this situation. So juvenile considering that he's a main character and accepted as an equal.



I love Q, but this episode only gets 2 1/2 stars.  However, there would never be another bad Q episode again.  They just kept getting better and better from here on out.



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