While investigating a rare series of supernovae, Voyager is again visited by Q - and this time he wants Janeway to have his child. No, he's not trying to pawn off a baby he somehow came into the possession of, he wants to impregnate Janeway. A second, female Q arrives as Janeway is turning Q down for the eighth time, and it is revealed that the solar explosions are a side effect of a war within the Q Continuum. Q abducts Janeway to show her first-hand; this time, instead of a dust-swept shop in the middle of nowhere, the Continuum is rendered as a Civil War battlefield. Janeway does not share Q's hope that a human-Q hybrid child would be an effective quick-fix for this war (that was started by Q's part in the death of another Q in Death Wish) - but is equally confident that a child that is the product of two Qs would be. She is unable to convince the opposing faction, who captures her and Q and plans to execute them, but fortunately the Voyager crew shows up (with the help of the female Q) in the nick of time and uses the Civil War weaponry to defeat the Q and save the day.
John DeLancie is as delightful as ever. He essentially crashes the constant condescension awards show that is Janeway's captaincy, to tell her that he is very happy for her, and that he'll let her finish, but that he is the most condescending being of all time. These moments are very satisfying to me; Janeway's arrogant, patronizing attitude is so pervasive, so unrelentless, that when Q shows up and calls her Kathy, when he feeds her the cheapest lines in the book and expects them to work on someone so simple, when he just tries to buy her love with a puppy, I squee with joy. Suzie Plakson (Female Q), on the other hand, would be significantly more tolerable if she never opened her mouth again, or even appeared on screen again. Okay, that's not completely fair. I don't remember her being bad at K'Ehleyr, but in this role she takes the over-the-top Q-style presentation and flattens it, to the point where it is neither flamboyant nor subdued nor worth watching.
In my Death Wish review, I neatly categorized all the Q episodes, so where does this one fall? Well, at first glance, it seems to be of the "humanity is better than gods" type. After all, Q is behaving badly, impulsively, shallowly, while the humans get a chance to moralize to him about how much better it is to be thoughtful and hard-working. But maybe it is because this episode is informed by the post-Deja Q mentality, where Q is outwardly extolling humanity's virtues, or maybe it is the whole civil war setting making the Continuum seem less god-like, but the atheist themes seem diminished her - leaving the feel-good humans-are-great stuff to stand on its own. In this episode, the Q are just another species, who just happen to be omnipotent and petty at the same time. Not that I necessarily think that this way is better or worse, but it is perceptibly different.
This is an episode that I pretty clearly remember abandoning half-way through; I recall being pretty disgusted at how goofy and unimaginative the Civil War interpretation of the Continuum seemed to me. I'm not nearly as turned off by it this time, but it is probably for the best that I didn't complete the episode originally - the solution, wherein the metaphor is stretched paper-thin to allow the Voyager crew to save the day (by force!) in the Continuum by using the "figurative" era-appropriate rifles, would have been an even bigger letdown. For me, that the end still is frustrating, but I liked the rest of the episode enough to look past it.
The episode ends with Q genuinely appreciative towards Janeway, and it seems a bit like a hollow victory without Q sending them home as a token of his appreciation. I like the interactions with Q and this crew (Chakotay is now Chuckles, and Neelix is the "bar rodent"), but it's probably just as well that there's only one Q episode left.
Watchability: 3/5
Bottom Line: Q continues to entertain, but the substance is a bit diminished here.
No comments:
Post a Comment