A Wild Q Appeared!

[andraste]

Since real life spent most of January kicking me repeatedly in the head and forcibly separating me from my DVD collection, this has been a week for comfort television. Star Trek: The Next Generation is always good for that, since I would probably be comforted listening to Patrick Stewart read the phone book. (Of course, listening to Patrick Stewart read the phone book would probably be more interesting than parts of Encounter At Farpoint, but never mind.) Since the part I actually own on DVD is mainly the Q box set, there has been lots of Q, and that only makes the comfort television factor better.

Something I have always wondered what on earth Starfleet makes of the reports they get about Q. We know they've had at least one conference about him, and they must be keen to hear about the omnipotent species who have taken an interest in humans. Yet I imagine he's often difficult to explain. It cannot be easy for the Enterprise crew to write serious reports containing things like '... and then we were teleported to Sherwood Forest, because Q's idea of being nice to the captain involves kidnapping him, his crew and a woman he had a fling with and forcing us all to re-enact an Errol Flynn movie.' Luckily Encounter At Farpoint suggests that there are cameras on the bridge so there's at least footage to confirm some of what they say. Otherwise Starfleet might think they were making up the incident with the cigars, the half-naked women and the Mariachi band.

Of course, Starfleet are probably missing some of the finer points completely. I can't imagine that Picard ever informed them of Q's habit of leaning over to whisper in his ear or showing up in his bed. So their analyses probably lean more toward 'Q put humanity on trial and introduced us to the Borg' and less to 'Q flirted outrageously with Picard and wore a series of ridiculous hats.'

Although if I were going to hold a conference about the Q, there would definitely be a panel about the hats. It would have plenty of pictures and possibly a silliness rating for each one. I suspect that if the Q continuum ever have conferences about humans, the Q we know and love includes some kind of 'great hats in human history' presentation and uses this as an argument against destroying the species.

Comments

[astrogirl]

After some of the reports Kirk filed back in the day, I think Starfleet is probably so used to hearing weird shit that they're blase about it by now. This is, after all, an organization that apparently has rules and procedures in place for when you accidentally find yourself thrown back in time.

(Hmm. Apparently this is the only Trek-related icon I have access to on DW.)

[aris_tgd]

You've seen the Picard/Q vid made for Festivids this year, haven't you? :)

[jhall1]

The hats thing makes me wonder if Q's people could be Time Lords. (OK, I know that there are at least two major problems with that hypothesis.)

[vascarl]

Hi, this is dragons_shadows from livejournal, may I friend you here?

In other words it's good to hear from you, I hope your week of comfort television helps to make things better.

[alara]

My Q sockpuppet actually has a few posts about humans' ridiculous perceptions of him and also some about his presentations to the Continuum about humans that I thought might amuse you:

Q complains about humans giving Latin names to everyone

Q's been reading Starfleet analysts' reports about him

HUMANS FOUND SAPIENT, SO NYAAH NYAAH NYAAH

[evilfuzzydoom]

This may be relevant to your interests, then! Someone posted it on the ScienceWriters community.

http://i.imgur.com/9qZGI.png