#but capable of so many Horrible things. he really does think of humans as pests.

[orcelito]

what really gets me is that like. i'm not really into the Wild West kind of genre. and i'm not really into sci-fi. ive never been that into either. but here we are at the intersection of each with trigun, and somehow i am Captivated

[cnroth]

On the Q

It was a revelation to me when I first rewatched Star Trek on Netflix a couple of years ago, that John DeLancie’s Q is considered malevolent or villainous. Given that I was born during the summer between seasons one and two of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), and that the series I remember most clearly from childhood is Voyager (VOY), one can understand my confusion.

In the pilot episode, the Q are introduced as a species of extremely powerful beings who can manipulate space and time to their will. They place themselves as judges over so-called “lesser” species, issuing subjective rulings about whether or not these other species are worthy of expanding, growing, or even existing. Sins committed by members or factions can be held against the whole species, being used as evidence of their immorality. Of course, Captain Picard convinces Q to allow him and his crew to prove themselves as having transcended the sins of their past, and is (more or less) successful.

By the end of TNG, the character of Q has evolved. Because audiences responded more to his snide humor and chaotic-neutral alignment than to the possible metaphors to be found within his character, that heavily influenced what he became—an amusing pest who pops in every so often to teach someone on the Enterprise a lesson about life or exploration or themselves. Yet, as he revealed to Picard in the series finale, he never really stopped being what he always was. The trial was not over, and the fate of humanity had yet to be decided.

Then, came his arc through VOY. As with anything related to VOY, this has been the most heavily criticized portion of his development. His first appearance, in the episode Death Wish, followed quite well with where his character left off at the end of TNG, and remains one of my favorite episodes of any Trek series. After that… well… he goes a bit off the rails.

Now, let’s just step aside for a moment to acknowledge the elephant in the room. A large number of the *cough* cisgendered-heterosexual-male *cough* Trekkers/Trekkies who hate VOY, hate it because both the primary protagonist (Captain Kathryn Janeway) and the primary antagonist (the Borg Queen) are strong, authoritative women. WAIT! Don’t tune me out yet; stay with me.

Yes, I know there are many legitimate criticisms of the series—its writing, its quality, the lizard babies, blah blah blah. Yes, I know. I fully acknowledge those things. I don’t deny them. And no, I am not turning this into a rant about how Janeway-haters are all misogynists. That’s another topic entirely. Simply, I do not want this to become a VOY-bashing session. I adore that show, and if you insult Captain Janeway, I will have to toss you out of an airlock.

That being said, I personally do not like where the writers took Q in the later seasons of VOY. It simply does not fit his character for me, and I think it cheapens what he represented throughout his run on TNG. It sold him out for easy laughs and entertainment instead of building into what I think could have been an incredibly potent allegory for power and privilege—one that was wonderfully fleshed out in Death Wish and then surreptitiously dropped in favor of a much more shallow and subtly sexist plot meant to garner lolz at the expense of strength and complexity in Janeway’s and Chakotay’s characters.

Power and privilege, I think, is where I really hone in on the essence of Q, for better or for worse. In some ways, he knows exactly what he has over everyone else; in other ways, he is blind to it. That is the nature of being a privileged person, is it not? For example, men can be fully aware that there is a social power imbalance that favors them and disadvantages women, yet completely blind to the fact that their reasons for disliking Janeway are characteristics they overlook and even praise in the male captains. That is the nature of privilege. Q knows that he is more capable than humans are, yet he never seems to grasp that his own privilege is exactly what skews his understanding of humanity in unfair and stereotypical ways. It also blinds him to the things they have in common.

But, here is where I want to get meta on my meta: Q is a character representing privilege, who is created and written by people of privilege. He is Bill Gates lecturing about income inequality. He is Iggy Azalea giving an interview on the value of rap. He is a mansplainer, telling women what sexism looks like. Sometimes, he does actually get the idea across. Sometimes, the allegory is good and poignant. Other times, it’s problematic. Always, it ignores the perspective of those for whom the issue is most real.

This character misappropriates the issue of power and privilege. It skews the allegory in favor of the privileged viewer, to the detriment of the oppressed. The fact that he uses epithets against Worf and Chakotay go unnoticed. Remember that time he turned Dr. Crusher into a dog in the middle of her absolutely spot-on criticism of his actions towards Amanda, rolling his eyes at the “shrill” woman? Or the time he tried to coerce Captain Janeway to have sex with him in exchange for getting her crew home? Did you laugh at those interactions and then promptly forget about the implications when the “real” moral of the story came to light? Those things soil otherwise good episodes for me, not because they exist but because they are written simply to make privileged viewers go, “lol, Q’s an asshole.” It isn’t so funny to those of us who actually live with that sort of treatment on a regular basis. If anything, it twists the knife. Meanwhile, white men can pat themselves on the back for watching such an enlightened, progressive tv show.

Still, there are positives to be pulled from this mess. I cannot help but think about the story of two Q who chose to leave the Continuum and move to Earth, and I consider the parallels to be found in how horribly allies are often treated by people of privilege who view them as traitors. I think about how it boggles Q’s mind that Riker did not want to give up his human life in order to be a Q. I think of how petty I can be when I know that I have a larger base of knowledge on something than someone else does, and how quickly I can dismiss their perspective as being beneath me. I think of how utterly unjust and narrow-minded it is for “developed” societies to judge “underdeveloped” cultures when the truth is that they have no such moral right. I think of how, sometimes, having everything handed to you can suffocate that which makes life worth living until you don’t know why you even bother anymore.

I think of these things and I wonder if Q, like the Borg, is simply another antagonist blatantly abusing power and privilege in order to teach people with real world power about themselves.