Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More
Where does Q rank on your list of all-time Star Trek antagonists? Hopefully, he’s high on it, because he returns to the franchise in “Death Wish”. When a renegade Q finds Voyager, our old familiar Q shows up to bring him to justice – by sealing him back up within a comet for crimes against the Continuum.
The Wikipedia plot summary for “Death Wish”:
Voyager comes across a comet, inside which there is a single living being. It turns out to be a member of the Q Continuum (later designated as Quinn). Quinn thanks the Voyager crew for freeing him from his imprisonment, then tries to commit suicide. He is unsuccessful (see omnipotence paradox) and causes all the males on Voyager to vanish instead.
Q himself appears and accuses Quinn of sending humans to the Delta Quadrant where they did not belong yet, then realizes all the men are missing and returns them. Quinn requests Federation asylum from Janeway when Q wants to re-impose the Q Continuum’s sentence of imprisonment. Q laughs at the request for asylum (the two Q even going as far as an extreme hide-and-seek chase) but Janeway decides to hold a hearing on Quinn’s request. Q reluctantly agrees to make Quinn human if he is granted asylum. He attempts to bribe Janeway throughout the episode, claiming that if she rules against Quinn, he’ll send Voyager home; it is also hinted that he is infatuated with her.
During the hearing, Q summons witnesses to testify against Quinn’s suicide. Another Q defends the justice system of the continuum. Sir Isaac Newton claimed that he was sitting beside Quinn when the apple struck his head (after Quinn stood up to leave, he jostled the tree, causing the apple to fall). Another witness, Maury Ginsberg, claims that if Quinn had not offered a ride in his jeep, he would have never made it to Woodstock, got the sound system working, and met his future wife. Finally, William Riker of the USS Enterprise denies any claim to have known Quinn at all, until Q shows Riker that Quinn had helped his family in the past: as a soldier in the American Civil War, Quinn carried a wounded Union officer, Colonel Thaddeus Riker, back from the front lines to safety – ultimately ensuring Will Riker’s existence in the future.
Quinn’s argument involves a representation of the Q Continuum, which appears as a road stretching around the entire planet with one rest stop, a country gas station and store, and some bored Q standing around. Quinn describes immortality as dull, explaining that it is only possible to experience the universe so many times before it gets boring. Q tries to dismiss it and makes a poor attempt to show that the other members of the continuum are happy, but Quinn sees through it and confesses, to Q’s surprise, that it was Q’s earlier unrestrained behavior in an attempt to make his life fun (which led to the events in “Deja Q“) that was the motivation for his own actions. He makes an impassioned speech comparing his eternal boredom to suffering from a terminal biological disease for which suicide is the only humane release, and that being forced to live for eternity against his will “cheapens and denigrates” his life, and indeed all life. Janeway is clearly moved by this and agrees to grant him asylum. Keeping his part of the bargain begrudgingly, Q makes him human. At this point, Quinn chooses his name.
While trying to decide where to assign Quinn so that he will not use his knowledge to evolve humanity overnight, Janeway and Chakotay receive a message from the Doctor that Quinn is dying after ingesting a rare poison, Nogatch hemlock. After they realize that the Doctor did not keep any of the poison on hand, and that the computer would not replicate it due to its harmful nature, Q then appears and admits that he was the one who gave Quinn the poison: he’s taking up Quinn’s rebellion against the staid order of the Q (“By demanding to end his life, he taught me a little something about my own. He was right when he said the Continuum scared me back in line. I didn’t have his courage or his convictions. He called me irrepressible. This was a man who was truly irrepressible. I only hope I make a worthy student.”).
In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “Death Wish” and the first appearance of Q(s) on Star Trek: Voyager. Plus! The guys talk about the less successful cousin of Allen Ginsberg, the internal politics of the Q, and dying just because.