Hide and Q (TNG)

            “Hide and Q” is, for the most part, an exceptionally poorly written episode. It does a terrible job of maintaining any sort of dramatic tension and also frequently seems like it was written by someone who had watched a little TNG but wasn’t intimately familiar with the characters. This is odd because one of the writers credited with the teleplay is Gene Roddenberry.

            None of this is earth-shattering. First season TNG has lots of stinkers. But I think this particular one bears further examination, for several reasons. It has some stuff going for it. The premise is vaguely compelling, and Q’s character does start to develop in an interesting direction. But on the whole it fails spectacularly, for a few very easy-to-understand reasons.

           

Or just hold a child and look distraught.

            First, let’s talk about dramatic tension. Any good hour of television, or more generally speaking, any good story, needs to have stakes. Something needs to be on the line, something that will be lost if the characters fail and/or gained if they succeed. “Hide and Q” tries way too hard to raise those stakes, to the point that all it does is draw attention to their flimsiness. The Enterprise is trying to save a colony from a mysterious disaster! If the rest of the away team doesn’t follow Q’s arbitrary rules, Tasha will die! If Riker is tempted by omnipotence…

            What exactly? What exactly is the bad thing that happens if Riker accepts Q’s offer of immortality and omnipotence? The episode is trying to tell this story about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely, but it never actually shows us Will being corrupted. It fails to offer any arguments as to why Will allowing Q to make him a Q would be anything but awesome (unless you count “Picard would lose a bet” as an argument.)

            Power does change Will, but not in ways that make any sense. The scene where Riker offers to grant everybody wishes is inconsistent to the point of being disturbing. He makes Wesley a grown-up (or at least strands him in a grown-up body) offers Geordi his sight (seriously, when is Geordi going to get any characterization other than “the blind guy?) and… makes Worf a Klingon girlfriend in fishnets?

            Wait a minute, hold that thought. This is isn’t the Holodeck. When Q makes things, they’re real. So when Riker snaps his fingers and makes Worf a special friend, he’s making an actual flesh-and-blood person. And when he snaps his fingers and she goes away, she just ceases to exist. Now, when Q pulls these shenanigans, it’s skeezy, but Q is basically an amoral being. Riker is one of the good guys.

Oh right. It's still the eighties.

            I will admit that women who exist only to be sex objects or fantasies is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. But this is such an egregious example I can’t wrap my head around it. And of course, it comes in a Roddenberry-written episode. The man is the most misogynistic feminist I’ve ever encountered. I’m sure it’s just a joke, but it’s a cheap joke that in the current age reads incredibly creepy, especially the fact that no one objects to the fact that Riker just made and then unmade a person, or asks him where she came from or what happened to her.

            I mentioned good points earlier. I really like how Q’s character is shaping up. The idea of this race of omnipotent beings who are terrified of stagnation is fascinating, and that angle doesn’t really come back until Voyager. The scene where Picard and Q quote Shakespeare back and forth is awesome, but that’s mostly because 1. Patrick Stewart is quoting Shakespeare and 2. Stewart and DeLancie have some of the best chemistry on the entire show. It’s a blessing that the writers realize this, and from here on out stop trying to pair Q with anyone else.

Random Observations:

Q wears the admiral’s uniform in this episode, and eventually the French Field Marshall, so he can outrank Picard. In later appearances, he will always wear a Captain’s uniform identical to Picard’s. You could read a lot into this.

Picard and Tasha is a terrible ship. Let us never speak of it again.

Troi doesn’t appear in the episode, explained by a throwaway line in the captain’s log. The ship’s productivity suffers not at all.

Q taunts Picard by not letting him record a log. This cracks me up for some reason, possibly because being denied the ability to monologue is a horrible punishment if you’re Patrick Stewart.

Worf is actually competent in this episode. That’s nice. It’s nice to see the warrior being allowed to war.

Really, it’s killing Wesley that makes Riker snap?

Geordi/ Tasha is also a bad ship, and it comes out of nowhere here.

The actor playing grown-up Wesley has 14-year-old Will Wheaton’s speech patterns down cold.