Well, if nothing else, it’s nice to see Civil War reenactors getting a pay day.
. . . I’m just kidding — no, it isn’t.
This is a review of the Star Trek: Voyager episode “The Q and the Grey.”
If you have not seen this episode, and you don’t want to know what happens in it, be
warned: spoilers beyond this point!
Having Q drop in the first time went so well that the producers of Voyager decided to invite
him back!
Makes sense.
Its first Q episode, which I reviewed in the previous video in this series, was one of
Voyager’s best episodes ever — and the second-highest rated episode of the season.
Another Q episode probably wouldn’t be as successful as that, but it couldn’t be that
much worse, either, could it?
. . . Could it?!
Things start out well enough — the crew is excitedly watching as a star goes supernova.
That’s neat!
Chakotay turns to Janeway like “Okay, you’ve had enough science for one day, young lady.
Time for bed.”
Janeway returns to her quarters, where she’s greeted by Q, who wants to show off his Hugh
Hefner Halloween costume.
Janeway isn’t impressed, but Q’s like, “Listen, lemme just impregnate you real
quick—”
“You, a billions-of-years-old being, want to have sex with me, a woman who is orders
of magnitude younger than you?”
“Yeah!
What do you think?”
“I think you’re taking your Hugh Hefner cosplay a little too far.”
Q leaves, but returns the next day as Janeway is talking things over with Chakotay in the
ready room.
Q’s like, “Oh, so there’s another man, eh?
That’s why you didn’t jump into bed last night so I could stick a baby in you!
What’s so great about this guy?
The face tat?
I can do a face tat, too!”
Janeway’s like “That tat ain’t all that” and walks out.
Later, Tom Paris and Harry Kim are hanging out in the holodeck and Q appears, hoping
they can give him some advice for how to get in their captain’s pants.
Tom’s like “Have you tried flying with her in a shuttlecraft at warp ten so you both
turn into giant salamanders?”
That’s no help, so Q, no doubt depressed by his romantic misfortune, turns to drink.
He orders some booze from Neelix at the holographic bar and says, “I’m tired of window shopping
— how can I get that captain of yours to let me sample the merchandise?”
and Neelix is like “We don’t serve leering perverts here — except Mr. Berman, of course.”
Cut to Janeway’s ready room once again, where Q tries to bribe her with a puppy, and
takes a softer approach, claiming that his previous attempts to seduce her were just
his childish way of covering up his true feelings.
The fact is, he’s lonely, and he doesn’t just want to have a baby with Janeway — he
wants a relationship, a family, stability.
Janeway’s like “Nah.”
Just then, a Lady Q appears and she’s like “Q!
What are you doing with that dog?
And I’m not talking about the puppy!”
“That’s kind of an old joke, isn’t it?”
“I’m five billion years old — I wrote that joke!”
Lady Q is Q’s ex, you see.
They just broke up, and apparently it was not amicable.
But no time to worry about that!
Janeway is called to the bridge because there are more supernovas!
These are supposed to be incredibly rare events, but now they’re poppin’ off like . . . weasels.
Janeway suspects Q is responsible for the sudden flurry of supernova activity, and Q’s
like, “Ehhhh, I mean, perhaps in a way . . .”
Three supernovas erupt at the same time, and Voyager doesn’t have time to avoid all three
shockwaves, and the shields might not be able to withstand the impact.
Janeway demands that Q do something, so Q snaps his fingers and transports himself and
Janeway to a southern plantation house during the American Civil War.
Seriously, you guys?
You do a Jonathan Frakes cameo in the last Q episode, and a Civil War gimmick in this
one, but you couldn’t do them both at once?!
Now if I make another North and South reference it’s gonna seem like I’m reaching, and
you know how I hate that!
Q, dressed as a Union officer, explains to Janeway that this isn’t actually the Civil
War — it’s the Q Continuum.
Q is causing Janeway to perceive the Continuum in this way because it’s a reference she’s
familiar with, and it represents what is actually happening: a Q civil war, sparked by the death
of Quinn in the previous Q episode, “Death Wish.”
Following the events of that episode, Q began speaking out more forcefully for independence
and individuality, creating a conflict between himself and those who supported him, and the
forces of the status quo.
That’s why Q wants to have a child with Janeway, he explains — to combine the omnipotence
of the Q with the compassion and morality of humanity, to create a new messiah to lead
the Q into an age of benevolence and peace.
Janeway’s still like, “Nah.”
As part of this conflict, the Q have created weapons powerful enough to harm each other
— the use of those weapons is what’s causing the supernovas.
So, that explains that.
Musket fire smashes through the windows and Q is wounded.
From outside, a leader of the opposing army demands Q’s surrender, but Q refuses and
fires back with his pistol.
More musket and artillery fire bombards the house, and Janeway drags Q out.
Back on Voyager, they’ve survived the supernova shockwaves, but now Lady Q is stuck on the
ship without her powers — something to do with the supernova and the Q Civil War, whatever.
Chakotay guesses there must be another way to get to the Q Continuum besides having a
Q snap their fingers, and Lady Q is like, “Yeah, there might be,” and she advises
the crew on how to modify Voyager to take a trip to the Continuum so they can rescue
Captain Janeway and she can, I dunno, look at Q’s phone to see who else he’s been
DMing.
Janeway has brought Q to the relative safety of one of his army’s camps.
She observes that Q’s side seems to be losing the war, and suggests that to end it, instead
of conceiving a child with her, Q should conceive a child with Lady Q. But Q doesn’t like
that idea.
He’s like, “No, Q never have sex with each other — the power dynamic is too even.”
Janeway’s like, “Well, you’d better figure something out, because I’m walking
over to the enemy camp and telling them you’re ready to negotiate for peace.”
And, that’s exactly what Janeway does.
She goes to the opposing camp, meets with their leader — identified in the IMDb credits
as Colonel Q, so let’s go with that — and she says “Q is ready to discuss a truce,
so whaddya say?”
And Colonel Q is like “I’ll entertain a truce under one condition: you gimme back
my damn daughter!”
Actually, Colonel Q has a better idea than negotiating for how to end the war: executing
Q, who it just so happens his men have already captured!
And, since Janeway has been helping Q, she’s gonna face the firing squad, too!
The next day — I guess?
However time works in the Q Continuum — Q and Janeway are lined up to be shot.
Janeway pleads with Colonel Q to end the violence and for all the Q to use their powers to be
a positive force in the universe for once in their goddamn lives.
Q asks that Janeway’s life be spared, but Colonel Q is like “Nah.”
Colonel Q gives the order to fire, and shots ring out — but, what’s this?
The shots weren’t being fired at Q and Janeway, who are unharmed, but at a band of Union soldiers
who are attacking the camp!
And among those Union soldiers are members of the Voyager crew!
Chakotay, and Paris, and Tuvok, and Harry — and there’s Lady Q, as well.
I guess they successfully entered the Continuum, and landed the ship in a fuckin’ cornfield
or something, and then the bridge officers told the other hundred fifty-odd people on
the ship to just hang out for a bit while they left, and talked the other Q into letting
them join the army and use Q-killing weapons — it’s all so straightforward, there’s
really no need to show any of it onscreen.
Paris magically teleports himself behind Colonel Q and forces him to surrender, then Q and
Lady Q announce that they have a way to end the war, and everyone ceases firing.
It seems Q and Lady Q have decided to try Janeway’s wacky “Let’s just have sex
with each other” plan.
So, that’s what they do.
They have sex.
Right there in front of everyone.
But all they do is touch fingertips, no nudity or anything — listen closely and you can
hear the sound of Rick Berman indignantly throwing his script to the floor.
Q sends Janeway and the others back to Voyager, and then pays Janeway one final visit in the
ready room to introduce her to the baby!
Aww, look at the baby.
Q says “Hey, do you wanna be the godmother?”
And Janeway’s like, “I’d be honored,” and then Q and his baby leave, and that’s
the end of this . . . fucking terrible episode!
There are few more extreme examples of creative whiplash possible in the Star Trek franchise
than going straight from Voyager’s first Q episode to Voyager’s second Q episode.
As I said in my review of that episode, “Death Wish” is one of the best shows Voyager ever
produced.
A bit of unnecessary fan service aside, it is outstanding in every way.
“The Q and the Grey” is exactly the opposite, utterly abysmal from top to bottom, poorly
conceived — pardon the pun — ineptly executed at every level.
It’s just . . . bad.
Let me start with the premise: Q wants to have a baby with Captain Janeway.
“Let’s have a baby, it’ll solve all our problems” is an unwise strategy in real-life
and in fiction.
More specifically, in this case it emphasizes Q’s creepy, sexually predatory side — first
glimpsed in his abusive attempts to control Vash in the DS9 episode “Q-Less” — and
I think that’s best avoided — all of that, making Q a sexually aggressive creep and evoking
“Q-Less” — but even beyond that, Q’s desire to have a baby with Janeway makes no
sense.
It makes no sense in the larger context of Q’s other Star Trek appearances, since we’ve
seen in earlier episodes that members of the Q Continuum have conceived children before
— but regular viewers of mine know that I care less about long term continuity, especially
between series, than I do about the episode I’m watching right now — and Q’s desire
to have a baby with Janeway makes no sense in that context, either.
As Q eventually explains it, he wants to have a baby with Janeway to combine the power of
the Q with the positive traits of humanity — conscience, compassion.
He wants to create a messiah — he uses that word.
And he seems completely convinced that this is a great idea and it’s going to work.
But he never explains how he thinks it’s going to work, except in vague declarations
about how their child will usher in a new era, and Janeway will be the mother of peace!
Why would the leader of one of the factions of the civil war having a child with someone
completely unrelated to the conflict resolve the conflict?
Or have any effect on it whatsoever?
Is Q blinded by his desire to end the war?
Or is he just that much of a dipshit?
Moving past the shitty, nonsensical premise, the script here is just rotten.
This episode has some of the flattest dialogue of the entire series.
The cast — regulars and guest stars both — deserved bonuses for the extra work they
had to put in to make some of these garbage lines come across as well as they do — and
they do not come across well at all.
Most of the dialogue consists of characters blandly describing what’s happening at the
moment, or commenting on it in the most obvious and literal way possible.
This episode was produced in 1996, so I know it couldn’t possibly have been written by
ChatGPT — it just sounds like it was — functional, perfunctory, witless, and lifeless.
Most disappointingly, Q’s dialogue falls into this category, as well.
John de Lancie and Susie Plakson, who guest stars as Lady Q, try their best to wring some
semblance of snark or personality or cleverness from their lines, but even actors with their
considerable comic talents can only do so much.
De Lancie is given so little to work with that he resorts to clownish mugging much of
the time, and Q mostly comes across as desperate and unpleasant.
For her part, Plakson finds a snide, superior tone and sticks with it.
The result is a one-note performance, but given how the character is written, I’m
not sure she could have done any better.
The one I feel most sorry for, though, is Ethan Phillips as Neelix.
Fortunately for him, he really only has two bits in the entire show, but they’re both
awful.
One is when he has to react to the supernova in the first scene with “Wow!”
— like a four year-old seeing fireworks for the first time.
The other is his scene with Q on the holodeck, when he indignantly informs Q that Captain
Janeway likes him, Neelix, because he is “Respectful, loyal, and most of all sincere!”
Characters dryly and literally describing themselves to other characters — truly,
the essence of drama.
Phillips does his best, as does everyone else, but there’s just nothing to work with.
Even the director of this episode, Cliff Bole, who has directed some classic TNG episodes
— “Hollow Pursuits,” “Starship Mine,” and oh yeah, “The Best of Both Worlds”!
— seems to be just going through the motions.
The episode is filled with baffling, aggravating directorial choices — like in the scene
where Q gives himself a bigger face tattoo than Chakotay’s, then Janeway and Chakotay
walk out of the room and Bole shoots Q from an angle where the face tattoo is barely even
visible.
Or this exchange between Q and Janeway in the plantation house, which is weirdly shot
entirely in close-up, with Q and Janeway just standing there as though their feet have been
nailed to the floor.
Or this shot near the end, where Janeway says something to Harry, and Harry responds, but
there’s no shot of Harry — he’s in the background and out of focus in this shot of
Chakotay, that’s it.
Was there not time to shoot coverage of Harry saying this line?
Or at least to rack focus to him when he says his line in this shot?
Were they pressed for time with some of this stuff because they wanted to make sure they
had enough time to do justice to the scenes in the Civil War encampments?
If so, they shouldn’t have bothered, because those scenes are the shits, too!
The idea of the Voyager crew joining the Q Union army and rushing in to save the day
in the nick of time is ridiculous and contrived, and the unimaginative staging of the battle
scene doesn’t help at all.
Also, how exactly does Tom manage to sneak behind Colonel Q without the colonel or any
of his soldiers noticing?
I get that they wanted to end the fighting and have the Voyager crew win on a definitive
beat, but that definitive beat shouldn’t leave people in the audience scratching their
heads and asking how it could possibly have happened.
And finally . . . Q’s a daddy now.
Like, literally — not “daddy” in the more idiomatic sense of a sexy, confident,
mature man — like Anson Mount is a daddy, or I’m a daddy — like, “daddy” as
in “father.”
Q’s a daddy.
He’s gone from the callously amoral imp who put humanity on trial for its existence,
and flung the Enterprise directly into the path of the Borg just to prove a point to
Captain Picard, to a daddy with a cute little baby.
Awww.
Between their handling of Q and the Borg, I think it’s safe to say that no one is
better at defanging and sanitizing villains than the writers of Star Trek: Voyager.
If they were assigned to write a sequel to No Country for Old Men, it would be about
Anton Chigurh buying a horse farm, adopting a trio of adorable orphans, and learning the
true meaning of love.
If they wrote the series finale of Twin Peaks, Bob would decide to stop possessing people
and stay in the Black Lodge from now on and start a new career writing cozy mysteries.
If they wrote a Star Wars movie, it would end with Kylo Ren turning from the dark side
and finding redemption by sacrificing himself to save the life of Rey — wait, did they
write a Star Wars movie?!
They’re as bad as those fanfic writers on Tumblr who need to make everything “wholesome”
— actually, the Tumblr fanfic writers are usually more creative than what we see in
“The Q and the Grey,” so never mind.
Bad episode.
Bad.
Those are my thoughts on “The Q and the Grey.”
What do you think of this episode?
Please share your thoughts with me in the comments.
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Please join me again next week as this batch of Q episode reviews concludes.
Next time I’ll be reviewing Q’s third and final appearance on Star Trek: Voyager,
in an episode titled “Q2.”
See you then!
Thanks for watching and take care, everybody!