True Q
A freshly-arrived intern suddenly receives her letter accepting her into Q's Space Hogwarts
The Enterprise is invaded by puppies! That’s the teaser. Soon afterwards, the warp core explodes. Fortunately, the intern whose story we’re following this week manages to single-handedly stop it from destroying the ship. What could possibly be going on?! What did that title card say again...? Ah yes, here’s Q now to provide exposition as to how Amanda has gnarly Q powers. But there’s a sinister edge to the return of our favourite mischievous god-like alien: he may have to kill ‘young Q’ if things go awry.
Words
During the previous season, there had been a couple of potential Q stories thrown around but none of them worked out. One of them, “Q Makes Two”, was described by Jeri Taylor as “a debacle”, and was the reason that the mediocre “Man of the People” was rushed into production. The germ of the “True Q” story came from seventeen year-old Matthew Corey, who had submitted a spec script entitled “Q Me?” about Wesley Crusher, teen romance, and unwanted pregnancy. Needless to say, this did not get used, but when René Echevarria stumbled upon an intern reading Corey’s script, he was intrigued. “I thought it was charming when she told me the nugget that a young kid finds out he’s a Q.”
This was actually Echevarria’s first episode as a staff writer, having sold five previous stories to the show, starting with season three’s “The Offspring”. Why did it take nearly three years to bring him into the writer’s room...? I’m uncertain. But he certainly enjoyed telling Corey that they were buying his concept:
It was kind of the mirror of three years ago, when Michael Piller called me one day – after more than a year of sending scripts to Star Trek and having them rejected – and them saying they wanted it.
On the whole, Echevarria was not into Q, but he did enjoy writing this episode. One key part of the final episode was altered by Piller, who felt the tension needed to be ramped up earlier. As a result, they added the moment in the corridor where the Q continuum check in with Q and we the audience learn that he might have to take drastic measures. Echevarria later commented:
It was pretty heinous of him to be willing to kill this girl, but I think in a strange way it worked very nicely to have the audience have that knowledge and in the meantime they’re seeing a very light, romantic story and are saying, “Doesn’t she realize what’s at stake here?”
The entire screenplay is remarkably short of technobabble, and maintains a playful tone despite the darker edge. If the episode itself falls short, it’s not because the script was poorly constructed.
Acting Roles
This is another of those odd episodes when the guest stars have to carry it. Although Olivia d’Abo’s Amanda Rogers is paired up with Gates McFadden’s Dr Crusher as a result of her having been brought on board the Enterprise as an intern, there’s much more impact from her scenes with John de Lancie’s Q (as might well be expected given Q’s over-the-top persona).
Writing the role, Echevarria impishly drew against the classic sitcom Bewitched, and as an in-joke the character’s name was originally ‘Samantha’. However, the moment Rick Berman learned of this he nixed the idea, and the new name was rolled out. Echevarria thought it was “a really lovely performance from Olivia d’Abo.”
She’s had quite the career! Her very first role was as Princess Jehnna in Conan the Destroyer back in 1984 when she was twenty-five.
That’s easily the most remarkable thing she did prior to this appearance on TNG, but afterwards her more than a hundred other roles include many memorable moments, perhaps none more so than playing Karen (the big hippy sister) in The Wonder Years for nearly a hundred episodes. She also did a lot voice work, including voicing Jane Porter in the Disney show The Legend of Tarzan, and Luminara Unduli in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a role that she reprised for the last of the numbered Disney Star Wars movies.
Bringing back John de Lancie’s Q is always a hoot, of course!
However, the character had been played for comedy since the introduction of the Borg in season two’s “Q Who”. Michael Piller had been keen to bring back the malevolent tone the character had possessed in the early seasons “so he’s not just there for the jokes”, and de Lancie was also enthusiastic about getting back to being “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” (a phrase originally coined to describe the poet Lord Byron). However, de Lancie was disappointed with how it played out:
I tried to put malevolence in places there, but that didn’t really lend itself again… I can’t do it within the context of birthday parties and babysitting and stuff like that. It’s something you need to have the set-up for. I would have liked to have taken it one step further where she was killed.
There’s one other small guest role in the form of John P. Connolly’s Orn Lote, who props up the story with a lacklustre B-plot about... erm... I want to say something to do with an unstable reactor? Yes, I just re-watched the episode and even then I still can’t quite remember what this part of the story is about!
Connolly had a lot of bit parts, but landed a recurring role in the Lifetime series Any Day Now as a Judge, which is about the only thing you’re likely to have seen him in.
Jonathan Frakes’ has the most fun with the guest stars, getting all dressed up in period costume for a fantasy sequence conjured up by Amanda with her Q powers.
But poor Marina Sirtis’ Deanna Troi once again gets cruelly mistreated by the production team, with her main scene in this one ending up on the cutting room floor again. I’m afraid the written dialogue between the two characters is really rather dull (based on what I read in the screenplay), so it’s no great loss to the episode, but it is a shame that Sirtis continues to get the shaft. Don’t worry, though, she has a corking episode coming up soon.
The scene in question contained a dog (Henry), which makes this the most dog-heavy episode ever - puppies in the teaser (below, left), a donated dog in a deleted scene who allegedly can still be spotted in the back of some of the surviving footage (I’ve not seen it yet myself) - not to mention Dr Crusher gets turned into Irish Setter (below, right)!
That’ll teach her to take on interns.
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
It’s fairly light on SFX this week, since this is more-or-less a bottle show looking to save budget. There’s a new latex alien in the B-plot (see above), but it’s nothing to write home about.
The sequence with the warp core breach was a practical effect created with liquid nitrogen, some flashing lights that had been specially-coated, and some post-production animation.
It’s a good thing the Enterprise-D is always having visits from god-like-aliens or falling into time rifts and the like, because otherwise all these warp core breaches would definitely bring down the resale value of this Galaxy class starship!
But the most pleasing shot is also the simplest: just a straight composition of Amanda and Q on the outer hull of the Enterprise.
While it’s far from the greatest Q episode, it’s always fun to see de Lancie in action.