OVEG: The Q And The Grey

[Mikey]

"Burn her!"

[Lazar]

That is one bad, bad, bad, bad episode. All the amazing things they could do with the Q, and they do this?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Wow... this episode makes Threshold looks good.

[Lazar]

Some things:

- The opening scene manages to make a supernova into a minor roadside attraction. I know the plot involves an unusually large number of supernovas occurring as a result of the Q war, but the way it was presented on screen (nice neat explosion, everyone claps, Neelix says wow, go to bed) just seemed so cheap.

- Q has the choice of all sapient females in the Galaxy, and he chooses Kathryn Janeway? For God's sake, WHY?

- The Q have superhuman intellects and they've had billions of years to settle their philosophical differences, and one rebellious member causes them to start warring on each other? As Chuck Sonnenberg points out, this destroys what we learned of the Q throughout TNG and makes them no better than humans.

- Of course, it had to be the US Civil War. The Caretaker creates an idyllic pastoral world to present to visitors? It's Quaintville, Midwestern USA. Q calls witnesses to testify to Quinn's influence on history? He picks some guy from Woodstock. Q takes the crew to the Continuum in "Death Wish"? It's a desert settlement in the Western US. The Q need to present an analogy of their conflict? US Civil War. To be fair, this is consistent with the fact that every recurring human character on the show, and almost every minor human character, either is confirmed to be or appears to be American. I know that the showmakers are constrained by the available pool of actors and shooting locations, but they still should make some effort to indicate that humanity is united, and that this isn't the United States Starship Voyager. If you're writing anything that involves a united human race, you should always bear in mind the fact that 95-96% of the world's population is not American.

- The scene where the bridge crew bust into the Continuum and overpower the Q is ridiculous. We're supposed to imagine that Tom Paris is wielding some godlike Q-killing weapon and knows how to use it? If you're going to present a battle between omnipotent beings, you should do it right and explore the implications, not just turn it into some trivial (non) action scene of the week.

- The female Q was hot. (Suzie Plakson, who also played K'Ehleyr and Selar.)

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Excellent breakdown, Lazar. I applaud you.

[Mikey]

Good point about the American Civil War. Why not the Franco-Prussian War or the Crimean War, much less one of the wars with "World" in the title?

[Sonic Glitch]

Good point about the American Civil War. Why not the Franco-Prussian War or the Crimean War, much less one of the wars with "World" in the title?

Because the whole point was to represent the Q Civil War in a way the crew could understand, and a good portion of the major characters were probably from America (do we know where Kim was born? Or 7of9?)

[Mikey]

a good portion of the major characters were probably from America

Thank you. This is a better representation of the problem than the way I put it.

[Lazar]

Because the whole point was to represent the Q Civil War in a way the crew could understand, and a good portion of the major characters were probably from America (do we know where Kim was born? Or 7of9?)

That's the problem: only 4-5% of the world's population is American. But yes, as far as I can tell, every major human character on the show (and pretty much every minor human character too) either is American, or is ambivalent/generic enough that they could be American. Harry Kim was from South Carolina; B'Elanna (to the extent that she was human) was harder to find a nationality on, but Memory Alpha did mention a childhood classmate of hers who had an Anglo name, so probably American as well. 7 of 9/Annika Hansen could conceivably be Norwegian, just from the name; the EMH/Doctor Zimmerman seems to be German-American. Janeway is from Indiana; Paris is obviously American; Chakotay, to be fair, is a generic American Indian and appears to be from everywhere in the western hemisphere. And I can't recall a single minor Voyager crewmember who wasn't American.

This is really a broad criticism that I make of Star Trek, and indeed, of a lot of American space opera. If there's a united humanity, and places like Europe, India, China and Africa are all comparatively equally developed, then there's no conceivable reason why Americans should be more than, say, 10% of human Starfleet personnel. (Even with some near future sci-fi setting, I'd still expect a pan-global space venture to include more Europeans, Russians and Chinese than you see on Trek.) I didn't mind, or even notice it, when I was a kid and approached Trek more naively, but now that I've thought about it and started writing my own science fiction, it seems as absurd to me as the old rocketship stories where you could magically travel to a different star with chemical propulsion. I'd say that of all the series, TOS made the most effort to feature non-Americans among the main characters, and they didn't let the availability of foreign actors stop them (Doohan and Koenig both did fake accents). In TNG we pretty much settled for a Frenglish captain and a slightly Ukrainian security officer; in DS9 we got a Sudanese doctor and an Irish engineer; ENT was okay to the extent that it copied TOS; but VOY really did the poorest job, with not a single human character who was distinctively not American. I think it was symptomatic of the lazy, hackish writing on the show: just play it like any other boring old program, and don't do anything bold or shocking like having a regular with a funny accent.

[stitch626]

It could be possible that something (perhaps WWIII) wiped out most of the population in other areas making "Americans" the dominant race population wise.

[Tyyr]

A world mostly devoid of asian and pacific island chicks? Now there's a bleak future.

[Lazar]

It could be possible that something (perhaps WWIII) wiped out most of the population in other areas making "Americans" the dominant race population wise.

Riker said there were 600 million dead, which, while huge, would still be less than 10% of the world's population - and we seemed to get the impression in FC that things would generally get better from Cochran's time on.

A world mostly devoid of asian and pacific island chicks? Now there's a bleak future.

Ditto. Fortunately, we know from Hoshi that Japanese girls still exist.

[Mikey]

Fortunately, we know from Hoshi that Japanese girls still exist.

And fortunately, Brazil... so, presumably, Brazilian wa-

*ahem* never mind.

[Tyyr]

I'd like to think that in the far future we've progressed enough to make female body hair a distant memory.

[Mikey]

I'd like to think that in the far future we've progressed enough to make female body hair a distant memory.

Don't be so sure - as of TNG, at least, the French were still around.