Mark Watches ‘Voyager’: S03E11 – The Q and the Grey

In the eleventh episode of the third season of Voyager, a familiar face arrives with an absurd proposal. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek. 

Trigger Warning: For discussion of racism (mostly unintended implications) regarding slavery and the Civil War.

I know I’ve described about half of Voyager’s output as “weird,” but lord, this show can be weird. That’s always the case with Q episodes, too, since he’s a character from a race that are all-powerful and omniscient, so I did expect this to be a strange affair. Yet some of the writing choices perplex, even if I understand what the writers were trying to do here. I SHALL EXPLAIN.

The Proposal

Like I do every time he shows up, I question what Q says. I have to! He is rarely straight-forward, he plays games with every person he meets, and he’s always got a secret agenda. So when he asked Janeway to be the mother of his child, it took me a long time to accept that for once, that was what he wanted. I literally couldn’t understand the concept, so I rejected it. It had to be a ruse! Yet as each absurd scene led to another one, it became clear that on a very basic level, he did want a child with Janeway. His approach, however, seemed particularly stubborn and ill-conceived. On that level, there’s a great parody of romance tropes here, since every attempt made by Q to entice Janeway is met with scorn, humor, and rejection. IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING TO WATCH.

On top of that, Kate Mulgrew is utterly fantastic alongside John de Lancie. I COULD WATCH THEM ACT TOGETHER FOR HOURS.

The Twist

For a moment, I actually believed that Q was lonely. That was not an inconceivable idea to me. After his last appearance on this show, perhaps he took the idea of individualism seriously! What if that led to him feeling lonely? That’s a reasonable thing! Yet then another Q shows up, and it’s our Q’s longtime partner, and somehow, a race that considers itself evolved beyond human understanding still has rigid sexual and gender binaries. (Grumble grumble, I don’t care. This made no sense.) And then, the real reason for this entire struggle is revealed:

Civil war.

While I have some issues with how the war is portrayed, I was immensely pleased that the story in “Death Wish” had a huge impact on this episode. That story’s exploration of individuality and freedom led to the Q civil war, a violent and largely incomprehensible battle over whether members of the continuum can have the freedom to do as they like. God, it’s such a good idea, and I do think the show captures something special here.

Civil War

Now, I understand the need to portray the “inside” of the continuum in a way that both Janeway and the audience can comprehend. That was always going to be a challenge, and the show was clearly following the logic used in “Death Wish.” This place had to have a visual relevance to the story so that Janeway could conceptualize it, even if that’s not how it actually looked like. So, Q uses something that’s inherently recognizable to… well, not very many people. Only American members of the crew (or those who studied American history) would be able to recognize the continuum. And here’s where I have an issue: I think the Civil War dressings are kind of uncomfortable. Some days, it is unreal to see how deeply people (all over the world!) misunderstand or twist American history to make sense of the Civil War.

Even here, Q makes a pronouncement about it to Janeway that more or less sidesteps the fact that the Civil War happened almost entirely over the issue of chattel slavery. It was not a war concerning the freedom of legal American citizens, and that’s the immediate thing that made the metaphor fall apart. In order for this to work, the Q would have had these two sides – the Confederacy and the Union – fighting over a third party who weren’t in the Continuum. And it’s this flippant reference to the Civil War that bothers me. Visually, it might work for a time, but by the time the battle arrives, even the internal logic of it falls apart.

For example: how did Q and Miss Q (I hate typing that, HOW DO MEMBERS OF THE Q HAVE A GENDER) lose their powers? Why is that never explained? If the Q are so omniscient, how did none of them ever realize that Voyager had found a way inside the Continuum? Surely one of them on the more conservative side would have noticed something, right? So even though the period piece costuming and setting is cool, it stops making narrative sense. How can non-Q beings succeed so easily against all-knowing beings?

On top of that, I just simply don’t get how having a baby solves anything. I don’t! It makes no sense to me how a half Q, half human child changes the Continuum as a whole, and it makes even less sense how a child from two Q would help anything. Have none of the Q ever had children? How did they ever procreate? Did they just all pop into existence and never change? We know there are individual members of the Q, but there’s no history to them existing as their own entities. Was there no pregnancy? Did that baby just pop into existence, too? That baby was cute, but I was so confused by it.

This felt like one of those stories that is entertaining on the surface, but any sort of critical analysis crumbles it to pieces. Again: what a weird episode.

The video for “The Q and the Grey” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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