OVEG: The Q and The Grey

Description: The Q And The Grey is one of those episodes that gets worse the more times I watch it, and I think this is in no small part due to the scriptwriter being changed from Michael Piller to Kenneth Biller. Rhyming names just aren't enough to get talent.

The episode begins with our crew, reveling in merriment as they watch a star go supernova. And because of Janeway's own twisted prime directive approach, it's probable as she's whooping it up that on some world the local populace cowers in fear, mothers clutching weeping children to their chests as they watch their own inevitable destruction. Janeway's sole concern, of course, is whether anyone brought champagne.

So the crew is duly impressed, including Neelix, who just keeps saying "WOW!" To paraphrase Jodie Foster, they should've sent a poet, not a fry cook. And nipping at the heels of the stupid Neelix moment is the Doctor -yes, the Doctor- who delivers the following: "Just remember, Kes, anyone can stargaze on the bridge, even a hologram with a mobile emitter, but the real action will always be in Sickbay." Yeah, there's just no saving that line. I'm sure you can see the many problems with its awkwardness, but beyond that, it's also Picardo's only line in the entire episode. So, he appears on the bridge to remind everyone "Oh yes, I have a mobile emitter," in clunky exposition, and then it doesn't even have anything to do with the rest of the episode. They should've just rolled with it.

Paris: You may have action in sickbay, but I'm looking forward to seeing the action in the mansion on the top of the spooky hill, which will be mine if Harry and I spend just one night there.
Harry: Yes, and we don't care about the legend that it's haunted. Ghosts are a fiction, as explained by famed Delta Quadrant physicist Maxon Blet.
Torres: Maxon Blet, the famous scientist who built the only subneutron processor there is, which is capable of powering an entire planet.
Janeway: The same. It would be terrible if that fell into the wrong hands while Dr. Blet was away on Jitral IV to host the annual fundraising kayak race that Chakotay will be in.
Chakotay: Which I hope to win, as the winner receives a rare and ancient artifact I believe holds the key to curing the plague that ravages Bontan III.
Doctor: Which is why the real action will always be in Sickbay.

And then just head straight on with the rest of the episode, never mentioning any of that shit again. Hey, if you're going to do pointless dialogue, at least embrace your awfulness.

So after it's all finished Janeway heads off to bed, but finds it's been transformed into a big plush red bed. Janeway calls for security, that there's an intruder alert; pity we didn't get to see that play out. There's not too many instances of filing a report on Breaking & Decorating. However, it's all undone by the appearance of Q. This scene is one example of how each viewing makes it worse; it is filled with the most loathsome series of sitcom-esque lines. I cannot even put into words how face-palmingly awful it gets - you have an omnipotent being bantering with the captain of a starship like he was the wacky neighbor who always hits on her. This is hack writing distilled to its purest form; it truly could only get worse if there was a pie in the face or a man in a dress. Q and Janeway continue this routine while Q tries to get into her pants, then reveals he wants her to bear his child. The dialogue reaches its lowest point with this:
Q: Kathy, you can't leave. My cosmic clock is ticking!

Why, Voyager? Why do you punish me so? At this point, you've probably reached the point where you yourself could fill in all the questions, like how can a man be paid to write a line like this, one which contradicts established info about Q (that's he's ageless and unchanging) with a line that is absolutely and undeniably both unfunny and done to death. Me, I'm just trying to think of a good reason not to hang myself.

So Q lays on the sweet talk, listing other things he could've chosen to mate with, like a microbe (uh huh). He tempts her with the fact that Q foreplay lasts for decades (wow, there's a selling point, taking years before you actually get around to the actual sex). This episode then breaks through the basement floor to find a new low with this exchange:
Q: You're playing hard to get.
Janeway: As far as you're concerned, Q, I'm impossible to get.
Q: Goody! A challenge!

Lord knows de Lancie does his best, but Q is simply written in the most awful manner I think I've ever seen. This is stuff that makes Profit And Lace look like Oscar Wilde (witty, I mean, not gay). And so far we've just gotten through the little bottom of the screen credits, where we see that Shawn Piller (Michael Piller's son, who came up with the story for the last episode) provides the story here that Biller is executing... in more ways than one.

The next day Chakotay asks Janeway about what Q wanted, and she admits to him what it was. You might expect the response would be Chakotay falling down laughing, but instead, well, you might be: Chakotay is jealous. Yes, that's right, Chakotay is jealous that Q was hitting on Janeway. We have not ended the first act yet and already this episode has broken my Stupidmeter. First, this passion between them was like half a season ago and barely went anywhere. Second, even if Chakotay were, for some bizarre reason, still infatuated with Janeway, why on earth would he feel threatened by the romantic advances of Q? That's like having a crush on Ann Coulter and being afraid she'll run off with Michael Moore.

Anyway, I'm going to keep quoting this shitty dialogue so you can see just how awful it is:
Q: What could anyone possibly see in this big oaf, anyway? Is it the tattoo? Because mine's bigger.
Janeway: Not big enough.

Uh huh. Either that line is horribly moronic (which, hey, I'm not willing to dismiss that point at all), or this is Trek actually resorting to a veiled reference to the size of someone's junk. I'm just... well, to quote an idiot: "WOW!" Nice to know we've taken the writing level from juvenille to infantile. You might say I have no right to judge, given that I've made similar comments about the Voyager characters, to which I can only reply: yes, but the thing is, I'm doing parody! If this continues, I'm going to have to stop giving reviews and just post links to the actual episodes, since they'll have done all the self-mockery for me.

Anyway, now we're with Tom and Harry, who are in the pool simulation getting rubbed by pretty ladies. Q interrupts and tries to get some help from them in how to seduce Janeway... There are some things in my life I never thought I'd have to write, but "Q tries to get advice from Tom and Harry to get Janeway in the sack" is one I guess I'm going to have to remove from that list. So Tom and Harry leave, and Q orders "another one of these fruity concoctions." Don't misread that, he's talking about a drink, not Harry. However, in one of the bits I do admit I laughed at, Q places the order with Neelix by shouting: "You there, bar rodent!" Now that's a nickname I like. Neelix, however, is overcome with indignation that Q is pursuing Janeway, and Q tries to figure out if Neelix is the key to it. It's an approach I do find clever for Q; he's thinking that Neelix is so impossible to be around that there must be some trick he's found to make sure Janeway doesn't flush him out an airlock. It's a perfectly believable approach to me, I'm wondering why more of the Voyager crew hasn't been asking that question while Neelix rules the galley with an iron fist.

So Q tries bribing Janeway with a puppy, but while she's momentarily infatuated, she decides she's not that hungry and gives him back. So Q tries a different approach, one that many husbands have found a necessary survival turn: faking sincerity. He puts on a good show, but is hardly convincing, and Janeway doesn't buy it, so he change tactics and goes with brutal, painful honesty: you're stuck and not getting any younger. Damn, that's cruel... no wonder I like Q.

Well, before you know it, a female Q intrudes, calling Janeway a dog. Oo, that's horrible; I haven't heard such an anemic putdown since one of Al Pacino's stalkers tried insulting my mother. Turns out female Q here was Q's significant other here until now. Yup, and it is at this point that the Q stop being an alien and impossible to understand group of limitless beings and instead becomes little more than the Greek pantheon. All Q's comments about the silliness of human gender differences now can just be dismissed as lies. Thanks, Kenneth Biller, for being the first to take something interesting and squeezing the life out of it.

Before this fun can continue, Janeway gets called to the bridge for two more supernovas, and they can't go to warp, so in a bizarre display even for Voyager, she orders evasive maneuvers. Kneebler: Maybe we'll fake it out. Janeway tells Q to do something to make sure they don't get killed, and Q whisks her and him off, pursued by lady Q.

This is where we take a right turn into Idiotland, in more ways than one. Janeway is in a mansion in a long dress, and Q comes in dressed like a union soldier. It seems Q has brought her into the continuum, and like last time in Death Wish she is just being allowed to perceive it in a way that makes sense to her. Out beyond, she sees a war taking place (Civil War, see?) because of Quinn, his "teachings of individualism and personal freedom." What? Motherf*cker just wanted to kill himself, that's not a thing to fight a war over... seems, in fact, the kind of thing that someone who doesn't want Q dying would try to avoid, wouldn't you think? And this, incidentally, is why this episode flounders in the hands of a writer as inept as Biller is, because the thing the Q always despised about humans was their barbaric ways, remember? That the Q, who are supposedly so evolved, would resort to actual warfare is so in conflict with that it would take a skilled writer to pull it off with the direction they want it to go in. We even have Q saying war can be a good thing, that it can bring about change. True, it can, and I'm not going to say that there is no such thing as a just war, but Q's attitude is so at odds with the character, and this isn't commented on in the slightest. It's hard to believe that his declaring it right to start a war crowing about freedom and individualism, is the same as that of the west during the Cold War... you remember, the Cold War, which was mocked in Encounter At Far Point as being nonsense? I do love when the preaching Trek writers become the things they loathe, it keeps me warm on cold days like today.

Oh, and just to point it out: I find it ironic that the rebels are wearing blue when the rebels in the real Civil War wore grey. But then, we know why it's that way: because even if you pointed it out in the episode no one would tolerate the protagonists wearing the uniform of the Confederacy. Obviously being a midwesterner I have no love for the Confederacy, I just can't abide Hollywood cowardice when it comes to certain opinions. We'll challenge your views, America, unless there's a chance we may not get invited to the parties with the really good heroin any more.

Anyway, Q reveals that his real plan was that by mating with Janeway, a new breed of Q would be created that would end the war and change the continuum. Now here he states DNA, but as we find out later that really has nothing to do with it, so I'll ask this question: What the hell happened to Amanda Rogers?! Hello, newly born Q, brought back to the continuum. Yeah, bring out that Comic Book Guy reference if you want, but dammit if you make an entire episode about the Q finding person X, and then make another one where the entire point is to have a person X, and you don't note that there's supposed to be a person X hanging around, then what the hell? I mean, to put it simply, it would be like a new season of 24 being made, where the evil plot is to stop the election of the first black president, even though we had a whole season around the election of a black president. It's not like we're talking about some obscure TOS reference to the location of some planet we've never seen, it's one of just a handful of episode about Q. You'd think someone would actually watch that handful before doing a Q episode, or read a summation, or just frickin' asked somebody! No wonder Q's written so poorly this episode if the writers haven't even bothered watching his episodes.

Also, coming from that episode, we also would've seen that the Q have the ability to change even our desires, because Amanda Rogers got Riker to start making out with her with that ability. Now, up until now I could have dismissed all this as just Q's ego saying that he wanted Janeway to want it, but if the stakes are as big as he's saying and his role so central to what's taking place, then all this does is paint Q as the true villain here, more concerned about satisfying his own arrogance rather than trying to bring about the quickest possible end to the conflict. In that sense, why even bring in Janeway at all when Q has the ability to create living creatures, and could just create a suitable bride after her initial rejection. It is honestly like these people had never seen Q before this episode; it's no wonder some argue that all Q's claims about being omnipotent were just lies and that he's just an alien with some clever technology.

Sigh. Well, back to the episode and... sigh again. Gunshots, and Q is shot. He's bleeding. Janeway makes a bandage out of some cloth to stop the bleeding from the gunshot. So much for it just being a perception of the continuum, but don't worry, it's going to get even dumber than that. Q tells Janeway to take the rifle in the corner and join in the fight. It's not a real gun, of course, as Q went to great lengths to explain that these were no mere guns, but impossibly-clever weapons devised by the Q to fight each other. But to her, it's just a pipe with a trigger. Okay, so let's pretend for a moment that somehow Janeway can use the weapon, stupid as it is to even go there... if it is that simple, then why doesn't Q just create another army like he did in Hide And Q and give them the weapons? This is doing what Voyager stupidly does too often: take allegory and turns it into reality.

And with that out of the way, back to Voyager, which has had its ass-kicking, and everyone finally gets up, including the lady Q. Q figures out she's mortal like Q was in Deja Q, so he takes the opportunity to try to scare her into talking. So she spills it; apparently the war is what caused her to lose her powers... hell, I don't care at this point, because it gets even worse. The crew is going to use her technobabble to fly Voyager into the Q continuum. Yes, really. If I was trying to come up with stupid ideas, I don't think I could even have found this one, so congratulations to those responsible. Anyway, we get some banter with the lady Q and Torres, the former just unable to pull of the de Lancie charm to make the superiority palatable. Still, I like when she calls Tom "Helm Boy" as they are taken towards a supernova. Oh, also, there's a technobabble bit of how she augments the power of the shields by a factor of ten with random jargon, but that'll never matter again. Of course, the fact they're flying into the continuum is still too large a shadow of stupid to overcome anyway.

Meanwhile, in the camp of Q's faction, Janeway tells him that what he really needs to do is mate with the lady Q. Q's aghast, saying that having sex with another Q just isn't done... which probably goes a long way towards explaining why lady Q is so ornery. Also, seems Q was lying about Q foreplay lasting decades then, but of course, Q doesn't lie. Then again, it seems that Janeway has finally gotten around to realizing that she kind of screwed up that character assessment.

So Janeway heads off with a white flag to try to talk with the other side about negotiation, but General Robert Q Lee here just won't budge. He says they're going to end this by executing Q, and after Q shows up, both he and Janeway are "put in chains" (of course, that's just a perception, as they're really super-duper ultra-advanced beyond your understanding devices that can hold an omnipotent being like Q. They could just snap their fingers and have Janeway evaporate, but Robert Q Lee is a dirty old man.) As they're set up for execution, Janeway implores them not to resort to violence to resolve their problems... which again, is in full contradiction to the Q's reason for seeking out humanity in the first place. Q gives an impassioned speech to let Janeway go... a far, far cry from when he was human in Deja Q. Q is acting noble, not because it's in his character, but because he's on the side of the good guys. After all, it was just the last episode when the catalyst was revealed to be Q's being a chaotic force that tormented innocent beings just to amuse himself, and while that's not a perspective I really agree with for Q, I don't buy into Q the Martyr either. Of all the approaches, I've found Ron Moore's take on Q's growth to be the best; I find this ham-fisted and inconsistent.

And now, in a moment drawn straight out of westerns, there's the ready, aim, fire setup, complete with quick zoom ins of the camera, and then the rescue. What completely undermines the tension of this scene is the utter ridiculousness of what follows: the Voyager crew, dressed as Union soldiers, attacks with the super-mega-ultra-muskets saving the day. Tom Paris himself takes Robert Q Lee prisoner. This moment declares to everyone that the Q are no longer anything to be taken seriously, their so-called omnipotence is... well, let's just say you can answer the question of "Are the Q omnipotent?" with an anagram: "No, impotent."

So with the battle won, Q and the lady Q (unsurprisingly, dressed in a huge period dress instead of in a uniform holding a gun, as only someone with a modicum of imagination would actually arm a mere girl in the midst of a desperate battle) decide they'll mate, which involves doing the E.T. finger touch thing and John de Lancie doing an over-the-top post cloital expression.

So, with the situation now resolved thanks entirely to the crew of Voyager, naturally the Q neither volunteer nor does Janeway ask that they be brought home. There's no ignoring this except for good old fashioned idiocy; oh sure, Janeway said some crap before about them getting home but not using a quick fix, but this is not a quick fix, it's the way home she promised to give the crew just waiting to be asked for, and it's never even brought up. So, everyone who dies over the next four and a half years... that's on you, Captain Moron.

Rating: 3

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