ExerTrek: Q Who

[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(197.2 pounds)

The sad thing about episodes with Q is that they tend to call attention to the narrative cowardice of many of the OTHER episodes. When Q shows up here to introduce us to the Borg and, as Picard says “kick us in our complacency,” he reminds us once again that so many other stories in this show aren’t all that challenging for this civilization of morally and technologically superior people. It’s all too rare that they get out of a problem by the skin of their teeth, and I like this episode for showing that yeah, this is dangerous.

Or should be, if it is worth doing.

It’s a little sad that the episodes with a sense of wonder and fear almost always have to be arbitrarily initiated by Q. I’d enjoy more than the occasional story in which the crew comes upon something numinous, when they have to say, “Wow, that’s some crazy shit. Warp Eight, Ensign Crusher.”

Yes, yes, this is supposed to be about a wonderful future when people have no hunger or fear or want, when the power of human intellect can solve all problems. That’s great. And you know what? There should still be things out there that they have to rise to handle, and they sometimes have to fail. Otherwise, it’s all just a rigged game. In other words, they shouldn’t be quipping and laughing at the end of each episode. Sometimes, I want to see them lean back in their seats and shudder instead.

(That may be one of the things Voyager sometimes got right, though in the wrong way: they barely survived some of their encounters, though it was usually due more to limited resources than the awesome power of their antagonists.)

Nobody wants to see week after week of people struggling to keep their heads above water; that’s called “real life.” But to see more resourceful people facing harder problems might have a certain inspirational interest.

As a kid, I remember thinking that if Admiral Kirk could escape the Regula I planetoid to kick Khan’s ass, I could probably do a little better in math class.

My grade: B.