Q Who?
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| Star Trek: TNG episode | |
| "Q Who?" | |
 The Enterprise encounters a massive Borg Cube in "Q Who?". |
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| Episode no. | Season 2, Episode 16 (42nd ST:TNG Episode) |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 142 (Season 2, Disc 4) |
| Airdate | May 8, 1989 |
| Writer(s) | Maurice Hurley |
| Director | Rob Bowman |
| Year | 2365 |
| Stardate | 42761.3 |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous | "Pen Pals" |
| Next | "Samaritan Snare" |
"Q Who?", from the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is the episode that introduces the Borg.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, after having hot chocolate spilled on his uniform by a young ensign named Sonya Gomez, is once again abducted by Q.
Q takes Picard aboard a shuttlecraft outside the Enterprise to warn him of the dangers in this region and advise him to turn back. When they return to the Enterprise, they materialise in Ten Forward, where a heated argument ensues between Q and Guinan, hinting at a two century long history of enmity between the two.
Q requests to be added as a member of the Enterprise crew, arguing that his services will be needed if they continue to explore at the present rate. Picard rejects Q's offer, stating that human-kind makes its own way in the universe without omnipotence to aid them. Enraged by this perceived hubris, Q sends the ship 7,000 light years away to System J25 as a lesson in refusing the Q. A planet is identified nearby, its cities having been destroyed. The damage to the surface was identified later as the same as the damage from the planets in the Neutral Zone that belonged to the Romulans in the final episode of the first season. Shortly after their arrival, they are greeted by a large, cube-shaped vessel that Guinan identifies as belonging to the Borg.
The crew is then startled by the sudden arrival of a Borg drone that beamed itself aboard despite the fact the Enterprise's shields are raised. After it accesses a few of their records, they are forced to kill it, but a second drone appears, this time protected by a force field which is immune to phaser fire. After completing the work of the first drone and stripping it of serviceable parts, it leaves without making any attempt at communication. Only after this do they receive a signal from the alien vessel. The message warns the Enterprise crew: "We have analyzed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished." The ship subsequently locks onto the Enterprise with a tractor beam which slowly drains the ship's shields. The Enterprise is able to disable the tractor beam with phaser blasts, causing noticeable structural damage to the Borg vessel in the process, but not before the Borg use a laser-like beam to slice out a section of the ship's saucer section, resulting in the loss of 18 crewmembers.
Picard then sends an away team to investigate the vessel. When they learn that the Borg are able to use their collective power to regenerate the damaged sections of their ship, the away team is immediately beamed back. The Enterprise attempts to flee, but the Borg cube pursues them.
The Borg are about to overtake the Enterprise, so Picard swallows his pride and turns to Q for help. Q, satisfied not only that his words are finally being heeded, but that Picard is actually asking for help, returns the ship to its original location.
Since Q rebuked Picard's stubborn refusal to heed his warning, (thus introducing the Borg to the Federation), the Enterprise's now compromised computers revealed the location of Earth. Picard and Guinan surmise over a game of 3D chess that it would then only be a matter of time before the Borg arrived at Earth.
[edit] Trivia
This is the first of a handful of episodes where the USS Enterprise-D and/or its crew has been transported to the Delta Quadrant.
[edit] Continuity
This episode is the first appearance of the Borg. The existence of the Borg was first hinted at in the first season finale, "The Neutral Zone". The Borg would appear again in "The Best of Both Worlds". Q's next appearance is "Déjà Q", in which he has been stripped of his powers for abusing them.
"The Best of Both Worlds" and this episode establish differing motives for the Borg's aggression. In "Q Who?", Q is quite clear that the Borg's motives were acquisition of new technology, and makes no mention of assimilation of other life forms into their collective. Furthermore, at the end of the episode Guinan speculates that in the future Federation would be able to negotiate with the Borg while later episodes reveal that the Borg are never open to compromise with other species.
Later Star Trek episodes and films indicate that Starfleet and the Federation were aware at some level of the existence of the Borg by the setting of this episode (2365). In Star Trek: Voyager, for example, Seven of Nine's parents are aware of rumours about the Borg in the 2350s. Another early appearance of the Borg occurred in Star Trek: Enterprise following on from the events of Star Trek: First Contact. However the latter can be seen as a change in time that was not originally intended and is therefore here not yet known.
Fans have speculated that the Borg just may have been the "robotic race" responsible for altering the V'Ger craft featured prominently in Star Trek: the Motion Picture.[1] In the video game Star Trek: Legacy, they were actually created by V'ger. Others have theorized that the Borg sent out the vessel called Tan-Ru,[citation needed] which collided with the original Nomad probe, creating the unit destroyed by Kirk in the Star Trek episode "The Changeling". However, all of this has been relegated to being apocryphal at best.
The character Sonya Gomez was later used in the S.C.E. novels as second-in-command of the USS Da Vinci.
This episode's Borg cube was approaching the Alpha Quadrant in response of the successful transmission of Earth's spatial coordinates from a group of drones from the 22nd century, Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Regeneration" before they were destroyed by the starship Enterprise NX-01 under the command of Captain Jonathan Archer. According to T'Pol, the spatial coordinates would take at least 200 years before it reaches the destination. Some of those drones were survivors from the second Borg attack from the movie Star Trek: First Contact.
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[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Q Who? article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
- Q Who? at StarTrek.com
