User Reviews

ST:TNG:11 - "Hide & Q" (Stardate: 41590.5) - this episode is the 11th episode to go into production and the 10th one to air on TV. The teleplay is by Gene Roddenberry himself (the creator of Star Trek) and deals with whether one man can overcome the temptations of limitless power including stopping time which is shown in this episode - of course when it comes to this type of power, Q is involved (this is his second appearance in the series). It also shows that Roddenberry thinks that humans will evolve for sure to the level of the Q given enough time (this is what Q reveals to Riker). This episode also introduces the Q Continuum, the place where Q and his kind come from.

Was interested to see Q in this and his arrogance was the same as the Farpoint encounter. His lack of interest in the emergency to Enterprise was en route to was cold and typical Q. He whisks the main crew off to a planet and offers Riker the power of the Q. The old adage of 'power corrupts, and a absolute power corrupts absolutely' applies here and there are plenty of biblical references about the temptation of leading the good to sin. Interestingly, when Riker refuses to save a dead girl with his new powers it sends him into a spin. His arrogance eventually becomes evident to the extent of regarding the Captain on a first name basis! Eventually Riker makes the offer of providing a special gift for his fellow Bridge Officers. Watch as Picard sits back confidently and endorses and even encourages this. Riker then presents his gifts and is turned down each in turn by all. Picard sits triumphant as Q is whisked away by his fellow Q and the viewer is left to wonder is this the last of Q?

'Hide and "Q"' is the most entertaining when it is surprising visually, kinetic in its choice of character conflicts and competitive and humorous with it's dialogue.

Other than a few minor directions given to Riker to make him hypocritical and arrogant, such as his cross-armed stance and reiterating Q's "incredible gifts" line, he is on the most part very sympathetic and correct. The writers are more likely in Picard's camp and in defense of his slippery slop fallacy but in my opinion Riker is noble in his choices, especially that of saving the girl. The final 'confrontation' between Riker and Picard is a manufactured, tangential one which does not reflect any previous statement of intent or characterisation of Riker, although on it's own is a fine piece of moralising.

The show still has issues with pacing and feels very drawn out at the latter stage of its episodes. Denise Croby frequently overacts and Tasha Yar's characterisation as a man-craver and object of desire is frustrating. Picard also yells line after line to the detriment of his likeability. Finally, the design of the planet and atmosphere is bare and underwhelming, with the shots lacking visual interest.

Q certainly has many humorous lines about Worf and Klingons, as well as interesting costume changes and expressive movement and emoting.

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. It had elements of the original series with the flat green background, fake rocks, general set, yet Q is the bridge character to the new series dynamic. He offers Riker the gift of being godlike. Some reviewers have said that Riker behaves out of character once given the power of the Q. How is that surprising? 🤷‍♂️ Have you ever worked with an employee and then seen them promoted to manager or principal or boss? HUGE change. Imagine being offered deity level. Riker does stay in character and refuses....with a little help from his friends. A is hilarious. He offers comic relief with a serious plot. And the episode is consistent with Roddenberry's classic theme of humanity having so much potential. This was one of the handful of good episodes in season one along with Haven, Datalore, The Big Goodbye, Last Outpost, Conspiracy, Heart of Glory, and Arsenal of Freedom.

Well, at least we know Shakespeare is a viable literary source some four hundred years into the future.

Irritable alien life force Q (John de Lancie) is back with another challenge for the Enterprise crew, fairly soon after the premier episode eight weeks earlier. However, it seems that the Q he speaks of now is even larger than himself, encompassing an entire but unknowable cosmic entity. Having dealt with Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) previously in 'Encounter at Farpoint', Q now sets his sights on Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), whom he offers the opportunity to merge with Q himself and become an all powerful god-like being. You have a pretty fair idea how this one will go, but of course, Riker has to see for himself that the crew members he impacts would rather be themselves than accept his life altering offers. The most surprising one was Geordi (LeVar Burton), who gave up his newly acquired eyesight for the restrictive eyepiece that he always wore. Data (Brent Spiner) held fast as well, denying the chance to become human.

You have to wonder if Q, in losing his bet with the Captain, would ever return again since that was the condition of the challenge. I guess we all know better now, but since I'm watching this series just now for the first time after almost three decades, I'll have to wait and see. One final thought though - I don't think I would have minded if Wesley (Wil Wheaton) remained ten years older. He looked like he would have been less annoying.

After successfully connecting the enterprise saucer section like a complete Alpha and spending the next seven episodes as 'professional commander guy' who makes logical comments --- Q has decided that's good enough to promote Riker to God, so that the Q can understand the human quality that will eventually turn us into beings even superior to God itself!

At this point ---- I think it's clearly Wesley that has been carrying the weight aboard the Enterprise is regards to human potential, right? Now it's Riker? I know we just had a Wesley focused episodes but......

I absolutely loved it when Riker turned Wesley Crusher into a Quarterback and even kept that ridiculous sweater on him.

Riker attempts to give his friends gifts but NOT SO FAST ---- we humans need to battle to earn our rewards! This is like when your ex lover gives you a gift card but you refuse to use it.

It's a bit jarring to go from Farpoint (humans on trial as savages) to this episode where humans all of a sudden have unimaginable potential.

The climax involves Riker refusing to bring a dead girl back to life and shortly after at Q's urging he gives his friends gifts. You have got to admire the efficiency of the human grieving process in the 24th century.

Well lesson re-learned folks --- We are not ready to have god powers. Onto Regula 4 to resolve a diplomatic disagreement.

Apparently when human being are given the power of God they instantly become arrogant despite living a life of service to starfleet.

I do ponder what level of evolution can humanity possibly reach that it will become more powerful then entities that can control time and space with a thought?

It is suggested that Q is going rouge with giving Riker powers. Perhaps this is a Q prime directive that Q ignored?

We are experiencing a TOS episode set on a TOS sound stage with TOS visual effects. It just doesn't land well.

Assorted thoughts:

• Tasha Yar loses her mind for a brief moment here ----- She starts crying about not having control of the situation and then tells Picard she would totally sleep with him if he wasn't her captain.
• Worf's ninja jump at Q during the opening was wonderful.
• Georgi has a thing for Tasha. It must be a real drag to view people as light sources while wearing the car filter over your eyes.

This episode is realistically a 5 out 10 but I am going to elevate it to a 6 out of 10 because I laughed my ass off at how alpha Wesley Crusher looked 10 years into the future. The fact that the prop department had to make another one of those awesome sweaters in an extra large is delightful.

Beyond laughing at adult Wesley Crusher and chuckling at the Napolean War Pig Men this episode did not engage me in any way. Probably the weakest Q episode?

Q is a joke, if he is so Super Duper, and can stop time, why not get involved with the Borg?

As for this episode Q looks sounds and even dresses the same in this episode as ??? Trelane in The Squire of Gothos this Q is a total copy. And about 30% as good. And the ending where he begs to do one more thing, now where was that before?

As for Riker, what about the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the God like Gary Mitchell

Dreadful Stupid episode.

"Hide and Q" just doesn't work for me. Surely, confronting man with the possibility of unlimited power is a challenging concept but I think the way presented here isn't the one to deal with such matter. First of all, Riker is the obvious choice for the "God candidate" (who else should it have been, Worf?). But to be honest I can't stand him laughing. He overplays his new role to the limit with his meaningful looks and clumsy arrogance. Sure, Riker's an eager officer and loyal to his colleagues but what I had wished for was reaching deeper into his character to clearly state out what his new powers could mean to him... Idon't know if Frakes would have had the ability to do so at the time (I would almost say no) but such a highly complex matter deserves to be taken seriously. Wouldn't it have traumatized him or given him a mental breakdown or simply blown his mind? And honestly: Riker's conflict about having been able to save the child. Is that all he was thinking about at the moment? Here comes the point which makes clear that this is just another episode awkwardly trying to create a pseudo-theological conflict. It's not Riker we're interested in but only the "what-would-be-if" kind of thing finally resulting in the overly simple solution of realizing that keeping to our true selves is the best thing to do. But the script's way too superficial on that. Shakespeare knew what he wrote about and his lines weigh a lot and it's quite a shame to abuse his work for such purpose (although the Q/Picard "Shakespeare-battle" is a funny thing).

Besides Riker, interestingly it's Data who ruins this show. What had happened to him? Did he just out of nothing develop a kind of conscience? How that? And what's his silly question at the end about Q having problems to deal with humans? I'm glad the producers dropped that kind of Data-parts soon...

Another thing is the "game" Q creates. First of all the set. It's so bad that even the most talented director couldn't have made anything out of it. So, no fault on behalf of Cliff Bole. Wouldn't it have been "game" enough for Q just letting the crew execute their rescue mission and watching how Riker behaves? Wouldn't that have been temptation enough? I do think so... And once again Wesley. Why didn't Riker just let him die? Second opportunity missed...

It's quite a torture to see Star Trek struggling for its way and dealing with quite intelligent concepts in a silly, childish and one dimensional way. Please Mr. Roddenberry, let go... (He finally did and look what became of TNG).

Riker's worst performance so far and Q's much better than in the pilot (although deLancie almost gave in to the temptation of falling back to classic 60s villainy). A new set of the Enterprise's corridors was introduced here and for my part that's all to mention here.

The Enterprise is on its way to help a Federation colony in the Sigma III system when the Q appears and prevents them from their mission. The Q wears a Star Fleet admiral uniform and then a Napoleonic marshal uniform, and then he has the crew battle against some sort of humanoid creature. It's a Q episode but it also has an interesting question about the difficulty of science (and extremely intelligent beings) to successfully predict chaotic and complex phenomenon, such as human psychology.

"Hide and Q" (Episode 9, Season 1, Air Date 11/23/87, Star-date 41590.5) poses the interesting possibility that 'the human equation' is more difficult to manipulate and understand than basic laws of space-time. We find this evident in the physics of today; modern physics never uses its basic principles of relativity or quantum mechanics to *precisely* control (in as quantifiable a way as in a physics experiment) human psychological reactions or behaviors.

This idea becomes explicit at the end of the episode. But the whole episode can be read as making this point through a series of failures by Q. Q tempts Riker with the incentive of becoming a Q in the hopes of having Riker teach the Q about the human desire to change, grow, and advance (more on this below). But Q also wants Riker to enjoy using Q powers by suggesting to Riker that he give all the top officers their deepest wish, with bad results -- the Enterprise crew doesn't want to achieve their goals and get what they want through magic.

Picard seems to know in advance that Riker will fail; perhaps suggesting that humans are in a better position to understand human psychology than an all powerful god-like entity. Perhaps Riker was blinded and corrupted by his temporary immense powers to fail to see the same thing. But it's also possible that Picard is granted too much knowledge, or plays an 'I told you so' type game in which he claims to have known in advance what we usually just learn after the fact through experience. Wesley, for example, gladly accepts his prize from Riker and only rejects it after he thinks about it for awhile.

I'm not sure why the Q entities don't have human type desires to advance and grow. For some reason Q fears the potential of humans (and that is why he recruits Riker). But I'm not sure this desire to advance is special to humans at all. It would seem to be a feature of all major Star Trek civilizations that advance, change, adapt, progress, etc. I doubt the Vulcans lack it. But perhaps the Q entities are so advanced they lost the desire to advance through evolution. (Though perhaps humans would lose such a desire as well if they could do all the things a Q can do.)

And some human communities don't advance at all, and instead live by traditions from hundreds of years ago (as Jacob Bronowski points out in his excellent science documentary 'The Ascent of Man'). So there is nothing inherent in our humanity that forces us to advance at our current state of evolution. Such tribes may not exist in the future, but, even so, some individuals may still be lazy or depressed in such a uniformly modernized world.

In one sense the episode has the human equation correct -- human psychology and behavior and emotion is very unpredictable even for a Q perhaps. But the same can be said of the weather and economics to some extent. It seems to me the episode lacks thoughtfulness and perspective on these kinds of questions, and it exaggerates its 'human equation' idea (or perhaps fails to develop it fully enough, to put it nicer).

Otherwise it's mainly an episode for fans of the Q, fantasy, and humanistic literature. I did like the quotes from Shakespeare: the world is like a play or stage (but, Q notes, 'if Shakespeare were alive he would have said *the galaxy* is like a stage' -- no, I think he would have said *the universe* is like a stage!). If you also catch the quote from 'Hamlet', then you'll find some thoughtful ideas about our humanity in this episode. And Q allows them to take center stage.

But I'm not a fan of Q and I'd rather see these views of humanity mixed with more pure SF. So there wasn't anything of interest at all for me until the end when they commented on 'the human equation' and only then did I have something to write about!

The key problem of this episode is Riker's instantaneous personality transformation when he gets the power of the Q, as others have commented.

Personally, I'm always annoyed at how these stories play out. When offered the power of a god, our character this small. What if Riker had wiped out all disease and aging? Would this morality play have a leg to stand on it Riker was preventing terminal childhood ailments?

And the final scene with the crew turning down all the gifts was profoundly silly and poorly written. Word comes out as asexual, Riker thinks robbing Wesley of ten years of his life is a good idea, Geordie give up a cure for his blindness for ... reasons. Worst was Data giving up the opportunity to become human because of some ridiculous sentimentality which Data could not possibly feel, and with wisdom he doesn't possess.

All in all just a bad writing.

Starting with the positive, I think we see Riker bust out the Captain Morgan leg stance for the first time. Nice.

As I was watching this episode the word "sanctimonious" was screaming in my ears. Sure enough, I see a 3 star review with the same in the title. Riker is annoying, Picard is annoying. The premise isn't bad. The execution is painfully high and mighty, and cringy. Worf is gifted a sex beast. Does the courtship ritual feel somehow racist? Geordi, after being gifted sight, announces to everyone the security lady is hot. It's the one thing he has to say about being able to see. Tasha throws herself at the captain because he provides minimal, awkward comfort about potentially being erased from existence. I wonder why she quit. Worst of all, the episode isn't thought provoking, despite focusing on someone being granted god powers. Saving your friends is bad, because something. Saving dead kids is bad, because something. Why? Oh, you might start calling the captain by his first name (heavens no) and pretend to be a genie who doesn't listen to his friends when they say "no gifts."

In "Hide and Q", on the way to bring medical attention to a mining colony that has suffered a mining accident, the Enterprise is waylaid by Q ready to put Riker to a test. After transporting the bridge crew sans Picard down to an unidentified plant and forcing them battle with alien forces dressed up in French Revolutionary garb, Q gives Riker all the powers of the Q to do with whatever he pleases.

Picard warns Riker that humanity is not ready yet for anyone to have so great a power. Riker promises to never use it again after saving the crew of the Enterprise from Q's trap. He lives to regret that when they show up to the mining colony and a girl dies just before Crusher can save her.

In an attempt to appease the crew if the Enterprise, Riker offers to give them all gifts. They all feel unsettled by this. Riker offers Wesley adulthood, skipping all those awkward teenage years. He offers Data the chance to be an actual human. Geordi is offered his vision. Worf is offered a Klingon mate to accompany him in the Enterprise. But all these gifts are rejected by the crew since they just don't feel right. Riker, understanding the error of his ways, asks Q to remove the powers from him and put him back to normal. Q leaves in a huff and the Enterprise continues on unscathed.

The first return of Q! Like a nagging pest, Q won't leave the Enterprise alone here in the first season, always interrupting a mission at the most inopportune time. Here he thinks he's found a weakness in the crew in the form of Riker, someone who can get sucked into temptation (and he's not wrong). But alas, Q underestimates humanity again. One of the crew mentions in this episode how Q can understand time and space so well yet still be so in the dark about how humanity operates. I found that quote interesting if not a but misguided.

All in all, this episode is okay for a Q episode. I liked their time on the planet's surface and the dumb pig soldiers that Q created for them to fight. I typically enjoy little anachronisms like that; I don't know why...

The set is pretty atrocious though. I like the way Riker gifts everyone what he believes to be their greatest desires, only for everyone to reject him. I think there might be a bit TOO much Q in this episode. He's better in smaller doses but he's all over this episode which might be its downfall.

The "game" he sets up for the crew doesn't really make all that much sense. The moral quandary Riker is supposedly dealing with is half-baked at best here and screams of some kind of adapted-for-Q TOS script. I know this show gets better on in later seasons, but sometimes this first one can be a bit of a slog.

Writing in 2021, it is great to see that I am not the only person taking a retrospective look at Star Trek, the Next Generation. When this series was first released in 1987, a little less than twenty years after the end of the Original Series, many people thought that, without Captain Kirk and his crew, it couldn't really be Star Trek. However, original creator Gene Roddenberry, was fully invested in the casting, writing and overall look of the new series, so let's see how it shaped up:

Another Q episode and its a good one. The omnipotent being sets up a complicated game in which the penalty is death and then gives Commander Riker the opportunity to save his crew mates and bestow upon them their most cherished desires.

We get to see a sparse alien landscape, interesting costumes and some "strange, animal creatures". Captain Picard gets to recite Shakespeare and we are treated to several moral conundrums and humorous vignettes as Riker tries to interest the crew in some rapid wish fulfilment. Worf's fantasy girlfriend provides a lot of amusement as we learn that Klingon women take an extremely dominant role in the mating ritual, poor Wesley's grown-up self is a chisel-jawed mannequin and the rest the cast decline to take part. Riker is suitably chastened and Q's experiment pronounced a failure.

A lot of viewers are dismissive of this "Star Trek does Faust" episode but forget that we were being treated to 26 episodes a year; a bounteous serving of entertainment that would be completely impossible today. Not everything in each episodes could work perfectly but the discipline required by such a workload at least meant that we did not have to contend with today's bloated plots and lachrymose characterisations.

(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)