Star Trek: The Next Generation/Recap/S6/E06 True Q

Series:Star Trek the Next Generation Episode: Season 6, Episode 6 Title:"True Q" Previous: Schisms Next: Rascals Recapper: Grev]

A young intern named Amanda Rogers boards the Enterprise while they're trying to alleviate the ecological woes of Tagra IV, as, surprisingly, Al Gore had not yet visited that planet. As Riker leads her to her quarters, she wishes her three puppies were here as she makes puppy-dog eyes at the Commander...and when Riker leaves, three puppies appear!

The next day, we get more of Amanda's backstory: She's an orphan, her parents having been killed in an accident when she was young. Then, when she goes to the cargo bay, she sees a container fall right at Riker's head! But she moves her hand and the thing just barely misses him. Then after Techno Babbling a few solutions for Tagra IV's environmental troubles, the warp core breaches unexpectedly, as warp cores are wont to do. As the core explodes, Amanda comes in to save the day! But how?

An A comes in the form of Q, who tells a stunned command staff that Amanda is a member of the Q Continuum. Her parents weren't human, but actually Q, who decided to live like the disgusting humans, including the abominably disgusting act of mating. The Continuum was unsure whether this foul act would beget an offspring with Q powers, so they sent Q to oversee her and make sure she doesn't destroy the multiverse with her newfound powers. He wants to take Amanda back to the Continuum for study, but she objects...and throws him across the room. Picard suggests that he not do things like walk through a wall and inspect her like a human would inspect a bacteria...then tells Data after he leaves to look into her parent's "accident". Meanwhile, Q's shadow asks him for a progress report. He tells the Q he may have to "terminate the girl"...but he may not.

Dr. Crusher convinces Amanda to talk to Q again, in that motherly way she never used with Wesley. Amanda doesn't want anyone on board to treat her any differently from any other member of the crew now that she's a Q, just like any other omnipotent being would want. Q takes a more conversational tack, telling her that the Q are indeed omnipotent, and she can do anything she wants...like see her actual parents again. But, that's boring. How about using her Q powers to speed up this experiment that Dr. Crusher wants her to perform, 'cuz that's boring, too! As she's doing it, she's distracted by that bearded hunk of a man Riker, and thus ruins the experiment. When Crusher complains, Q calls her a mutt for wasting Amanda's time with trivialities...then turns her into one. A dog, I mean. Amanda, chagrined, turns her back. Q, obviously, liked her better as a dog.

Once again trying to alleviate her concerns, Q gives Amanda teleportation tips, by playing Hide and Seek, where Q limits himself to "Anywhere on the Enterprise". It takes Amanda awhile to figure out that he means that literally, and finally finds him on the outside hull, as naturally, Q don't need to breathe. But they can make sound in space. Meanwhile, Data informs Picard that Amanda's parents were killed by a Suspiciously Specific Tornado, one that shouldn't have happened thanks to the Federation's all powerful weather control machine.

Later, Amanda's eating lunch in Ten-Forward when he sees that awesomely-built trombone-playing hunk Riker again, but he's eating with someone else instead of her. Then she realizes she's a fricking omnipotent being and, despite Crusher and Troi's warnings, whisks herself and Riker to a gazebo, the most romantic thing in Amanda's universe. Unfortunately, this does nothing to woo Riker...until she realizes she's a fricking omnipotent being and makes him love her, literally. But, of course, the artificial love proves...artificial...and Amanda puts him back the way he was. Good thing, too, 'cuz I hear the age of consent around Tagra IV is 19 (not that that would have stopped Amanda's actress at all...)

Meantime, Q is summoned to Picard's ready room (because even fricking omnipotent beings can't escape the Bald of Awesome), where Picard berates him from hiding the truth from Amanda. Q, blinded by the shine, admits that the Suspiciously Specific Tornado was the Q's doing. They allowed those two to live like humans in all ways except the one they could not tolerate: The abominably disgusting act of human procreation. They let Amanda survive because she was deemed an innocent in all this, but now Q must determine if she's fully Q or some sort of human/Q hybrid (since apparently the mere act of human procreation injects human DNA into a being). If she's not fully Q, she's fully dead.

On Tagra IV, Geordi, Riker, and the Tagrans have whipped up some Techno Babble that might work in their situation (while, on Bill Clinton's campaign bus, Al Gore is taking notes), and are going down to fix everything, just as Picard tells Amanda that the Q might have to kill her. She, being a strikingly old-looking 17-year-old girl, proceeds to throw a Q-sized tantrum...until Q shows up and says the Q are willing to make a deal: She can live as a human; however, she can never again use her powers. She immediately chooses to live as a Human.

Cue Tagra IV blowing up. Q says he didn't do it, nobody saw him do it, you can't prove anything...but he might have had a hunch. Needless to say, she uses her newfound powers and saves the day. More than, in fact: she completely restores Tagra IV's ecosystem to peak condition. (Al Gore makes a Note to Self to find himself a Q one day.) One crisis averted, another so very, very not. Q says he knew she would do it, and now she has to come with her, or else *splercht*. Amanda decides to accept her new status as a Q and go with them. And so, with a heart-felt goodbye to Dr. Crusher and her foster parents, Q whisks her away to the Continuum, where she will be completely forgotten about by every Q alive when Q shags Suzie Q to make little q a few years later.

Incidentally, the story idea came from a 17-year-old Ascended Fanboy; thus, the slightly Sue-ish qualities of Amanda Rogers and the utter lack of her in any other canon.