We start off with Bashir on a date, regaling a story of some sort of test. Then there’s a call to action and he explains on the way to O’Brien that he gets chicks with his stories of medical finals. This I find absolutely preposterous, and I think I did back then, too. The sounds like some sort of gamma wish fulfillment.
Some crisis with the ship that two station crew members went out on, Dax and Polly, yet there are now 3 occupants of the ship. The 3rd occupant being, Vache! This is a character people will recognize from Next Generation, as she had some relationship with Picard. We find another character having a funny French name, for Vache means cow in French. And then we see another person in a Starfleet uniform skulking in the airlock entryway. It is Q! People familiar with Next generation ought to know who Q is. Q is among my favorite recurring characters from Next Generation. I really must digress here to explain that Q Who? was probably the second Next Generation episode I saw, and I was wondering why everybody was being so mean to this guy!
I should probably explain who Q is. He’s an omnipotent being, highly intelligent, though not omniscient. He’s immortal and can do literally anything just by thinking about it. He’s part of the Q Continuum with other beings of the same nature that are also called Q. Personality-wise, I’d say he’s how an Alpha is perceived by a Gamma. Arrogant, childlike, all-powerful. The Enterprise continually “besting” this character through intellectual exploits is an ultimate Gamma wish fulfillment. That said the character is quite impish and entertaining, and I’m always delighted when I find out he’s in an episode.
There is a mystery to the space station crew as to how Vache got to the Gamma Quadrant (heh, gamma!), Vache simply saying that she was brought there by a friend. Of course it should be obvious to the audience familiar with these characters that Q is the one that brought Vache to the Gamma Quadrant.
While under medical examination, Bashir remarks that she’s in remarkable shape, and I mutter under by breath, “for a woman of her age,” as she appears to be in her 40s. Still, she is quite beautiful. They discuss “science” and mention the Daystrom Institute which is the big place where Science is done on Earth, as I recall. Back in the 90s that was a really cool thing, the kind of place I would have loved to have been working at once I finished college. These days they probably would have renamed the institute because it was somehow racist and math is racist and learning is racist anyway.
Something sapped the power of the ship. They were on, and O’Brien runs a level 1 diagnostic, but everything checks out fine. Annoyingly, I never did figure out if level 1 was most thorough diagnostic or level 5 was. Based on context, I guessed it was 1, though. It may have been in some technical manual that I read once, but forgot. This is actually bugging me and I’m going to look it up right now…. OK, I looked it up and level 1 is the most thorough according to an answer to this question I found on Stack Exchange.
- Take system out of service, full shutdown, manual inspection, observed re-initialization, manual testing.
- Take system out of service, limited manual inspection, crew monitored automated tests.
- Take system out of service, minimal manual inspection, automated tests.
- Take system out of service, automated tests.
- Automated tests.
Clearly the mysterious fire crystal is the cause, in dramatic irony. We proceed through the rest of the episode with the crew tracking down the problem, in which it turns out the fire crystal is a space egg and a manta ray like creature that looks pretty cool comes out of it at the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Vache and Q are having a sort of break up fight, which is petty and annoying, and what is with that ridiculous necklace-earrings she’s wearing!?
Near the end of the Episode, Vache decides to team up with Quark to, uh “fence” priceless artifacts at (or for?) the Daystrom Institute.
Final grade B-
This is a pretty weak outing for a Q episode, though there is a great segment where Q boxes with Sisko, and Sisko drills Q for a knockdown. Q whines, “You HIT me! Picard never hit me!” To which Sisko replies, “I’m not Picard.” I remember this and would quote the lines with my high school friends. The rest of the episode is quite forgettable, and I had actually forgotten it. Q was his usual annoying self in this episode, but never his clever self like he usually is, see the excellent Next Generation episode Déjà Q for reference.