Eruditorum Press

Fashionably late capitalism

You Were Expecting Someone Else 33 (Assimilation²)

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Josh Marsfelder of Vaka Rangi, a critical history of Star Trek (he’s just started The Next Generation) and related topics (including an essay on Doctor Who), writes on the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover comic by IDW. Also, speaking of comics, no reviews this week I’m afraid – won’t be around to pick up my books due to those Cleveland talks. 

Let me preface this by saying I am not a comics person. My first, and only, sojourn into the world of mainline United States sequential art was around the time there were several different Spider-Mans running around Marvel while at DC Supergirl was some kind of pink alien goo matrix or something. I took one look at that, promptly decided comics were fucked up and never looked back. I am, however, apparently something of an authority on Star Trek, which is why Phil has so graciously invited me to say a few words about the first, and to date only, time that other big polyauthored science fiction TV franchise crossed over with Doctor Who.
The one exception I made to my self-imposed rule of avoiding US comics at all costs came anytime there was a four-colour adaptation of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during the late 80s and early 90s, during the tail-end of the period I’ve come to call the Long 1980s. Back then, you couldn’t just queue up Netflix or Hulu (or other places) to rewatch your favourite show-You had to wait for it to be re-aired, which was if not rare, at the very least unpredictable, or wait for it to come out on VHS, which took a long time. And,  at least if you were someone like me, collecting TV shows on VHS was simply out of the question: Not only was it expensive (I’ve never been a terribly wealthy person), but it took forever for home video releases to come out, and it was hard to keep enthusiasm going that long. If I wanted new adventures with my favourite Star Trek heroes, I was limited to my imagination (which I daresay I’ve been blessed enough to have in abundance), or to the tie-in comic lines from DC and Malibu. Indeed, especially in the case of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, much of my memories of and perspective on the show came not from the TV episodes themselves, but the comics. 
It didn’t hurt that this was something of a golden age for tie-in comics: Most of them were written by talented authors and artists who also happened to have a deep appreciation for the source material they were tasked with adapting. Indeed, Ron Moore said a number of times that he was a big fan of Michael Jan Friedman and Pablo Marcos’ run on the DC Star Trek: The Next Generation book, because it was the only way he could actually experience new stories with a cast of characters he’d come to love as a member of the audience.
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“That’s my evil twin who’s doing that. We’ve got to stop him!”: Datalore

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Almost as iconic to my memories of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the timespace it inhabits as Data is his brother Lore. I always found him to be one of the great antagonists of the show, even trumping the Borg. It’s him who I think of along with the Klingons, Romulans and Ferengi as people the Enterprise would frequently and regularly come into contact with, and the two-part episode “Descent”, in particular the climactic scene where Data debates Lore in a darkened, bombed out corridor before shutting him down, is permanently burned onto my psyche as one of the show’s most legendary and unforgettable moments.

As a result, this episode, Lore’s first appearance, is always one I eagerly look forward to rewatching whenever I revisit Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season…And it’s one I’m always profoundly let down by. Most recently, this happened when I was trying to introduce my sister to the show as I excitedly talked up how cool Lore was, how brilliant Brent Spiner was in the role and how important a role he played in my personal history with the series. After I put the Blu-ray on and we’d seen it, my sister and politely, yet firmly pointed out that, no offense, but “Datalore” was crap, the evil twin story was precisely the sort of artificial conflict we both hate in scripted drama and Wesley Crusher rendered the whole thing essentially unwatchable. She’s right, of course: There are a few episodes of any show that really aren’t very good, but you have to begrudgingly recommend to a new viewer because they lay the groundwork for later, far superior story arcs. Unfortunately, the very best I can say for “Datalore” is that it’s in that category.

“Datalore” is actually Gene Roddenberry’s final contribution to Star Trek as a writer and, well, it shows. This is absolutely the worst Wesley has been yet, and it’s impossible *not* to lay that at Roddenberry’s feet. He’s obviously responsible. And, all the usual criticisms of Roddenberry’s style of writing apply here too. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that Data’s origin is established to be on an old Earth colony as the creation of an eccentric human inventor instead of “unknown aliens”, but that’s definitely the case now. At the very least it gives Brent Spiner a lot more to do in the future, so that’s good (though interestingly, Noonien Soong was originally supposed to be played by Mike Okuda. Seriously. That would have been cool in its own right). However, the one part of the script we can’t blame on Roddenberry is its stock nature: The idea to make “Datalore” an evil twin story actually came from Brent Spiner. In the original script, Lore was apparently going to be Data’s twin sister, a good android who was even going to join the crew to do mechanical work in environments humans couldn’t go, like the exteriors of starships.…

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 83 (The 2012 Olympics)

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“One measures a circle starting anywhere.” – Charles Fort, quoted by Alan Moore in From Hell

Before we begin, a touch of housekeeping. The Williams book should be out within the week. I think it has something that will make a fair number of you excited in amidst the extra essays. Also, if you’re in the Cleveland area, I’m giving a pair of talks this week at the Lakewood Public Library. On Wednesday, at 7pm, I’m talking about Wonder Woman, doing “a comic for more or less every decade,” and then on Thursday at 7pm I’m doing one on Doctor Who that will be “a brief history of overthrowing the government.” Both talks are free, there will be books for sale and I’ll be signing, and it’ll be a good time, so if you’re local, please do come out. Now, on to the Olympics.

I think this will be the last time we do a Pop Between Realities that’s about a cultural event as opposed to another television series. Those have been sporadic features, and from time to time I’ve cheated – I did the Three Day Week of 1973 in the same post as Dad’s Army, for instance. But they’ve been a major part of what TARDIS Eruditorum is. So here we have yet another ending for the blog. Another tradition wrapped up. Another step towards the present.

The nature of how I write it these days is much closer to the early days than to most of the blog. I’m not back to writing things the day they post and them thus going up at erratic times, as they once did, but I am writing this about twelve hours before it goes up, trying to finish before bedtime, which is in about four hours because Jill and I are on days this week. I’ve just posted my Kill the Moon review, and have been enjoying the fires it lit. Over on Tumblr today, Jack Graham got an ask about TARDIS Eruditorum, and said some very sweet things, but mentioned a couple of objections, all of which are completely reasonable and insightful. But one managed to get under my skin, as the best criticism, which was his observation that I’m “overly teleological in this attitude towards the development of the show, especially with regards to the dawn of BBC Wales.” Which I absolutely am. Largely because I’m stuck being so. There’s always been a telos to TARDIS Eruditorum. Even when the specifics of its ending point weren’t completely fixed, it was always building to an ending out of necessity: eventually it was going to run out of Doctor Who. And because it’s presented itself as a narrative, that makes for an ending. Sure, I’ll do a Capaldi book eventually, and probably knock out a book whenever there’s an end of an era of Doctor Who, because I like writing about the series and the money’s good. But we’re still coming up on the end. Everything else will really just be appendices at that point.
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“Right out of a manga…!”: The Big Goodbye

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“The Big Goodbye” is not the first Holodeck story, although it has that reputation among fans. We’ve seen the Holodeck used in a few episodes already for both training and recreation, but of course what fans mean when they say this is that “The Big Goodbye” is the first Holodeck malfunction story, which, shall we say, goes on to be something of a cliche in 1980s and 1990s Star Trek. Though even that’s not technically accurate, considering “The Practical Joker” from the second season of Star Trek: The Animated Series was for all intents and purposes the debut of both the Holodeck and the Holodeck malfunction plot, even if it wasn’t called that at the time.

Considering that, as a narrative device, the Holodeck offers basically limitless potential for intriguing and captivating storytelling and the overwhelming majority of Star Trek’s writers default back to this one basic plot from a not-even-all-that-good episode from Star Trek: The Animated Series‘ decline period is concerning, but not the issue at hand today, because “The Big Goodbye” does work, and work very well. One obvious reason why is the actors, who are in top form: They’re always in top form so it’s quickly going to become irrelevant to keep mentioning that, but the specific way they’re in top form this time around is because the structure the Holodeck offers allows Star Trek: The Next Generation to crash into period piece drama and genre pastiche. The common explanation given for this, echoed famously by Wil Wheaton in his own review of this episode, is that actors love this sort of thing anyway so naturally it’s fun for them to throw themselves into a brief like this and just go nuts with it. And there certainly is some of that: I’m convinced the majority of the reason Data has a part here is so Brent Spiner can do his best hard-broiled gangster routine, which he’s of course amazing at.

But Spiner is actually a really good example of how the actors go above and beyond, not just in this episode, but every day on set. Data’s part isn’t just an excuse for Spiner to do funny voices, he’s a kind of Harpo Marx archetype who’s constantly comically bewildered by his situation. Spiner’s skill at impersonations actually gets written back into the character as Data’s awkward efforts to blend in and get into his role. He’s done this before, obviously, but this is the first time where the production starts to work with this and give him the room he needs. Gates McFadden does something very similar: A natural comedian, McFadden is clearly relishing the opportunity this episode gives her, and this is Bev’s best outing yet. Gates doesn’t play Crusher at all straight here, between her fumbling and tripping in the Holodeck to the exaggerated and pouty way she conveys the alleged “romantic tension” with Captain Picard, Gates turns Bev into basically a pantomime character here, it’s wonderful and it’s right up her alley.…

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Kill the Moon Review

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This review is brought to you by 166 lovely people at Patreon. If you would like to join them in supporting these reviews, please do.

Let’s try something different. 
Let’s write this flat-out, without any reference to GallifreyBase, to second watchings, to anything. I have opened up the laptop the moment I finished it, and I am writing first impressions, as an honest, open review. I’ve not looked at Twitter reaction. I’ve not looked at comments. I am making an honest stab at staking out a critical position without any lens of history whatsoever. Because I don’t really care. I don’t want to contexualize this in the immediate critical reaction. I want to charge out all guns blazing and make a point, fully cognizant of the risk that I might turn out to be in a lunatic minority. 
This was the single best episode of Doctor Who ever.
I am using that sentence with perhaps an odd degree of precision. It is better at being Doctor Who than any previous episode, given that so much of what makes it work is that it is an episode of Doctor Who. It is unapologetic, and indeed triumphant about pulling tricks that only Doctor Who can do. “The moon is an egg.” I mean, that’s the most gloriously trolling reveal imaginable. It all but invokes Poe’s Law on a particular segment of criticism of Doctor Who.
And the joke is that the episode as a whole is a decisive move towards the classic themes of science fiction they espouse. Harness was apparently instructed to “Hinchcliffe the shit” out of the first fifteen minutes, and he did, but equally important is the way in which he Lamberted the shit out of it. On a very basic level, this starts like the show did back, well, in the immediate aftermath of two teachers from Coal Hill School confronting a secretive alien in their school. It starts with “here’s a weird place, let’s go explore it.” It does a self-consciously back to basics opening, complete with the Doctor not using the namechecked psychic paper and instead doing a classic, fast, and utterly believable bit of talking his way into command of a situation. There’s a self-conscious move, throughout the start of this episode, to frame Doctor Who in a very classic way.
That’s been a mission statement all season, but with the exception of Into the Dalek, which combined a visually splendid “here’s what Terry Nation wished you could see” with the same warmed over Dalek story we’ve been redoing since 2005, there hasn’t really been the decisive turn to doing the “here’s Doctor Who as you expect it, only not quite” approach that this season has been developing onto something that’s almost entirely composed out of the series’ golden age science fiction heritage. 
The series has gotten very smart about how it handles the near future, fully embracing the fact that it’s going to be proven wrong by longevity and accepting that you can still do interesting television that’s a clear extension of the immediate-term.
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More Hurt As I May Hold (The Last War in Albion Part 64: Criticism of The Curse, American Gothic)

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This is the fourteenth of twenty-two parts of Chapter Eight of The Last War in Albion, focusing on Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. An omnibus of all twenty-two parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.

The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in six volumes. This entry covers stories from the third and fourth volumes. The third is available in the US here and the UK here. The fourth is in the US here and UK here. Finding the other volumes are, for now, left as an exercise for the reader, although I will update these links as the narrative gets to those issues.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore began a lengthy storyline usually referred to as the American Gothic story, in which Swamp Thing encounters traditional horror monsters in various American locales. One of the most notable stories in this arc is an issue called “The Curse,” about menstruation and werewolves in rural Maine.

“I is not want for come no more alive by fire, as like to this. It is not right. It is more hurt as I may hold.” – Alan Moore, Voice of the Fire
“The Curse,” however, was not an uncontroversial story. Indeed, it generated so much response that the letter pages of both Swamp Thing #45 and #46 were devoted entirely to letters regarding the story. For the most part, however, these letters were in favor of the story. The only outright critical letter in Swamp Thing #45 comes from a gentleman in (ironically) Northampton, Massachusetts, and complains that Moore repeats the phrase “hungry for the moon” too often, objects to the story’s generality in speaking for all women, and complains that the display of steak knives is unrealistic (“no market worth its liabilities would ever, ever, never-ever display its cutlery so dangerously”). Of these three complaints it is, in an idiosyncrasy typical of the sorts of comics readers who wrote in to DC letters pages in the 1980s, the steak knives that seem to be the biggest problem. Another letter, however, takes issue with the ending of the story, while still generally praising it. 
Figure 478: Phoebe lying dead under the howling moon.
(Written by Alan Moore, art by Steve Bissette and John
Totleben, from Swamp Thing #40, 1985)
This sentiment is shared by one of the two letters presented in Swamp Thing #46. This letter, by Mindy Newell, takes up most of a page, and Moore offers an equally long response in the letter page. Newell’s objection is straightforward – that Moore’s decision to have Phoebe kill herself is a weak cop-out of an ending. Newell writes, “I also understand that you were trying to point out to our male audience that women don’t deserve to be treated in such a horrific manner… that you were striking a blow, not just for equal rights, but for equal understanding.
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“…the issue at stake is patriotism”: Too Short a Season

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“Too Short a Season” is one of the most criminally underrated episodes in Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first year, if not the whole series. It’s the first unabashedly, hands-down brilliant episode since “Haven”, which makes sense as it’s the show’s second contribution from D.C. Fontana. Well, second *official*, at any rate: She did the teleplay for “Lonely Among Us”, which I also loved, and she did clean-up work on “The Naked Now”, but understandably took her name off it and used a pseudonym there. Though “Too Short a Season” is still an adaptation of somebody else’s work, it’s still very much a story that’s very recognisably hers: It’s got every ounce of that trademark Fontana bite and cynicism and, as we’d expect, it’s a story where the real villains are the Federation. In fact, it’s the first story like that in the entire franchise.

I seem to recall once either reading or hearing a rumour that the role of Admiral Mark Jameson was written with Captain Kirk in mind. Now, I can’t substantiate this anywhere and have no idea where I might have initially picked that up, so I could very well be imagining things, but after having just rewatched “Too Short a Season” in lieu of the critique I gave the Original Series it seems truly uncanny to think about. Because one level on which to read this episode is as a very firm reaction against the sort of ethics that permeated *huge swaths* of the Original Series, especially under Gene Roddenberry. Jameson is not an obsequious pencil-pusher, like previous obstructive Starfleet admirals have been. He’s not some incompetent desk jockey removed from the “real” action on the front lines, he’s every bit the unorthodox renegade and rogue Kirk is. In fact, “Too Short a Season” almost seems like a flat rejection of “A Private Little War”, for what Jameson does here is almost the exact same thing Kirk did in that episode, only while the narrative lionized Kirk, it condemns Jameson.

(That Jameson is destined to fall from grace is made obvious fairly early on: Not just in the way the teaser emphasizes his impulsive commandeering of the mission, but thanks to Marina Sirtis. “Too Short a Season” is an excellent showcase for her theatre-honed expressiveness: When Jameson is first speaking to Karnas on the bridge, the camera keeps cutting to Deanna Troi, and Marina goes out of her way to telegraph his ulterior motives to us purely through her facial expressions: Marina plays Troi as if she can sense Jameson’s deceit and ambition right from the outset. Granted, I suppose this raises the question of why she wouldn’t have expressed her concerns to Captain Picard, but it’s Marina Sirtis’ considerable acting prowess that’s primarily responsible for getting us to think her character might be under-served in the first place.)

The entire reason there’s a hostage crisis in the first place stems directly from Jameson’s actions negotiating for the resolution of a similar situation forty years prior.…

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Comics Reviews (October 2nd, 2014)

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As always, ranked from least favorite to favorite, with the caveat that I like everything enough to pay money for it.

Thor #1

Why bother launching this on The View if the end result is going to be to spend an issue highlighting how much this is just a continuation of the previous volume of Thor? Why end this with the reveal of the character on the cover? Why have comics not moved beyond the storytelling prowess of 1970s Terry Nation stories? Goddammit.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #3

It’s interesting to see what parts of this book come from what writers. On the evidence, Al Ewing is providing more of the emotional heft, while Rob Williams provides more of the zany and big ideas, this one incorporating a bevy of twists. The result is something that feels more like the generic Doctor Who licensed comics we always get and less like what had been making this book special in the first two issues. Not bad by any measure, but the fact that a noticeable dip in originality and freshness came with the change to the second writer is a sad sign.

Moon Knight #8

I’m still not entirely sold on the turn to arc-based and continuing plotting. This was fine and a good issue of Moon Knight, but the loss of Warren Ellis’s ideological purity is just that: a loss.

Miracleman #11

I forgot the way this book kicked up a gear in Book Three. V for Vendetta does the same thing, though nobody ever notices because it’s collected in one volume. As should Miracleman be, given that it’s actually not much longer than Watchmen in terms of page count. Instead, as ever, we get $4.99 issues for sixteen pages of story. Bastards.

Silver Surfer #6

At last, the book arrives at its actual premise. And it’s fun, and exactly the sort of “Jack Kirby’s Doctor Who” feel that this book promised over half a year ago. Comics. The medium for people who resent it when things happen in their media. Still, it’s churlish to overly resent this comic because the previous five took too long to get here. This is very fun, and the better of the two Doctor Who comics I bought today. It may share some problems with Thor, but the problems are in past issues, not this one.

Rat Queens #8

No idea what the plot of this book is anymore, but it’s one of those I simply don’t care. It’s fun. Every month. By the time I get to the end of the issue I’m at least enjoying the characters in the issue. Should sit down with this and get into it, as I really enjoyed the first few issues when I shotgunned them. Not working for me as well serialized, but that’s true of a lot of comics.

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All comics below that line there are ones I would with a straight face recommend people pick up if their premises sound interesting.…

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Outside the Government: The Reichenbach Fall

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It’s January 15th, 2012. Jessie J is at number one with “Domino,” with Flo Rida, Coldpay, David Guetta, , and Rizzle Kicks also charting. In news, the Scottish government announces that the independence referendum it’s been promised will go forward in 2014, and William Daley steps down as White House Chief of Staff. 
And on television, Sherlock finishes up its second season. To those paying attention to such things as writers, this looked ominous in one key regard, in that it seemed a mirror of the one outright dud in the first season of Sherlock – the one written by Steve Thompson and not directed by McGuigan. Thompson’s oeuvre at this point, at least in terms of things Doctor Who fans looked at, consisted of The Blind Banker and Curse of the Black Spot. To give him the big epic finale seemed an exercise in madness. And yet the result was the peak of Sherlock’s cultural capital – an iconic cliffhanger that casually owned popular culture for a while in its wake, and again in the lead-up to its resolution. It’s difficult to overemphasize how big this episode was. It may have been the lowest rated of its season, but it was by far the most impactful. In the immediate aftermath of transmission, the pop culture was absolutely obsessed with the cliffhanger. It may not be the most watched or the best episode of Sherlock. But the end of this one is the iconic and defining moment of the series. 
Cynics will suggest, not without reason, that this story was by Thompson in the same way that The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit was by Matt Jones or The Celestial Toymaker was by Brian Hayles. And certainly there’s no way that Thompson wasn’t closely supervised here. It’s also the case that when watched without the giddy excitement of context the joins and frailties of the script are somewhat more visible. This is a desperately untidy affair in which the twin motors of a plot that moves faster than its holes and the sense of Aristotelean tragedy keep afloat a story that could easily have gone the way of Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. 
Which is, to some extent, the reason that putting Thompson on this story was always going to be OK, because the sheer scope of the story was going to overwhelm its quality. For all that this owned popular culture momentarily, ultimately, it’s only the last bit of the episode that anyone cares about. And fair enough – it is a wonderful cliffhanger, simply because it embraces its own inevitable resolution. The episode doesn’t even bother trying to leave any ambiguity or suspense over whether Sherlock survives. Even his death isn’t really trying to be sincere, with a carefully and meticulously scripted bit of John’s POV that’s clearly there to leave enough space in the margins to come up with a plausible means of Sherlock’s survival. The episode never deludes itself into thinking its mystery is going to be “whether” and not “how,” and leans into it beautifully.
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“1, 2, 3, I see…”: Hide and Q

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“Yep. Looks like a soundstage to me, Commander.”

A lot of times on television shows, particularly very expensive and VFX heavy science fiction shows such as this one, certain concessions must be made to financing. Sometimes you’re forced to shoot an entire episode on pre-existing sets or re-use old special effects shots in order to make the cut that week on time and on budget. Star Trek of the Long 1980s tends to be pretty good at this: Just recently, Star Trek: The Next Generation used a bottle show brief as an opportunity to turn “Lonely Among Us” into a minor classic, and six years later Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, facing a similar mandate, will take “Duet” and turn it into an unmitigated classic.

And then there’s “Hide and Q”.

I won’t say “Hide and Q” only exists to re-use the effect for Q’s force field from “Encounter at Farpoint”, but I will say it’s odd how a character who carries such weight and gravity suddenly reappears only ten episodes after his debut in a story that seems to be little more than a pointless (and far inferior) retread of his previous appearance. Because it’s really difficult to make the case that this isn’t what “Hide and Q” is: Q shows up, captures the Enterprise and puts the crew through a series of tests in order to determine whether or not humans are worthy of being a spacefaring civilization. The reason given for why Q is back is apparently because his people, while no longer worried humanity is a threat to itself and others, might now progress to such a level that their power might come to rival that of their own, and would like to test to see if humans are responsible enough to wield such abilities. But this amounts to little more than a diegetic explanation of the symbolic power Q already had: Q was already a manner of god and the issue at stake was *always* whether Star Trek: The Next Generation was deserving of that title and honour. That’s what it means to be a utopian ideal: You become a role model and idol others try to take into themselves.

Furthermore, this not only adds nothing to Q’s symbolic power, it actually does measurable harm to his efficacy as a character. Although Q was always going to be a reoccurring foil for the crew, from this point onwards, there are going to be two kinds of stories that feature him: The first kind are stories like “Encounter at Farpoint” that actually recognise the potential metatextual challenge Q can offer the series that force Star Trek to prove it’s capable of living up to the ideals it claims to embody, and furthermore, that those ideals are ones worth holding on to. The second, and regrettably far more common, type of story is the one where Q becomes, in the words of John de Lancie himself, Captain Picard’s (or Sisko’s, or Janeway’s, but that’s another couple of books) “wacky sitcom uncle” who happens to be omnipotent.…

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