Portrait of a Character – Q

Q, a canon character, works well for all sorts of deus ex machina.

John de Lancie as Q (gif is provided for educational purposes only)

Origins

First of all, this canon character ended up helping showcase, in Fortune, some very important information. Because he gets to show just what happens to the Digiorno-Madden-Beckett-O’Day-Reed clan in the near and deep future. In addition, the vehicle ended up being the canon episode, The Q and the Grey, which I expanded significantly.

Portrayal

As in canon, Q is portrayed by actor John De Lancie.

Personality

More or less omnipotent and omniscient, Q easily becomes bored by the likes of you or me (or my characters). However, even he has limitations. As a result of needing a good plot device and a means of making him at least a little bit relatable, I made it so he won’t get into the heads of people. And in particular, that meant it took a lot of doing before Lili could convince him to allow her into Kevin Madden-Beckett’s head at the moment of that infant’s untimely death. Because the contact gets cut off, the question of whether there is life after death is not answered in Fortune, and I waited until Equinox, The Three of Us and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere to make the final determination that, yes, there is life after death.

Relationships

Q’s only known relationship is with the female Q, who I have called Joy in my fan fiction. Because Q has issues and wastes time pursuing Kathryn Janeway, I had Lili give him some help in terms of connecting with Joy.

Theme Music

While Q doesn’t really have theme music, per se, he does try to persuade Lili to show him the ways of human sex and sexuality by playing Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it On, a song he describes as ‘foolproof’.

Mirror Universe

Because Q does not seem to be 100% from our universe, I suspect he flits between the two all the time. And he may go to other universes, such as the 49 centimeter radiation band.

Quote

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t know about Kevin.”

Upshot

Because this character has so many gifts, he can be hard to relate to. In addition, even in canon, I feel the writers sometimes didn’t know how to handle him. They made him obnoxious and overly obsessed with humans. Instead, I decided to give him doubts and hesitations.

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