Picard Season 2 Is Secretly A Sequel To A Classic Q Star Trek: Voyager Story
Warning: Article contains discussion of suicide, and spoilers for Star Trek: Picard episode 8.
The latest revelations about Q (John de Lancie) in Star Trek: Picard have turned his storyline into a sequel to a classic Star Trek: Voyager episode. When he visits Guinan (Ito Aghayere) in disguise as an FBI agent, the El-Aurian senses that Q is dying. Q acknowledges her deduction and explains that he prefers instead to think of himself on "the threshold of the unknowable." He greets the darkening of the temporal horizon as something new, something good.
Q's outlook on his newfound mortality recalls the Star Trek: Voyager episode «Death Wish,» in which Quinn (Gerrit Graham), a member of the Q Continuum seeks asylum on Voyager so that he can end his life. He's closely followed by Q, who attempts to stop him. What follows is a typically thorny Star Trek moral debate episode, as a hearing is held aboard Voyager to discuss Quinn's right to die. Quinn presents his case that the immortal life of a Q is responsible for his suffering, he's experienced everything that he possibly can, multiple times, and wishes to experience the one thing he's never been able to — death itself.
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The presentation of death as the final frontier is at the heart of Q's storyline in Picard season 2. At first, Q says he has made peace with his newfound finite lifetime, but as the moment of his death fails to materialize, he grows fearful and anxious about that life's meaning. Where «Death Wish» was a sci-fi allegory about the moral complexities of the right to die, the Picard season 2 episode «Mercy» is a story about coming to terms with one's encroaching death. Rather than
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