DEATH WISH (STAR TREK: VOYAGER)

'Death Wish' is an episode of ''.

Contents

Plot

Trivia

Related link

External links

Plot

''Voyager'' comes across a comet. The crew find out that there is a single living being inside, and decide to beam it over. It turns out to be a member of the Q Continuum (hereby designated Q2, Q is the Q from '' and ''). Q2 thanks the Voyager crew for freeing him from his imprisonment, then tries to commit suicide. But he ultimately fails (see Omnipotence paradox) and instead of killing himself, all males onboard Voyager are gone.
Q appears and accuses Q2 of sending humans to the Delta Quadrant where they didn't belong yet, then realizes all the men are missing and returns them all. Q2 requests Federation asylum from Janeway when Q wants to re-impose the Q Continuum's sentence of imprisonment. Q laughs at the request for asylum, and Janeway decides to hold a hearing on Q2's request, and Q reluctantly agrees. He later bribes Janeway that if she rules against Q2, he'll send Voyager home.
During the hearing, Q summons three witnesses to testify where Q2 has been influential in the history of humans, beneficially. Sir Issac Newton claimed that he was sitting beside Q2 when the apple struck his head. Another witness claims that if Q hadn't fixed his bus, he would have never made it to Woodstock, got the sound system working ''and'' met his future wife. Finally, William T. Riker of the ''U.S.S. Enterprise'' denies any claim to have known Q2 at all until Q shows Riker that Q2 had helped an ancestor of his (Thaddeus Riker) survive through the Civil War, ultimately ensuring Will Riker's existence in the future.
Q2 shows the court the Q continuum (or rather how it would be interpreted by their feeble human minds) as a road stretching around the entire planet with one rest stop, a country gas station and store, and some Q standing around bored. Q2 describes immortality as very boring, you can only experience the universe so many times before it gets boring. Q tries to dismiss it and makes a pathetic attempt to show that the other members of the continuum are happy, but Q2 sees through it and confesses, to Q's surprise, that it was Q's earlier unrestrained behavior in an attempt to make his life fun was the motivation for his own actions. He makes an impassioned speech comparing his eternal boredom to suffering from a terminal biological disease for which suicide is the only humane release, and that being forced to live for all eternity against his will "cheapens and denigrates" his life, and indeed all life. Janeway is clearly moved by this and agrees to grant him asylum. Keeping his part of the bargain, Q makes him human.
While trying to decide where to assign Q2 (now called Quinn) so that he won't use his knowledge to evolve humanity overnight, Janeway and Chakotay receive a message from the Doctor that Quinn is dying after ingesting a poison. After realizing that the Doctor did not keep any of the poison on hand, and that the computer would not replicate it due to its harmful nature, Q then appears and admits that he was the one who gave Quinn the poison. He's taking up Q2's rebellion against the staid order of the Q.

Trivia

★ The photo of "Colonel Thaddeus Riker" is that of a real US Civil War officer of the 102nd New York Regiment-according to Francis Miller's 1911 "Photographic history of the Civil War" Volume VII p.289 this was Major (later Col) L. R. Stegman. In the TV episode the officer at left was Quinn; in fact in the ''original'' photograph the officer to the left was a Lt. Donner from Ohio.

Related link

★ Principle of double effect

External links

★ Episode summary from Startrek.com