Tavern Queue: Star Trek

Welcome to The Tavern Queue! This is a new thing we’re going to try here – where instead of a Queue about, well, Blizzard stuff, we’re going to try a Queue about a certain Tavern Watch subject we’re interested in.

We’ll announce the topic of the next Tavern Queue in future editions, but for now check out the regular Queue and follow us on Twitter for the announcements. This week I’m going to answer a bunch of Star Trek questions. Why, you might ask? Because Star Trek is amazing and I want to.

Jabrone asked:

Since it’s “The Queue”… Explain Q in the Star Trek universe. Please and thank you.

I think Q is perhaps one of the best television characters that was ever created. The evolution of his character is pretty impressive, too. He initially is presented as a god-mode character; someone with no reservations, limits, and checks on his power. If he wants it, it happens.

We then get into his psyche a bit more, we see that he’s unstable and wants to explore what makes us human. He tests the protagonists in court, confronts them with death, and even sees what happens when they’re given his own god-like gifts.  He ends up becoming Human at one point himself, only to discover that the mortal life isn’t as bad as it seems. Eventually he begins to show compassion and understanding, working with a young girl on the cusp of Q-hood. At the end of The Next Generation he basically saves the galaxy as he provides Picard the clues he needs to close the temporal rift threatening the galaxy’s very existence. All of this is done with an underpinning of a trickster god, but still, sometimes the fool speaks the most truth.

His first appearance and question was amazing. Was humanity really ready to escape out into the stars and explore the wider universe? When TNG was made in the late 1980s, the world lived on the pin of a needle, ready for all out nuclear annihilation at any moment. Today’s struggles are extremely serious, but let’s not forget that at the time one push of a button could literally send us into the dystopian third world war of the Star Trek universe. Q called upon that imagery, a court held with participants that draw upon the foundations 80s punk rock and counter culture, to place humanity on trial for the savagery it brought upon itself; a savagery that at the time was all too possible.

So what is Q’s place in the Star Trek universe? He’s a check on what we are and are not, a warning of what our technological magic could look like to lesser civilizations one day.

Logan asked:

What are your favorite episodes from each series and why? Follow up which Movie is the best and why?

I’ll star with the best movie: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. A solid story, character evolution, an event that is referenced for the next 15 years of Trek, and Worf’s grandfather.

The Original Series: City on the Edge of Forever

The Next Generation: The Inner Light

Deep Space Nine: Far Beyond The Stars and The Way of the Warrior

Voyager: The Omega Directive

Enterprise: These are the voyages…

Yes. You read the right. The best episode of Enterprise is the last one where Riker is simulating Enterprise in the holodeck. Bring it, nerds.

Chrth asked:

Do you think the 4th Season* of Enterprise redeems all the failures of the first 3 seasons? *Not including that abomination of a series finale

Let me tell you about the last episode of Enterprise. It was kind of amazing. In fact, it was beyond amazing. It was a tie that circled back the last decade of Trek without The Next Generation to its humble roots of moving forward in life, owning your mistakes, and making things better. Riker was facing a crossroads in his life and he needed inspiration and moral guidance, so he turned to a time when things were not black and white. He found what he wanted.

Enterprise as a whole gets tarnished a lot. I might just be an unabashed fanboy, but I don’t think the series was bad at all. It tried episodic television before it was getting off the ground on network TV. These days it would be hailed as a solid SciFi offering.

That last episode was such a great creation story for the Federation. It brought Humanity into the stars, and like Q would eventually test them in expanding further, so too was the founding of the Federation.

Jennifer asked:

Did you think Benedict Cumberbach was creditable as Khan? I like the actor, wasn’t feeling the role

Here we go.

That wasn’t Khan. Those were not Star Trek movies. They were action packed, lens flair Transformer movies in disguise. The only thing they were missing was Kirk and an Orion slave girl. Oh wait.

#micdrop #alpha-universe-forever