TOS - The Squire of Gothos

[clearspira]

Q would have his ass handed to him by Trelane.

And your evidence for that is?

[clearspira]

Trelane's species are not related to the Q. How do I know that? Because every Q when they use their magic to teleport or transfigure something it has a white star shaped pattern. This is consistent across every show and every Q.

As Trelane does not use this pattern then he cannot be a Q.

[Yukaphile]

Well, you might have a case in the first season, where they had that... floating... space... fence... thing. It seemed like technology.

[FlynnTaggart]

The "Phaser and Ammo" bit makes me wonder what sort of gun rights the Federation has. Like in Undiscovered Country Nimbus 3 has some bit about civilian ownership of weapons on the planet being banned implying its possibly legal other places. Now I kinda want to see a tacticool phaser.

On the episode, the obsession Trelane had with Earth is kinda annoying both because there are probably far more warlike species (if he just wants a straight warrior culture he'd probably love the Klingons or Hirogen more then humanity who spends almost as much time building cool stuff as blowing the crap out of it) and plays into the TOS problem of Earth being special. Way too many episodes are there with an Earth-ish planet or Earth connected planet. I know its easier to show....... IN SPACE!!! then having a truly alien planet or culture but is still kinda lazy.

Though atleast its some dude who is a Earth "weeaboo" who made it Earth like rather then some inexplicable Earth planet though.

[LordUltimus]

I did like that Chuck mentioned Q-Squared, definitely one of the best Star Trek novels. It also gave reasons for any disrepencies between Trelane and the rest of the continuum (at least in the pre-Voyager days), like the technology he uses is basically training wheels for young Q that he has outgrown by the time of TNG.

[FaxModem1]

Now here's one of those areas where I have to 'respectfully disagree with Chuck'. While you can have a story where nobody gets hurt but you still have a sense of danger, if your characters are never in any real danger, sooner or later the viewers, readers, players will realize that and the tension will all go away. TOS might have misused the new extra dying trope a bit too often, but even if they hadn't abused the heck out of it, you still would have needed a death here and there to make the point that things are indeed dangerous.

I think it's rather necessary for this episode because Trelane, for all intents and purposes, is a child, and having him be a murderer, even if we're unto an amoebas compared to him, would be rather distasteful for the audience. Same way that it'd get the audience a bit uncomfortable if Opie on the Andy Griffith show
was, instead of playing a bit too rough with them on accident, he was drowning puppies. One's an aww shucks, 'kids do what kids do'. The other is "That kid is going to grow up to be a serial killer".

[Yukaphile]

Still watching it, haven't finished it, tbh.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Q would have his ass handed to him by Trelane.

And your evidence for that is?

Q are severely limited by their imagination. Not this tyke.

[Kendrakirai]

Q would have his ass handed to him by Trelane.

And your evidence for that is?

Q are severely limited by their imagination. Not this tyke.

I mean, Trelane didn’t realize that his information was hundreds of years old, and was constrained by that, and even *then* he didn’t comprehend all of what he was seeing enough to actually be imaginative with it. He merely parroted it back.

[Yukaphile]

Q have better feats, period. Trelane is mostly featless.