Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

Hide and Q (1987)

Patrick Stewart: Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Photos 

Quotes 

• [Q appears in a Napoleonic uniform] 

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : A Marshal of France? Ridiculous!

  Q : Well, one takes the jobs he can get.

• Q : Hear this, Picard, and reflect: "All the galaxy is a stage."

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : World, not galaxy. "All the world's a stage."

  Q : Oh, you know that one. Well, if he were living now, he would have said galaxy. How about this, uh... "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : I see. So how we respond to a game tells you more about us than our real life, this... tale, told by an idiot? Interesting, Q.

• Commander William T. Riker : I feel like such an idiot.

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Quite right. So you should.

• Lt. Commander Data : Sir, how is it that the Q can... handle time and space so well, and us so badly?

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Perhaps someday we will discover that space and time are simpler than the human equation.

• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Don't you see, Riker? He's nothing but a flim-flam man. He's been that ever since we met him at Farpoint!

  Lieutenant Worf : "Flim-flam"?

• Q : Perhaps maybe a little, uh, Hamlet?

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Oh, I know Hamlet. And what he might say with irony, I say with conviction: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!"

  Q : Surely, you don't see your species like that, do you?

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : I see us one day becoming that, Q. Is it that which concerns you?

• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Perhaps they're all remembering that old saying "Power corrupts".

  Commander William T. Riker : And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you believe I haven't thought of that, Jean-Luc?

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : And have you noticed how you and I are now on a first name basis?

• [Q appears in a monk's costume] 

  Q : Let us pray, for understanding and for compassion.

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Let us do no such damn thing! What is this need of yours for costumes, Q? Have you no identity of your own?

  Q : I come in search of the truth.

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : You come in search of what humanity is!

  Q : I *forgive* your blasphemy!

• [Picard is alone on the bridge, when Yar appears at her station] 

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Where is everyone else?

  Lieutenant Tasha Yar : Down on some planet.

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Some planet? What're *you* doing here?

  Lieutenant Tasha Yar : Well, I, er... uh... It sounds strange; but I'm in a penalty box.

• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Whatever it is, why do you demonstrate it through this confrontation? Why not a simple, direct explanation, a statement of what you seek? Why these games?

  Q : Why these games? Why, the play is the thing. And I'm surprised you have to ask when your human, Shakespeare, explained it all so well.

• [Worf moves in on Q] 

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard : No, Lieutenant Worf! You'll make no move against him unless I order it.

  Q : Pity! You might have learned an interesting lesson, Macrohead - with a microbrain!

  Lieutenant Worf : Grrr...