Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

Hide and Q (1987)

John de Lancie: Q

Photos 

Quotes 

• Q : You seem to find this all very amusing.

  Commander William T. Riker : I might - if we weren't on our way to help some suffering and dying humans, who...

  Q : [dismissively]  Ah, your species is always suffering and dying.

• [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.

• 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?

• [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!

• Commander William T. Riker : We don't have time for these games.

  Q : Games? Did someone say "game"? And perchance for interest's sake, a deadly game? To the game!

• Q : Shall it be a test of strength? Meaningless, since you have none. A test of intelligence, then? Equally as meaningless!

• 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.

• Q : Starfleet Admiral Q, at your service.

• Q : Humans. I thought by now that you would have scampered back to your own little star system.

• Q : [quoting Hartley]  "Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays."

• Q : "Drink not with thine enemy." The rigid Klingon code. Explains something of why you defeated them.

• [Q has offered Riker to become part of the Q] 

  Commander William T. Riker : To become a part of you? I don't even like you.

  Q : You're gonna miss me!

• Q : Use your power!

• Q : [reciting a log entry of his own]  The Enterprise is now helpless, stuck like an Earth insect in amber while its bridge crew plays out a game whose real intent is to test if their first officer is worthy of the greatest gift the Q can offer.

• [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...

• Q : You see, of all species, you cannot abide stagnation. Change is at the heart of what you are. But change into what? That's the question.