DEATH WISH
Episode 34

 

SUMMARY: One of the Q beings, who are near enough immortal, seeks asylum from the Q Continuum, and with the avowed intent of committing suicide. One way or the other, Janeway's verdict at the asylum hearing will have a profound effect on everyone. During an attempt to beam aboard a core sample of a comet, the crew inadvertently brings aboard a member of the Q Continuum, who was imprisoned inside the comet and who easily passes through the class-3 containment field surrounding the sample. The released Q expresses his gratitude at being rescued, then bids the crew farewell. He intends to commit suicide, but unfortunately he makes all the male crewmembers of Voyager disappear instead. When Janeway orders him to return her crew, he sheepishly informs her that he does not know how. Then the better known Q, who has bedevilled the officers of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D for years, suddenly appears and, despite a charmingly snide comment about the novelty of a female Starship captain, luckily decides to return the missing crewmen. Q tells Janeway that the escaped Q (hereafter called "Q2", as per the script, not to be confused with Q2 in [#165 Q2]) has been incarcerated for the past 300 years due to his repeated suicide attempts. Q2 demands asylum on Voyager and attempts to press the point by haphazardly tossing the ship around space and time in an attempt to lose the other Q. Voyager is taken to the Big Bang at the beginning of the cosmos, is shrunken to a subatomic particle and is hung as a decoration from a Christmas tree, but each time Q catches up with Q2 and Voyager. Janeway calls a halt to the dangerous game of hide-and-seek, agreeing to hold a hearing to consider the request for asylum which, as a Federation Starship captain she is obliged to do if she receives an official asylum request, in order to determine facts. The terms are that if Janeway rules in the Q Continuum's favour, Q2 must return to confinement, but if she does not then Q Continuum will grant mortality to Q2, even though she cannot condone his expressed determination to commit suicide. Q and the refugee Q Tuvok agrees to Q2's request to represent him at the hearing which takes on the tense atmosphere of a courtroom drama. In many cultures known to the Federation, even among some member species, suicide is acceptable, such as the Vulcans among whom those who reach a certain infirmity with age practice ritual suicide. Q2 explains that he wants to end the tedium of immortality, which has occurred because, as the Q evolved, the Q sacrificed many things such as manners, mortality, a sense of purpose, a desire to change, and a capacity to grow. Q2's suicide would have numerous consequences for the Continuum, since it would mark the first time the Q have dealt with the unknown since the new era began. It is noted that the Q have executed members of their own race on prior occasions. Tuvok and the refugee Q at the asylum hearing Janeway presides at the hearing Q counters by explaining that a suicide could have unpredictable consequences for the Continuum, which has never known anything but immortality. Q calls himself to the stand along with other witnesses taken from various places in time whose lives were profoundly changed by Q2's influence. His witnesses include Maury Ginsberg (who saved the Woodstock festival when he noticed an unplugged cable; Q2 had given him a lift to the festival) Q tries to sway Janeway's ruling by promising to send; Sir Isaac Newton (Q2 shook the tree from which the apple fell that led Newton to his science-changing discovery); and Commander William T. Riker of the USS Enterprise-D (whose ancestor, Colonel Thaddeus Riker, nicknamed Old Iron Boots, was rescued by Q2, after he was wounded during the American Civil War at Pine Mountain in 1864). Riker is glad to meet Janeway, is pleased that the starship still survives but is surprised to hear it is in the Delta Quadrant. However, Q has promised that none of the witnesses will remember anything about their appearance at this asylum hearing, so that those in the Alpha Quadrant will continue not to learn of Voyager's survival. During a recession of the hearing, an increasingly troubled Janeway is secretly promised by Q that he will return the Voyager crew to Earth if the decision is in the Q Continuum's favour (her research has noted that whatever else he may be, Q is not a liar), but Janeway is determined to render a just verdict. When the hearing reconvenes, Janeway, Tuvok and the two Qs visit a manifestation of the Q Continuum to see what life is like there, appearing first on a desert road which is a metaphorical representation of the boredom experienced by the suicidal Q2 - the road takes the Q to the rest of the universe then it leads them back in an endless circle. Nearby is a farmstead from Earth's ancient Wild West which, along with its apparent inhabitants, represent different aspects of the Q Continuum, such as playing pinball with the galaxy as the playing pieces. A dusty old leather-bound book titled 'The Old' and a lively modern magazine called 'The New' represent the conflicting opinions in the Q Continuum. the two Qs, Janeway and Tuvok in a representation of the Q Continuum The morning following the visit, Janeway grants Q2's request for asylum, and urges him to explore the mysteries of mortal life rather than commit suicide. She discusses with Chakotay which position on the ship would suit someone with the extensive knowledge that Q2 has. He has taken the name Quinn and been added to the crew manifest. But Quinn commits suicide and dies in Sickbay after ingesting Nogatch hemlock, a rare poison that cannot be replicated and the Doctor does not keep them in storage. Q confesses that he obtained the poison for Quinn because the events of the asylum hearing forced him to rethink the sedate life of the Q Continuum. Further developments are depicted in [#53 The Q And The Gray].      Q ABOUT QUINN: By demanding to end his life he's taught me a little something about my own. He was right when he said the Continuum scared me back in line. I didn't have his courage or his convictions. He called me 'irrepressible'. This was a man who was truly irrepressible. I only hope I make a worthy student.