With "Hide and Q" we are at the tenth episode , and entering the deadly middle of the first season; the good news, the writing is getting a little better, but it's still well below the level of acting that the ensemble cast is capable of. "Hide and Q" first aired on November 23, 1987. It was written by C.J. Holland and Gene Roddenberry, based on a story by C.J. Holland, and directed by Cliff Bole. The episode features the return of John deLancie as Q the enigmatic alien that drives the plot in the two part premier "Encounter at Farpoint."

The Enterprise is on its way on an aid and comfort mission to a mining colony damaged by an underground explosion, when Q appears on the bridge and stops them. After a brief recitative from Picard to fill in those spared "Encounter at Farpoint," Q challenges the bridge crew to a "game," and whisks them away to another planet, surrounding the Enterprise in a mesh. Picard, however, is stranded on the bridge on an apparently otherwise empty Enterprise. Q, in a vaguely Napoleanic uniform (complete with swagger stick) and an encampment, fills in Riker, Yar, Whorf, LaForge and Data on their roles. Q selects Riker for special attention, as he tells the crew he plans to test them via a game. Tasha Yar has a temper tantrum, and is banished to a "penalty box." Q pits "bestial" soldiers in French uniforms and laser-firing muskets, against the bridge crew. Q tell Riker that he has "given" Riker "the power of the Q." Riker sends his crew mates back to the still immobile Enterprise, where we discover that it's as if none of the previous events had ever happened; time was, apparently suspended, and Riker is still on the planet. Riker demands Q explain himself and his purpose, and Q says that the Q Continuum sees something in humans that is disturbing in that they are more than they appear, and in time, may be greater still. He invites Riker to join the Q Continuum, so that they can learn about humans and human potential. Riker turns him down, Q says "you're going to miss me," and disappears. When he does, the bridge crew return, accompanied by Picard and the bestial army. Wesley and Worf are injured, and Riker sends them all, healed, back to the Enterprise. They fly off to help the mining colony, but Riker promises Picard not to use his Q-given gifts; as a result he must allow a child to die. Back on the Enterprise, Riker tries to give each of his crew what he thinks they most desire; each thanks him and asks to be restored to their normal status. Q appears and Picard tells Q he has "lost the wager," Q pouts, and is, protestingly, taken away by the other members of the Continuum. There's more but you can read the plot summaryhere .

There's a lovely sequence in Picard's quarters when Q quotes Macbeth V.v., the famous passage about the nature of human life being like a play:

". . . it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Picard sees Q's allusion, and raises, by quoting the "What a piece of work is man" speech from Hamlet II.ii. This is actually a nice bit of acting from both Patrick Stewart, and deLancie, both of whom have major Shakespearean cred. It's therefore all the more amusing when Q chucks this huge elaborately bound gilded-leave volume of Shakespeare at Picard; it's the Globe Shakespeare, the most poorly edited, almost unreadable, and cheesiest edition of Shakespeare money can buy. That's Picard holding it in the image above. I bet Stewart couldn't wait to put it down.

I'm not alone in being reminded of Trelane from Star Trek's original incarnation in the episode "The Squire of Gothos." John deLancie, who plays Q, remarks upon the similarity himself in this video interview. I think deLancie quite cleverly nails the overall effect of both Trelane and Q when he alludes to both characters "carrying the ton through time, " wherein he means the sense of ton use in the Regency era to mean a fashionable, elitist taste and presentation of self. The endings of the two episodes are particularly striking; we hear voices, presumably of Trelane's parents, admonishing him that "If you can not take proper care of your pets you can not have them at all," Trelane is taken off by his parents, whining all the way, while in "Hide and Q" we see Q desperately denying the wager, and pleading to the rest of the Continuum "If I could just do one more thing . . ." but is taken away, shrieking. We end with another anomaly in time and space as the Enterprise is returned to where it was, without time seeming to have passed. SF and Trek writer Peter David also noted the similarities between Trelane and Q, in a novel called Star Trek: The Next Generation—Q-Squared, published in 1994, features Trelane as a rebellious member of the Q Continuum.

Q, in this episode and subsequent episodes, is very much the trickster, otherworld Fey character, complete with a fascination that amounts to an obsession about game-playing with mortals, and an almost biological necessity to keep his word, even when it's not convenient. This is the first episode that refers to the Q continuum, though it's never explained; it's becomes clearer in later episodes that the Q are a collective species with abilities to manipulate time, space and matter, at will— rather a lot like the fairies of mythology and folk tales.

This is another of those episodes, as Wil Wheaton notes, that unfortunately suffers from Roddenberry's fondness for heavy-handed didacticism; this is apparent in the constant moralizing, and in the over abundance of exposition. It is saved by some fine acting, particularly on the part of John deLancie who is extraordinarily subtle, especially in his reaction shots.

Here's the official teaser for "Hide and Q":

The previous episode was "The Battle"; the next episode is "Haven."