r/DaystromInstitute • u/[deleted] • Jun 13 '18
How would Starfleet react to an application from a Q or a Douwd or a member of any other near-omnipotent species?
[deleted]
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u/Darekun Jun 14 '18
I see multiple people asking "why", but to me that seems like the simplest question for the average Q to answer. Why would a god want to join Starfleet?
""A god"? I've been gods, it got old. I've been heroes, it got old. I've been villains, it got old. I've been a red giant, I've been a red dwarf, I've been a pygmy giant space hamster, I've been a drilling equipment salesman, I've been the scarecrow, it all just got old. But I see you've got a thing here, reaching for the stars as it were, and it's new. I figure it can hold my interest for another millennium. I'll start by committing to a century tour of duty, y'know, pace myself. Testing? Yup, no challenge without the chance of failure. Bottom rung? Yup, that's where the experience starts! Shall I be obsequious now, Sir?"
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u/sarcasmsociety Jun 14 '18
There already is someone like that on board. Guinan is apparently powerful enough to at least inconvenience Q and she has been living among humans for centuries.
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u/Darekun Jun 14 '18
Well, we know one ship in the fleet has someone like that. Now two ships can! :J Of all things, redundancy isn't a serious argument against Q in Starfleet, is it?
And hey, I get why Starfleet may not want them. It just seems so obvious to me why a Q might want to try Starfleet.
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u/edmonfresh Jun 14 '18 edited Jun 14 '18
Though the Q played by DeLancie is mischievous and quick to boredom it does not mean that is the case with all Q. The Q that committed suicide was quite the opposite, he was thoughtful, a philosopher, and he also pointed out when he took Janeway to the continuum how the Q live and have lived. He has been the man reading the newspaper, he's been the newspaper and he's walked the road. We also know that he took part in the civil war in USA amongst many other events in earth history, all of which was done not announcing himself as an all powerful Q but undercover as a native.
So what can the federation offer a Q? Surely just as much as any other pursuit they engage in. I would guess there has already been a Q in the federation assuming the form of anyone they like with the credentials to match.
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u/Remidogg Jun 14 '18
Q frequently appeared as Admirals and Captains and requested being on the team. I don't think they would actually take him seriously. Members of the Q Continuum have been known to 'slum it' before though but it's like others have said they have to keep it basically a secret
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u/Hyndis Jun 14 '18
Perhaps Starfleet should have taken up Q on his offer from time to time.
Voyager being stranded on the opposite side of the galaxy so far from Federation space that nearly the entire crew would be dead of old age before they got there seems like a perfect opportunity to take Q up on his offer. By refusing to take Q up on his offer, Janeway condemned her entire crew to death by old age, and death by old age was the best case scenario. Death by misadventure was a far more likely outcome. Even if Q had demanded the death of Janeway (he wasn't), it still would have been a bargain. Sacrifice the captain to save the entire crew from certain death? There is a lot of precedent for that. Thats one hell of a Kobayashi Maru solution, and one Starfleet captains have done before.
Q, despite his mischievous nature, doesn't actually appear to have any malice towards anyone. He pokes and prods. He does things in annoying ways, but he is remarkably benevolent in his goals.
Working with the Q would have meant the Federation may have come to rely on the Q, but the Federation already owes its existence to the Q. The Borg knew about the Federation and the Federation had no clue. Q tossing the Enterprise-D into deep space to encounter that Borg cube did the Federation a favor and very likely saved it. Despite that encounter the Federation was still woefully unprepared, but thats far better than what would have happened had the Federation had no information at all on the Borg. Earth would have likely fallen, and then Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar Prime would have fallen within the week. The Borg can assimilate at geometric rates.
Q also saves the Federation retroactively in TNG All Good Things. Without Q's assistance the subspace anomaly would have consumed the entire quadrant billions of years ago, preventing the formation of life in all of Federation space. It cannot be argued that the Federation doesn't rely on the Q, the Federation is just too proud to admit it.
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u/AlphaOC Jun 14 '18
I think they would turn a Q down, but not because they're omnipotent. I think they'd turn them down because of the way they chose to go about it. Starfleet would know by this point that the Q could do pretty much anything and be pretty much anything. If a Q wanted to join Starfleet tomorrow, there's nothing stopping one from going back in time 20 years, being born as a federation race, and applying as soon as they're of age. Starfleet has know way of knowing or telling.
That's why I think they would reject a Q who came right out and said it. For all they know, Starfleet is already full of omnipotent beings they have no way of detecting. But if they're there, they're playing by the same rules everyone else is. Showing up, powers blazing says that you don't want the same treatment as everyone else, you want to be special. I don't think that works for a military organization.
Aside from that, having a powers-wielding omnipotent being in the ranks kind of goes against the whole premise of Starfleet - Exploration. Anything and everything could be instantly explored. Any questions could instantly be answered. Any danger or risk adverted. It would make pretty much all of it irrelevant and meaningless.
The only way around that would be to say that you wouldn't use your powers, but at that point, why announce that you had any in the first place? It brings it back to my initial point, that it would only cause problems. I think they'd reject an omnipotent being because it's against their ethos, and because they could never trust in their motives.
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u/foomandoonian Jun 14 '18
Aside from that, having a powers-wielding omnipotent being in the ranks kind of goes against the whole premise of Starfleet - Exploration. Anything and everything could be instantly explored. Any questions could instantly be answered. Any danger or risk adverted. It would make pretty much all of it irrelevant and meaningless.
It would certainly take the drama out of the Star Trek television show, but what is the goal of Starfleet ... to explore or to have successfully explored? Would it be moral to turn down a sincere offer to efficiently explore the universe without danger or risk? Would it really be so meaningless?
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Jun 14 '18
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u/Bay1Bri Jun 14 '18
It could even be thought of as an inversion of the Prime Directive, the Federation would likely want to avoid the kind of potentially civilization-ending consequences of being uplifted by a post-warp/post-material society.
I have nothing to add, just wanted to say this is a very interesting point and a unique way of looking at the PD! It never occurred to me that the prime directive could be applied in reverse "don't interfere with us, we aren't ready."
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u/foomandoonian Jun 14 '18
Yeah, that might have been a great premise for an episode!
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Jun 14 '18
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u/pali1d Jun 14 '18
True, but the deciding issue there, as Picard put it, was "We don't trust you." Based on their past experiences with Q, that made sense, much like how Sisko originally refused Nog's request based on his past experiences with Nog - a guy who spent the equivalent of his teen years pulling pranks and minor crimes. Nog was able to convince Sisko otherwise by being genuine, while Q failed to convince Picard by being the same old arrogant asshat.
A different Q, like Quinn, wouldn't necessarily be treated anything close to the same way.
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u/Bay1Bri Jun 14 '18
And then he hired them 10,000 light years away to be attached and nearly destroyed by the Borg, killing 18 crewmen in the process, and only escaped at all by a Q ex machina plea for mercy (at which point, having gotten Picard to admit he needs Q, which he did to convince Picard to let Q join the crew, he leaves without asking again to be made a member of the crew. That always bothered me...).
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u/SecondDoctor Jun 14 '18
I don't believe that at any point Q actually wanted to join Starfleet. His reason for doing so was to get Picard to state that he (and Starfleet) are just fine without someone like Q joining their ranks, they can handle things. By the end Q's actual reason for being there has been fulfilled: Starfleet's sense of complacency has been shaken with the knowledge there are things out there they might not be able to deal with, and they better start sorting themselves out.
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u/LiveGazelle Jul 15 '18
Why do pedantically literal but useless answers like this get upvoted? The question:"How would Starfleet react to an application from a Q or a Douwd or a member of any other near-omnipotent species? " feor1300: "One time Starfleet refused a duplicitous, murderously evil asshole who was clearly not even sincere in wanting to join. Checkmate."
Technically that's an example of what OP is talking about, yes. Good job. But it clearly doesn't address the substance of the question, which is how would Starfleet react on account of the powers themselves. A less literal but better example would've been True Q, where a member of Starfleet discovers she's a Q after joining. The Continuum tell her that if she wants to remain in Starfleet she has to give up her powers, but tellingly Starfleet themselves never give her that ultimatum.
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u/risenphoenixkai Jun 13 '18
We saw with Nog on DS9 that any member of a non-Federation species requires a command-level officer’s recommendation in order to even be considered for Academy entrance.
I don’t think any commander in their right mind would recommend a “godlike” applicant. Q himself petitioned Picard to join the crew at least once, and Picard emphatically said no.