DS9 S1E6 "Q-Less" Reveiw by AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

Oh boy. DS9 is not my favorite Star Trek, but I don't remember it being this bad. I should not have chosen "Q-Less" as my first DS9 review. I watched it because I just reviewed "Qpid," and wanted to see what happened to Vash. Turns out she has learned absolutely nothing by hanging out with an omnipotent being for two years. She shows up on a malfunctioning shuttle with Jadzia and another crewman while returning from the Gamma quadrant. Kira, Sisko, O'Brien, and Bashir are all struggling to get the shuttle door open. The shuttle has been drained of power, and the air supply is running out, so if they don't get it opened, all three of the occupants will die. Kira wants to shoot it open, but that won't work. O'Brien finally gets a power unit and juices up the servos in the door. My question is why didn't they just beam them out? UGH, the ever under-utilization of transporters drives me nuts.



Anyway, they get the occupants out, and O'Brien recognizes Vash from his time on the Enterprise. I just watched the only episode of TNG that has Vash on the ship, and I sure don't remember O'Brien even being in it. But I'm willing to accept the premise that the two met on that occasion even though it wasn't featured on the show. What I'm not willing to accept is that O'Brien apparently knew that she took off with Q and hasn't been heard from since, but for some reason doesn't bother to tell anyone about this tidbit until after the inevitable appearance of Q himself. You couldn't have given everyone a head's up on that, Chief? Sisko does some research on her background, and is disturbed to find out about her sordid past as a tomb raider.

We also learn that apparently Q and Vash have had a falling out, as Vash no longer wishes to have anything to do with him. It's clear that Q is the dump-ee in the situation, as he basically just follows her around begging her to stay. What we don't learn is why. It would have been nice to have some details about what they did, where they went, and why she decided to hop on board a shuttle and out of his life. There are some silly throw-away lines about how despised Q is throughout the quadrant, but no real details. There are some decent comedic elements in the show, though. One bright spot in the episode is when Vash is trying to unpack her bag, and Q keeps resetting it on her shoulder. Another is when he upgrades his uniform from TNG era to the new style.

Vash has decided to bring back some Gamma quadrant relics to sell. Now I know that the character of Vash is supposed to be this archaeological freak, but really? While spending years with an omnipotent being that absolutely adores her and will give her literally anything she wants, she couldn't come up with a better plan for a get-rich-quick scheme? Also as soon as she arrives, the same power-draining conundrum that took out the shuttle is now plaguing the entire station. The crew suspects that it's Q that is messing with them, but he swears it's not. Sisko doesn't quite know how to interact with Q the way that Picard does, and actually allows the despot to get so far under his skin that it comes to blows. Transformed into a 40's style put-up-your-dukes boxing match, Sisko knocks Q to the ground. This pleases Q to no end to know that he can so easily push Sisko's buttons. The scene is kind of funny, but feels out of place.

Meanwhile, the situation is becoming more grim as there is very little power left, and the entire station is now slowly being pulled towards the wormhole. We as viewers have already figured out that what's really mucking things up is a wicked crystal thingy that Vash brought with her. I'm actually not sure if we're supposed to be in on this knowledge or if it was intended to be a twist, but it seemed clear to me from the moment we saw it that the crystal was the thing that was causing them trouble. It's being auctioned off, along with the rest of the artifacts, at a private event that Quark has arranged. While the bidding goes higher and higher, the clueless crew stumbles through tracking down the source of the problem in an agonizingly slow fashion. With only seconds to spare before disaster, they beam it out into space, where it transforms into a huge space butterfly and flies through the wormhole. Q leaves, and Vash ditches her plans of returning to Earth and instead heads to an exotic planet to rob graves or whatever.

I'll be honest and admit that the only reason I gave this a Meh rating instead of Horrible is that I didn't have the first idea where to start with writing a fix-the-episode-baby for this mess of an episode. There's just not a good story here. It seems like they just wanted to do a Q episode, and thought that bringing back Vash would make for an interesting way to do that. And it might have been a decent idea, but none of it worked. Being Picard's love interest is what made Vash a compelling character. Without that, we just don't care enough about her to be invested in her story, because for us it was never her story, it was Picard's. Even if we did care to learn about her, we're not given enough of her missing puzzle pieces here to satisfy us. Also Sisko and Q just have zero chemistry, and I'm glad they never bring the two together again after this. Unfortunately there's really just not much in "Q-Less" that works.

Published May 27, 2017