“Death Wish” is episode eighteen of season two of Star Trek: Voyager.
There’s a comet on Voyager‘s viewscreen and Chakotay is saying it has an erratic trajectory but nothing to account for that. Captain Janeway asks if he’s saying it isn’t a comet then. Although Chakotay says it looks, feels and tastes just like one. The captain wants B’Elanna to beam a sample onboard for examination. B’Elanna heads to Transporter Room 2 and does so. Only what beams aboard is a man in a Starfleet uniform. She’d erected a containment field around the transporter platform; the man walks up to it, is briefly stopped, then walks through. And introduces himself to B’Elanna as ‘Q’.
B’Elanna contacts the captain and explains the transporter brought a man aboard, who says his name is Q. Janeway is familiar with the name and orders red alert. However, this isn’t the Q who continually annoyed Captain Picard in TNG. Janeway says she will be done immediately, but Q – call him Q-2 – tells her not to bother, gesturing rather than snapping his fingers. He transports Janeway to the transporter room, then both to the galley.
Q-2 thanks Janeway for letting him out of captivity. He doesn’t say who put him in the comet though. Kes is in the galley, and Q-2 envies her for only living 9 years. Because he wants to die. The captain tells Q-2 that every Starfleet captain has been warned about him. He realises she has mistaken him for another Q, but doesn’t fully explain. Q-2 has something he wants to do before the others notice. He says he has had 300 years to come up with the right words and gestures. Every man on the ship disappears. That wasn’t the desired effect. Q-2 is unable to bring those he vanished back. They’re gone. He wonders who has had more recent experience with humans, and Q – the well-known one – appears.
Humans are not supposed to be in the Delta Quadrant at this time and Q-2 says it isn’t his fault. Q is surprised to see Captain Janeway on command; he thought Riker would have got it. Then notices that there are only women around. Q-2 admits there was a slight accident. He was apparently trying to commit suicide. Again. Q brings everyone back and Q-2 asks the captain to grant him asylum from his enemies. Q.
Q-2 gestures and Q disappears. More precisely, Q-2 took them somewhere else. The birth of the universe. Q finds them there, as he also finds them when they go subatomic and become a Christmas tree ornament. Janeway is not impressed with this. There is a clear procedure Starfleet captains follow when asylum is requested, and she intends to follow it to the letter, to protect her ship if nothing else. Q says that, if she rules in his favour, Q-2 will return to confinement. Q-2 says that if she rules in his favour, he will be made mortal. To kill himself.
Q-2 interrupts Tuvok at work and Tuvok wonders if the Q always had an absence of manners or if it is part of the evolutionary process in becoming omnipotent. Q-2 says they are not omnipotent. Just as Voyager appears incredibly powerful to others, the same applies to the Q. Q-2 wants Tuvok to represent him. For one thing, Vulcans approve of suicide.
The captain chairs the meeting and asks for all parties to behave themselves. The two Qs assent. Q states that the Continuum takes the matter very seriously. Q-2 says that immortality has become impossible to endure any longer. The lifepath he chooses leads to death. Q says that Q-2’s selfish wishes are not that of the majority, and he wouldn’t be confined if he didn’t want to kill himself.
Q calls forward an expert witness on the Continuum – himself. A Q committing suicide would change the Continuum and the very nature of the Q. They can’t be more specific, because they don’t know what will happen. Q-2 thinks this is a good thing. Q’s argument is that, as immortality is a defining characteristic of the Q, Q-2’s desire for suicide is evidence he is mentally unbalanced.
Tuvok thinks that is a faulty premise, as many cultures consider suicide acceptable. Plus, the Q have executed other members for crimes in the past, so death is not unknown to the Q. Q admits that, though undesirable, such executions were necessary and warranted in order to preserve social order. Tuvok wonders how a society that approves of capital punishment can outlaw suicide, And, wasn’t Q himself once accused of being mentally unstable?
Witnesses are called by Q to show the good effect Q-2 has had in the past. One of them is Riker. They will not remember the event afterwards. Captain Janeway tries explaining to the other two, one of whom is Isaac Newton, what has happened. Then gives up and changes tack, simply saying they are having a very strange dream.
If Captain Janeway rules in favour of Q-2, she will be ruling for him to kill himself. If she rules in favour of Q, Q-2 will be imprisoned again.; Death, or perpetual imprisonment., Neither are wonderful options. Part of the defence requires a visit to the Continuum itself. Or, at least, a version of it that can be understood by mortals. Q also has a bribe to offer the captain for ruling in his favour. Given that the Q can transport people across galaxies instantly, it’s an obvious one.