‘Star Trek: Picard’: What’s Wrong With Q?

After the Season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Picard gave us a tiny morsel at the end of the episode featuring the return of John de Lancie’s all-powerful Q, this week’s episode, titled “Penance”, brought the master manipulator back full force. Only, as Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) himself realizes… Something is wrong with Q.

“It was refreshing,” de Lancie told Decider on the still-mysterious twist. “It gave me a kind of a secret, and that secret, that’s what actors try to do oftentimes is find a secret because it energizes things a little bit without having to reveal anything. There’s a secret in there.”

As to what that secret is, de Lancie was mum… Is he dying? Is there some sort of infection in the universe? Maybe he’s not Q at all? Whatever it is, it’s as unclear to us, the audience, as it is to Picard. Part of the reason for that is that, as usual, Q is talking in riddles, his hints and teases all out of order for the timeline, only leading Picard along in whatever his game is instead of giving it up entirely.

The good news, though, is that despite Q’s infuriatingly twisty phrases, de Lancie always knows what’s going on, and what he’s teasing — even if the audience doesn’t.

“It’s really important to know what’s coming,” de Lancie continued. “There were times when I’m not sure if the writers knew exactly what was coming either. We had a general notion, but actors don’t do well with general. You need really specific and detailed. There were times where I was waiting to go, well, I wonder what’s gonna happen next here.”

Notably, de Lancie had yet to see the episodes when interviewed, so wasn’t entirely sure of the content that made the final cut (when asked about the digitally de-aged version of Q who showed up in the premiere, de Lancie laughed and posited his reaction to seeing it might be, “Oh my god look how much thinner I was back then!”). But he has been able to help steer the direction of the character over the years, and in particular, having a faulty god in this damaged Q ties right into something DeLancie has become a passionate advocate for over the intervening years: atheism, reason, and science.

“Yes, and hopefully those lines will still be in there,” de Lancie said, when asked if his activism had impacted this new take on the character. “[Gene] Roddenberry was decidedly secular. And I think one of the things that has been really great about Star Trek is that it has for the most part remained that way. Science, reason, first. Magical thinking, quite a bit further down the line. So in any case, I do keep those things in mind. You know, something a little off, somebody asked me during the whole QAnon stuff, they said, your connection… They said, is there a connection between Q and QAnon? I said, ‘Hey, I play God, not an idiot.’ And that got sent out. So I play a God, not an idiot.”

Star Trek: Picard streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

Where to watch Star Trek: Picard