Taaya 's Reviews > Star Trek - The Next Generation: Der Widersacher: Das Q-Kontinuum 3 - Roman

A rather boring end to a rather boring book and an unnecessarily bloated trilogy.

I admit, I like learning new stuff about Q. But this trilogy lacked psychological depth and ... everything. And while Picard is always a little ... biased when it comes to Q - to the point where I think he's actually downright wrong in his behaviour -, here he's also EXTREMELY annoying about it. And everytime you think they might finally reach an actual point in their meaningless exchanges, where Picard not only bemoans everything but actually starts to form a logical argument, the conversation just stops again. (Not to mention that Picard thinks he has the moral high ground and is allowed to judge everyone while humanity DOES THE SAME SHIT HE'S JUDGING AS IMMORAL HERE!) Plus, the fact that Picard judges Q from a human perspective as if Q were human, ... well, that is in character, but the weakest point in Picard's character in all of TNG and Star Trek: Picard so far.

And can we PLEASE stop using already stigmatised illnesses as a sign of evil? Nope, it's not fun to portray a villain as mad. It's not ingenious, it's lazy, because that means one doesn't have to come up with a plan for said villain and what kind of world is at the end of this plan.

Also, what's with all those side blows against Barclay? And why always mention Geordi's disability?

Yep, actually, this trilogy is all about ableism. Psychological illness = sign of evil. Neurodivergence in Barclay = he's annoying. Judging Q from a human perspective is once again coding something as neurotypicals judging everyone from their limited perspective without ever acknowledging that they're not the peak of creation, and when the former three points need a break, hey, let's rub everyone's nose in how the disabled character is limited and can easily be rendered helpless.

(Oh, somewhere there's also a plot. But that's only 'Young Q was bored and released a villainous and sadistic creature upon our galaxy. That creature tortured and killed billions, the Continuum intervened and created the galactic barrier to keep said creature outside while punishing Q in assigning him as guardian of Earth. Now the Federation wants to see what's on the other side of the barrier and oh no, the creature is free again.'

Oh, and everything that ever happened in any of Trek (and in the universe) has all been Q's doing. (I hate it when authors take away from former creator's lifeworks and make them their own.)