Hide and Q (S1 ep 10)

People, you're in for a break today, I don't feel like going into details of my teenage life this installment - consider it my gift to you for good behavior.

Because every once in awhile a show comes around that's so bad... well, in this case it's almost too shitty to put into words. Crap like this has been happening more often than I would think possible. Seriously, this was just awful. Dammit, I'm not supposed to spoil this so early. Pretend I didn't say anything.
Unlike the last episode, I definitely saw this one several times. It seems like the Q shows were repeated over and over during the years. The thing is, I don't remember hating it so much the first half-dozen times I saw it.

They quick and dirty version of this episode is this:

So, Q shows up, again. Ten episodes and I think half of them have been covering territory already covered in previous episodes.

But whatever. Q shows up, does a bunch of crazy stuff like only Q can do, and it's all an excuse to give Riker the power of the Q. Picard takes this as an opportunity to moralize more than he ever has before... and I have no idea what he's moralizing about. Somehow using all this power to save a little girl that just died in a mining accident is somehow evil. So Riker doesn't do it because he promised Picard he wouldn't

Riker gets mad about it and calls the bridge crew up and Picard smugly moralizes some more. Then to prove how correct he is about something, I don't know, it's weird, he lets Riker give gifts to the whole crew.

Firstly, Riker gives Wesley the gift of being all grown up. Weirdly, Geordi seems turned on by it.
Second, Riker offers to turn Data into a real man, but Data refuses because it wouldn't be real (?).
Then, Riker gives to Geordi the gift of sight. Geordi then ogles Tasha before saying he would rather be blind that owe his sight to Q (or maybe Riker, it was a bit unclear).
Then, bizarrely enough, he gives Worf a sex slave. Geordi sorta judges Worf for his un-human sexual practices and desires, and Worf screams about how uncomfortable he is about doing this girl on the bridge in front of everyone. It was so dumb.
Riker looks to Tasha and offers her nothing. Ha!

That's really all there is to say about his episode. It sucked. Bad.

Some additional thoughts:

• To show you how unintelligible this dialog is, Q calls Worf a Macrohead with a Microbrain. Then he laughs at his own clever put down. I was embarrassed for him. I thought the Q were supposed to be a super-intelligence or something. 
• As a production, the alien world they were transported to looked awful. There wasn't much to enjoy there. It was some fake rocks against a green screen, they just forgot to drop in a computer generated background. God knows that couldn't have been on purpose. 
• When Q says something ridiculous Tasha screams out, 'You've gone too far!' Q immediately makes an example out of her. Did she not remember the last time he visited? She made a similar outburst and was frozen solid. She has to have learned not to do that to him.
• Tasha only really has one scene in this episode, and it's maybe the worst one of her's I've seen all season. She cries some before hitting on Picard. It's like her character and Wesley's are tag teaming how much they can piss me off in these episodes. 
• Picard and Q's Shakespeare battle is really, well, it happened. 
• Riker is given the power of Q. Picard and the crew turn on him so fast it's disturbing. 
• In an episode that's already heavy on the moralizing, Picard gives a rant that makes less sense than almost anything I've ever come across in any form of narrative fiction. Somehow using the power at all, no matter how great of a reason, would be evil. 
• Because Riker promised not to use his powers, they get to the mining colony and Riker can easily save these people. Instead he lets them die. 
• Riker gets mad and immediately starts a smugness battle with Picard on the bridge of the Enterprise. The gift giving exchange is insanely stupid. 
• It may not have been anything long lasting. But Wesley being stabbed was somehow cathartic. Probably because in the ten episodes of this show so far, I've only had a moment or two where I momentarily felt I was dealing with real people, and not some sort of utopian satire or something. This ended up playing well comedically. Not the intended effect, I think.

MY FAVORITE SHIRT!!

In summary, this is not as bad as Code of Honor, but is up there with The Naked Now on my all time hate list. It's going to be my mission in life to never subject myself to this episode ever again. I wash my hands of it now, and marvel at its stupidity.

It's sad, a show about getting ultimate power could be very well done, and if memory serves, was explored again in later seasons with Barclay, kinda, and much better. This was a waste of everyone's time. How did this show not get cancelled by now? They clearly had no idea how to do a TV show.

My rating?

1 out of 5