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The other thing this argument succeeds in doing is giving us a fascinating look at the Q Continuum. It's a close running between him and Joel Grey (from ' Resistance') for the series' best guest star. The rest deserves to go to Gerrit Graham's passionate, compelling presence. Piller deserves much credit for the intelligent writing. The beauty of his argument is how much sense it makes, and that it incites us think more deeply than probably any Voyager episode has to date. Since Graham-Q has nothing new to accomplish, his life has become pointless, futile, and a torturous bore. No one in the Continuum even bothers to talk anymore, because all the discussions have been discussed and all the unknown possibilities explored. And Graham-Q also explains how the Continuum used to be a place for ongoing polemic, humor, and discussion from all over the universe. He's traveled the road many, many times there is nothing left for him to explore. But it's simply a circular road that just ends up back at the house. The road, he explains, represents the universe.

The episode peaks in its fourth act, where Graham-Q attempts to prove his suffering life is pointless by taking Janeway to the Q Continuum, presented in the human-comprehensible form of a house in the middle of a desert with a road running by it. But 'Death Wish' rings true all the way, thanks to the genial and poignant performance of Gerrit Graham as a jaded Q who has no reason left to exist. On occasion, Star Trek can get trite when all-too-delicately taking the human question route. There's a reason he wants to die, and it's in this reason where the episode addresses a wonderfully engaging human question. De Lancie-Q is the prosecutor trying to convince Janeway to deny Graham-Q the asylum he seeks, based on grounds that he is insane and in no position to request it.īut Graham-Q is not insane. The rest of the show takes a courtroom format, where Tuvok defends Graham-Q's request to Janeway, who takes the role of judge in the matter. (Q gags can be fun-like the ornament joke-but I've seen so many of them that they rarely impress me any more.)

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He knows all the hiding places, and once this series of gratuitous Q gags has been delivered, the story wisely presses on. But Graham-Q attempts to hide by whisking himself and Voyager away from de Lancie-Q, first sending the ship back to the time of the creation of the universe, then shrinking it to the size of a subatomic particle, and finally, as one hilarious in-joke, hiding the Voyager on a Christmas tree as an ornament (it fun to see the franchise poke fun at itself). Once de Lancie-Q returns Voyager's vanished crew members, he's ready to promptly send Graham-Q back to his incarceration. The show takes a while to get going, but once it does, it's compelling, absorbing, and thoughtful-another cerebrally enticing teleplay by Michael Piller (based on a story written by his own son).

'Death Wish' has a few plot holes here and there, as well as the obligatory Stupid Q Tricks but it's easy to look past them based on the sheer strength of the story being told here. But Graham-Q requests asylum from Janeway de Lancie-Q concedes to a hearing over whether or not Graham-Q can be granted his wish of killing himself-something which had before been denied because it could be harmful to the balance of the Q Continuum. The Q we're all familiar with from TNG (John de Lancie) appears to undo Graham-Q's blunder and send him back to his incarceration. Once released, this Q (Gerrit Graham) returns to his suicidal attempts and, much to the ire of Captain Janeway, accidentally vanishes half of Voyager's crew in the process. When the crew comes across a comet exhibiting strange properties, they inadvertently release an imprisoned Q who had been sentenced to eternal incarceration by the Q Continuum for attempting to kill himself.

Nutshell: A few silly scenes leading up to the core of the story, but once it gets where it's going it's one of the best and probing stories yet told on Voyager. Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan 'This ship will not survive the formation of the cosmos.' - Torres