Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 7, “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass.”
In the latest episode of Strange New Worlds, the nearly omnipotent being Trelane returns to plague the crew of the USS Enterprise once more. As played by Rhys Darby, the character also showed up last season in the episode “Wedding Bell Blues,” clearly intended to be the Trelane we first met back on The Original Series (when he was played by the late William Campbell). And now, Trelane has been all but confirmed to be a member of the other-dimensional race of beings from Star Trek: The Next Generation known as… the Q Continuum!
But let’s back up a sec. While Trelane’s name is never said onscreen in either SNW episode, showrunners Henry Alonso Meyers and Akiva Goldsman have confirmed the character’s identity in interviews. He first showed up back on TOS when he went face to face with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk in “The Squire of Gothos,” an all-powerful creature who turns out to be nothing but a spoiled little kid whose parents have to give him a cosmic spanking by episode’s end.
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The thing is, many fans have often speculated that Trelane and his parents were actually members of the Q Continuum. Of course, the concept of Q wasn’t introduced until The Next Generation’s pilot episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” which aired some 20 years after “The Squire of Gothos.” It was there that John de Lancie first played the pesky frenemy of Captain Picard, but it did always make a sort of sense that Trelane and Q could be related, since they shared several characteristics – among them, near-omnipotence, a capacity for annoying anyone they’re around, and a flair for dressing up in period costumes.
Which takes us to “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass,” where we see Trelane essentially completing a school project (of which Captain Pike and his crew are the subjects). A “Proctor” (played by Diane L. Johnstone) shows up throughout the episode to judge Trelane’s performance (she gives him a “solid B-” in the end), and wouldn’t you know it? She’s dressed in a costume that is very similar to the “judge” outfit Q wore in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
John de Lancie as Q and Diane L. Johnstone as… Q
Surely this is the final non-admission admission from the show’s writers that Trelane is definitively a Q. What more do we need to just accept this as fact and add it to the Memory Alpha database once and for all? After all, back in “Wedding Bell Blues,” de Lancie provided the voice of Trelane’s non-corporeal father, even if he was not referred to as Q onscreen. (The late writer Peter David also wrote a 1994 Trek novel called Q-Squared that placed Trelane as a member of the Continuum, even if that was never considered canon.)
So this all cute and fun, but would any nerdy discussion of this nature be worth its weight in pocket protectors if we didn’t also poke a hole in the whole thing? Because really… it’s not like that judge costume is a standard-issue Q Continuum wardrobe item. De Lancie’s Q wears the outfit in “Encounter at Farpoint” when he transports Picard and other members of his bridge crew to a recreation of “the post-atomic horror” of the mid-21st century. Basically, in that sequence, Q is dressed up like a judge from that time specific period, so the Proctor wearing a version of the same outfit means that… she decided to dress up as a judge from the mid-21st century when grading Trelane’s project? For some reason?
Eh, let’s just go with it.
Talk to Scott Collura @scottcollura.bsky.social, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!