Q Who
Q steals one of the shuttles and abducts Captain Picard. Q has a favor to ask of Picard but Picard insists that Q return him and the shuttle to the Enterprise. Q refuses to comply until Picard agrees to listen to him.
Q transports them back to the Enterprise. The crew of the Enterprise spends hours searching for Captain Picard and the missing shuttle while they are gone. Guinan sensed that something was wrong, reached out to Commander Riker, but wasn't sure what it was.
Q explains to Picard and the others who are assembled in Ten Forward, that he wants to join the crew of the Enterprise. He explains that he could be quite useful. Picard turns down Q's request. Picard explains that they can deal whatever comes they encounter.
Q is insulted and transports the Enterprise 7000 light years into a region of space unexplored by the Federation. There they counter a cube shaped spaceship. Georgie contacts the bridge and explains that there is a cyborg intruder in Engineering.
Picard, Worf, and a security team rush to Engineering. The cyborg or Borg (as Q calls it) ignores them as it takes stock of the equipment in Engineering. Picard orders Worf and the security team to prevent the Borg from interfering with the functioning of the Enterprise. They shoot it several times before it drops to the ground.
Another Borg transports in and whisks the downed Borg away with it by transporter beam. The cube ship locks on to the Enterprise with a tractor beam that starts to drain the Enterprise's shields. The Enterprise manages to break free and cause a fair amount of damage to the Borg ship.
Riker, Worf, and Data transport on to the Borg cube and investigate. Guinan advises against this course of action. She explains that her people had encounters with the Borg but nothing good came of those encounters.
Riker and the away team notice that the Borg seem to be more focused on repairing their ship and ignore them. Once it seems that they have been spotted Captain Picard has them beamed back to the Enterprise.
The Enterprise takes off at high speed but the Borg start to chase them. The Borg cube opens fire on the Enterprise disabling the shields with three shots. Q mocks Picard until Picard finally admits that they need his help. Q accepts Picards plea for help and transports the Enterprise back to the sector of the galaxy where the Enterprise was at the beginning of the episode.
Picard visits with Guinan. He sees a silver lining to the encounter with Borg.
Thoughts
Doctor Pulaski is not in this episode.
I think I might have seen this episode before, possibly when it first aired or soon thereafter, but it has probably been more than 20 years since I last saw it.
It seemed like Captain Picard took some big chances in this episode after Q transported the Enterprise 7000 light years in a matter of seconds. Safety should have been his first concern in that situation, not exploration.
There is a subplot involving a new member of the engineering team, Sonya Gomez. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Borg / Q part of the episode. This is the first of two episodes of The Next Generation in which she appeared. The other episode was 2.17 (Samaritan Snare) which I have not watched but is on my list of episodes that I want to see, not because of her but because it has the first appearance of the Pakled. Gomez was originally intended to be a recurring character, according to Memory Alpha.
There was something about the music in this episode that frequently didn't work for me.
This is not a great episode but it is a significant one. I'm glad that I've watched it but I don't see myself watching it again any time soon.
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