So, What’s the Theme Here?

 

Omnipotent space aliens that like to screw with humans, though deep down, they feel for their “dum-dums.” Pucks for the modern age. They also have a reputation among their own kind, who sometimes step in when they start goofing off..

 

The Great Gazoo

 

 

Oh great Gazoo, what should I do?

 

The year is 1965. The Flintstones, Hanna-Barbera’s combination of the Honeymooners and 1 Million Years BC is in its sixth and final season. Writers are worried that the formula is starting to go flat. There’s only so many stories you can tell with the modern stone age family before they start to become dull. So they decide to spice things up by introducing a new character.

 

Some would say they jumped the shark. Those people are dum-dums. You don’t get to be a vitamin for 54 years without being cool as hell.

 

And the Great Gazoo was indeed cool as hell. Part Jeannie, part Mork, part Mr. Mxyzptlk, he was a fun addition to the cast. Yeah, it was incongruous that he was a space alien in the time of cavemen, that was the point. Incongruity is one of the basic elements of humor. The incongruous juxtaposition of the stone age with modern civilization was what made Flintstones work in the first place.

 

All you Gazoo haters get on out of here. Dum-dums leave.

 

Great Gazoo debuted in the episode The Great Gazoo. When a strange space capsule lands in front of Fred and Barny, a voice tells them to press a button on the side to let him out. Doing so, the Great Gazoo is freed, and is horrified to find that the powers-that-be on his homeworld of Ziltox punished him not only by sending him light-years away from Ziltox but by sending him back in time.

 

Gazoo was exiled for creating a button that, if pressed, would have disintegrated the entire universe in one big ZAM. He professes, however, that he never intended to use it. He merely wanted it as a status symbol–to be the first one on his block with a universe-destroying ZAM button.

 

Yeah, I feel for Gazoo. The powers that be hate for anyone but themselves to own weapons. Gazoo is lucky the space-cops didn’t space-Ruby Ridge him.

 

Gazoo learns that he has to be a good boy and perform good deeds for his rescuers until he earned his way back into the good graces of the powers-that-be back on Ziltox. And so the Great Gazoo became a fixture of the Flintstones cast…but only for a handful of episodes. Though a fan favorite, he was never brought back for any of the continuations and spin-offs. He wasn’t brought back for The Pebbles and Bam-Bam Show, Fred and Barney meet the Thing, Flintstone Kids, etc, etc. This seems to imply a happy ending. Apparently he fulfilled his Dharma on Earth and ascended back to Ziltox.

 

As a testament to his popularity, the Great Gazoo had, if you can believe it, his own comic book series published by Charlton Comics (the comics company best known nowadays for having all the characters that would turn into the Watchmen characters under Alan Moore’s pen like the Question, Blue Beetle, and Captain Atom.) The 20 issues provided more detail on the particulars of Gazoo’s exile and provided entertaining weirdness like the fact that Great Gazoo likes to relax by fishing for catfish using micefish.

 

 

Who are we to question the ways of an elder race with knowledge superior to that of our own?

 

Wilma also wears green instead of white in the comic. I don’t know why. I think it has to do with how comics are inked, I don’t know.

 

Gazoo’s exile was simultaneously lenient and strict. His supervisors watching from Ziltox would sometimes zap him with a bolt of lightning to get him to stop goofing off and get on with helping Fred and Barney, or turn his powers off, or threaten him with permanent exile. Sometimes they would even reach across the cosmos and pull away Gazoo’s comfy cloud beds.

 

 

But on the other hand, Gazoo got to maintain contact with Ziltox way more than you might think. He was sent the Zilox Gazette via rocket (3,) got to return to Ziltox for the weekend (5,) and for his birthday (17,) and ultimately his exile was treated less like a punishment and more like a 9-to-5.

 

Fred and Barney even visited Ziltox a couple of times in the comics, and one time, Gazoo took them on vacation to Venus (5.)

 

Some aspects of Ziltoxian culture would prove to be inconsistent. Gazoo remarks that Ziltoxians only eat pills in issues 6 and 18 but in issue 3 he remarks that he knows how to make a good Glrlxx soufflé and that his specialty is grilled mulrex in zalazel sauce. The supreme power of Ziltox also changes. In the cartoon episode Two Men on a Dinosaur, the supreme power is Gazaam the Mighty, who hijacked the Flintstones’ television set to tell Gazoo to do better. He looked like Gazoo but in a military uniform. But in the comics, the leader of the Ziltoxians changed. In issue 7, the leader is depicted as a giant mechanical eye and is addressed as “Glowing Orb.”

 

 

And in issue 9, the leader is depicted as a star-headed Ziltoxian named Excellency One.

 

 

Does this mean Ziltoxians are secretly the creations of a very tiny First-to-Dream? I guess that means we can scale Excellency One up!

 

…Or does that mean I have to scale my own characters down…?

 

…Oh, I did not think this through…the Capeworld setting is FRAUD CHECKED!

 

The Flintstones wiki claims these are all Gazaam the Mighty just under different titles. I’m not so sure. I think its more possible that the leadership of Ziltox changes, perhaps every year or so. Instead of 4 years for a president, they have 1 year for a supreme leader. Maybe they had a couple of Ziltoxian civil wars? Gazoo had three birthday stories in the comics, so he was at least serving Fred and Barney for three years. A lot can happen in three years, especially for a race that can time travel.

 

The world may never know.

 

Also, Ziltoxians apparently don’t have a concept of people.

 

 

How should we interpret this?

 

1. Ziltoxians are a hive-mind and don’t understand the concept of personhood.
2. Ziltoxians don’t consider humans people but more like animals, in which case Fred and Barney are Gazoo’s pets.
3. It’s a stupid joke from a comic book and I’m overthinking it.

 

Tell us what you think in the comments section. I will accept all answers but 3. 3 is clearly wrong.

 

Though Gazoo was arrogantly dismissive of his “dum-dums,” he genuinely cared for Fred and Barney. Through he would sometimes prank them (in issue 15 of the comic, he pretended to be a ghost pirate to get Fred and Barney to search for a fake treasure), he never spoiled Fred and Barney with his god-powers. In The Great Gazoo, he stiffed them on the bill for a restaurant to teach them not to rely on him for every little thing. Fred and Barney even owe Gazoo their lives–twice. He saved them from criminals in The Stonefinger Caper and again in The Treasure of Sierra Madrock. He even took them on a family vacation to the Jetsons future in The Long, Long, Long Weekend.

 

And in the final issue of the comic series, issue 20, Gazoo is called back to Ziltox to be put on trial. His supervisors are not pleased with his work. Fred and Barney remain as stupid as ever. Deeming Gazoo a failure, they threaten to reassign him to another planet. But Fred and Barney travel to Ziltox and give testimony about how much Gazoo means to them and how much the little dude has done for them. The Ziltoxian court rules in favor of Gazoo, and what is more, commute his sentence…but Gazoo decides to stay on Earth and help his friends for just a little longer.

 

Ah, isn’t that sweet?

 

He’s Fred and Barney’s kooky genie. He’s their handler. He’s their teacher.

 

But he’s also their friend.

 

It would appear that even the most advanced and analytical of aliens can be won over by the charm of bumbling human stupidity and sitcom hijinks.

 

Gazoo’s Cool Stuff

 

 

 

Let’s start off with the coolest thing–he’s been a vitamin for decades, and is still a vitamin. How long has your favorite character been a vitamin?

 

That’s right. Pay tribute to the alpha male, freeloader.

 

Gazoo’s powers may seem like magic, and Fred even calls it black magic in several episodes, but his powers are in fact based in technology. In a handful of stories in the comic, he relies on a “magic wand” for powers and gets into trouble without it, but I’m going to classify those stories as non-canon. Someone on the writing team made an error because, magic wand, really? Watch any episode of the cartoon. Gazoo doesn’t have no magic wand. He snaps his fingers! Magic wand, really…

 

In issue 12 of the comic, it is revealed that Gazoo gets his powers from his Ziltoxian belt (you thought it would be his helmet, right?) and that his supervisors on Ziltox can shut it down anytime they feel like he’s getting too big for his little green britches.

 

Befitting a guy that got in trouble for inventing something he shouldn’t have, Gazoo is technologically gifted. He keeps a flying saucer and time machine, seemingly simply to have them, as he’s able to travel through space and time just by snapping his fingers. And one time he invented a super bowling ball just to help Fred cheat at bowling (1.)

 

 

In some respects, he is as highly intelligent as he professes to be. Issue 10 reveals that he is 18,347 years old and during the comics he had no fewer than three birthday parties meaning that he spent at least three years with Fred and Barney, so he’s likely 18,350 years old. He picked up a lot of skills in his long life. He is an expert in ballet (My Fair Freddy,) Ziltoxian cuisine (issue 3), dinosaur races (Two Men on a Dinosaur,) and horse races (issue 6.) He’s also an expert in whatever it is you have to be an expert in to get phenomenal cosmic powers. He can do everything you expect an omnipotent space Leprechaun to do. He can create things, change things, destroy things, travel through space, travel through time, and generally speaking, go anywhere and do anything.

 

He can teleport from Earth to Ziltox in a second (6.)

 

 

 

And yes, that means he has a steady girlfriend. He’s starting with an edge over Q out of the gate.

 

And double yes, if you’re wondering why the sabertooth tiger is licking Fred, it’s because he zapped it with a love-ray. That’s another trick he can do…and how very Puck!

 

He can also hear what happens on Earth while he’s on Ziltox (14.)

 

 

Hey, if someone can hear across a void, it’s fair game for other aliens to do it to.

 

In issue 10 of the comic, Gazoo takes Fred to the future of the Wild West (not every day you get to write that the Wild West is the future) for some Westworld fun using his time machine, but in The Long, Long, Long Weekend, he takes the entire cast to the Jetsons future with a finger snap, showing that he doesn’t need a time machine to time travel.

 

Oh, brief digression here–what a missed opportunity it was that the Jetsons never got to meet Gazoo! The Jetsons and Flintstones were implied to share the same setting in The Long, Long, Long Weekend and it was firmly established that they did in The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, but Gazoo, a technologically advance alien from the future, likely cotemporaneous with the Jetsons, never meets them!

They even put a Jetsons story in the 10th issue of his comic. They were close to meeting!

 

It’s a crime I tell you. And during that big Hanna Barbara explosion at DC comics a few years back, they didn’t do a thing to remedy the error, though Future Quest was pretty damn good, I will admit, I highly recommend it.

 

Listen up DC! First thing I want from you is a pre-COIE 40 years later miniseries written by a non-hack, preferably Morrison. The second thing I want you to do is give the world the Jetsons/Great Gazoo crossover generations have been denied.

 

We now return to your irregularly scheduled vs fight.

 

Gazoo doesn’t like it when bad guys pick on his dum-dums. When Fred and Barney ran afoul of a Goldfinger parody named Stonefinger in The Stonefinger Caper (it was the sixties and James Bond was ultra-hot), Gazoo comes to their rescue and turns Stonefinger and his henchmen into babies, figuring that since they screwed up their lives they needed to start over at square one. When Fred and Barney ran afoul of another criminal syndicate in The Treasure of Sierra Madrock, Gazoo forced the goons to karate chop each other until they passed out.

 

Gazoo never went as far as so say, Stardust the Super-Wizard in dishing out horrible fates, but he kind of flirted with it. He got pretty close for a G-rated character.

 

Speaking of horrible fates, in The Great Gazoo, Gazoo briefly turns Dino into a giant Pebbles doll and I got to ask…did he kill Dino?

 

I mean think about it. You’re a living creature with a brain and pulse. Suddenly, you aren’t there. In your place is a mound of felt and cotton. You aren’t there. You don’t exist.

 

Doesn’t that mean you’re dead? And if so, who’s the Dino that Gazoo snaps back into existence?

 

Is that Dino the same Dino as before the doll?

 

It’s not clear whether or not the Great Gazoo can bring the dead back to life, but the Great Gazzo can, in fact, create life…of a sort. In Double Troubles, Fred and Barney want to go bowling, but their wives want to be taken out for dinner, so Gazoo creates dead-eyed clones of Fred and Barney he calls “nothings.” Fred’s nothing can only say YES YES YES. Barney’s nothing can only say NO NO NO.

 

It’s honestly really creepy.

 

He essentially created two lobotomized clones of Fred and Barney and disposed of them at the end of the episode.

 

It’s one of those episodes that’s funny when you’re a kid and existentially terrifying as an adult.

 

But Gazoo can create life better than the “nothings,” case in point, this wind elemental from issue 12:

 

 

That’s pretty good, Gazoo. Conjure elemental is 5th level magic.

 

Gazoo can not only create beings but empower beings. In issue 10, he takes Fred to 19th century Tombstone (a rare example of a place that didn’t have to be changed to fit in with the Flintstones theme) for cowboy adventures and gave Fred the courage and the skill to arrest the local bad guy…and when that didn’t work, he just turned Fred’s skin into rock. And when that didn’t work (the bad guy punched him hard enough to crack him,) he just finger snapped Fred back to normal.

 

In Curtain Call at Bedrock, Gazoo uses his powers to upload an entire play script into Barney’s head…which does nothing for the play they want to put on, because even while knowing all the lines by heart, Barney still sucks as an actor. In issue 13 of the comic, a weird story happens where Gazoo “does Fred’s thinking for him.” It’s not entirely clear what the story means by this, but in practice, Fred becomes a telepathic mind-reading super-genius (and an insufferable dick, because its a sitcom, and whenever the slubby guy in a sitcom gets an edge, he becomes a dick). If I had to guess, I’d say that Gazoo off-loaded some of Fred’s cognitive processes onto his own brain. A similar process is used in Capeworld where cognitive processes are off-loaded onto the Astral to expand thinking beyond the brain. In My Fair Freddy, Gazoo uses a ray to turn Barney into the perfect gentlemen complete with top hat, cane, and perfect diction.

 

Gazoo can also switch peoples’ bodies, because every sitcom with a magical character has to do a body swap episode, its like a law or something, and switched Fred and Wilma in issue 7 of the comic.

 

Gazoo’s most disturbing “buff” was in Jealousy where, in an attempt to make Wilma jealous, Fred has Gazoo turn Barney into a woman so that they can date.

 

Barney was okay with this.

 

 

Look at their faces. They are filled with regret for what they have done.

 

Gazoo can freeze things, most often rambunctious cavemen, just by pointing his finger (15, 15.)

 

 

 

He even froze their FX stars. Now that’s cold!

 

And he can just as easily put people to sleep (11.)

 

 

“And while they’re sleeping…oh, how ominous!”

 

It’s appropriate for such a Puck inspired character to put the cast of fools to sleep. Lord, what fools these dum-dums be!

 

He can instantly dry up a body of water (its not clear whether this was an ocean or lake) with a snap of his fingers and then fill it right back up (10.)

 

 

Perhaps Gazoo’s coolest feat occurred in the 2nd issue of the comic. When Fred and Barney bring back rock-eating creatures from Ziltox to Bedrock, they do what you would expect rock-eating creatures would do to a city where all the buildings and appliances not animals are rocks, but they went event further and left craters where the surrounding mountain ranges used to be.

 

Gazoo restored it all with a single snap, and as a flourish, added a new mountain.

 

 

Gazoo’s best feat, second only to his universe-dissolving ZAM button from his origin, is when he did some Twilight Zone stuff with Freddy in Boss for a Day. Gazoo altered reality so that he had his boss Mr. Slate’s life and Mr. Slate had his life. As it goes with these kinds of stories, Freddy came to realize that he preferred his old life and Gazoo made everything right in the end.

 

Speaking of the Twilight Zone, it’s not his best feat, but Gazoo once made the entire Flintstone’s household perfectly silent so that even the word balloons were left blank (12.)

 

Anyone remember the Twilight Zone episode Sounds and Silences? One of my personal favorites. I highly recommend it.

 

Gazoo’s body…is his body. He doesn’t like, have an energy form behind the body. That’s not to say that he isn’t strong. he’s much stronger than you would think a little green man would be.

 

During one of Fred and Barney’s visits to Ziltox, they accidentally led a creature called a Decapitator (guess what it does) to a group of Ziltoxians. When the Decapitator did what decapitators do, the Ziltoxians simply gave themselves new heads (9.)

 

 

In issue 6 of the comic, Gazoo once saved Fred from a series of unfortunate events, not by finger snapping, but by simply using his muscle. He stopped a speeding motorcycle with one hand, a falling boulder with two hand, and most impressively, a steam roller with one hand. And in issue 16, he helps Fred cheat at boxing by KOing the champ in one blow.

 

 

 

In the cartoon, it was a rule that Gazoo couldn’t be observed except by Fred, Barney, young children, or animals. No one else could see or hear him. But the comic invented a loophole for him–he could appear to other people so long as he shapeshifted.

 

In issue 12, he shapeshifts into Majo the Magician so as to get Creepela Gruesome to stop placing hexes on Fred.

 

 

Yeah, remember the Gruesomes? The Addams Family was a huge hit back in the day, so Hanna Barbera thought they’d try capitalizing on the concept of spooky families by giving the Flintstones gruesome neighbors…and then they tried again in the seventies with the Frankenstones.

 

Flintstones has some deep lore, man.

Gazoo would also become lawyer F. Lee Freeyem in issue 16 (get it?) and was good enough to get Fred and Barney cleared of all charges with a couple of words.

 

But perhaps his best disguise was in issue 15 when he got into the Scooby-Doo spirit and disguised himself as a ghost pirate just to mess with Fred and Barney.

 

The name of this ghost pirate?

 

Captain Kidder.

 

That’s a Smacky Jackson worthy pun right there.

 

 

 

Though the Great Gazoo is indeed a very great Gazoo, he is not all-powerful.

 

An all-powerful being, for instance, would never allow himself to be depicted like this.

 

Besides having to bow and scrape before the Ziltoxian government, Gazoo is surprisingly vulnerable physically speaking. He once got seasick (13.) He has allergies and takes Ziltoxian medicine for it (2.) He once came down with a sickness and was shocked to discover that he had a temperature of 40 (Ziltoxians are apparently, very, very cold) and had to fly to Ziltox to pick up medicine (1.)

 

Someone wasn’t taking their Flintstones vitamins…

 

He was also knocked out and incapacitated by a bump on the noggin in issue 13. His weakpoint is his gigantic Vegeta head, as you might expect.

 

His powers can redirected and their effects may not come out how he would like the to. In My Fair Freddy, he accidentally brought the Flintstone’s car to life (See? It can move without feet!) and Fred deflected a uh, “gentleman making ray” with a mirror, turning Barney into the perfect gentleman.

 

Oh, and here’s something strange–in issue 11, Gazoo chickens out on helping Fred and Barney beat up some ghosts in a haunted house (they must’ve been really crappy ghost to lose to two cavemen beating them with clubs) and remarks that he has no power over the supernatural. I doubt this, and chalk up this weakness to the supernatural as apocryphal, as in issue 12 he was able to fool Creepela with his disguise and wasn’t at all worried about her even though she’s very supernatural.

 

He’s also had plain dumb ideas before. In The Gravelberry Pie King, his advice got Fred fired from his job and then caused his nascent gravelberry pie business to tank. In How to Pick a Fight with Your Wife Without Even Trying, while he correctly states that men are mentally superior and should remember to treat women like infants (BASED AND ZILTOX PILLED), he incorrectly states that board games can bring people together.

 

Ahahaha. No. Everyone loves their girlfriend until she takes the Boardwalk.

 

He may not give the best help, but Fred and Barney owe their lives to him (several times over.) He’s a good little guardian angel. He’s a kook, as he admitted in his first episode, but he’s a good kook deep down

 

Q

 

 

 

The year is 1987. Star Trek: The Next Generation is about to premier and its got some big shoes to fill. For its first episode, the writers decide to tread familiar ground–the Enterprise vs an omnipotent alien. It was done many, many times on TOS–Trelane in Squire of Gothos, the Organians in Errand of Mercy, the Excalbians in Savage Curtain, the Metrons from Arena, the Providers from Gamesters of Triskelion, etc, etc.

 

Omnipotent aliens were common on TOS because when you have characters that can starships that can blow up planets, scan anything, and teleport everything, you kind of need guys that can finger-snap reality away to make the away team helpless. It’s either omnipotent aliens or “Captain Kirk, the planet’s atmosphere is interfering with the transporter.”

 

You may notice something about the TOS omnipotent aliens. With the exception of Trelane, none of them really have a personality beyond “Contemptuous of mankind and calmly self-assured of their power.” Most of them are representatives of a race, little more than figureheads. They’re plot devices. Their purpose is to look stoic and cool and then move out of the way for the real action. Way more people remember the Gorn from Arena then the Metrons. 

 

So they tried something different for TNG. They made one omnipotent alien for all their omnipotent alien episodes. They made their omnipotent alien a recurring character with a very, very strong personality. Q’s actor John DeLancie has said that he thinks there’s a lot of Trelane’s character DNA in Q, and its easy to see. Like Trelane, Q is playful, arrogant, and powerful, and has to answer to a higher authority. In Trelane’s case, that’s his parents, in Q’s case, that’s other members of his race in the Q Continuum. But while Trelane was extremely childlike (and by the standards of his race, an actual child) Q was shrewder. Q was like Trelane hitting adolescence. He could be used in far more kinds of stories from the comical to the serious and thus Q would become he face of Star Trek’s many omnipotent aliens–a playful, arrogant, space-age Puck.

 

Though Q first appeared extremely hostile to mankind in the premier episode of TNG, Encounter at Farpoint, literally putting mankind on trial for its collective crimes with a guilty verdict meaning genocide of the human race, he would soften considerably in later appearances, though he would never lose his smug arrogance. Humans were inferior creatures–and they had to know it.

 

Time and time again he would place the Enterprise in perilous and outlandish situations, but he would never permanently hurt anyone with his plots. He was less a true enemy and more a persistent pest. Superman had Mr. Mxyzptlk, Batman had Batmite, and Captain Picard had Q. He would even prove to be helpful on occasions, because though he would constantly harp on the inferiority of mankind, he had a soft spot for them. He considered Picard the closest thing he had to a friend, and in the comic Alien Spotlight, he admitted to Picard after spending a day in his body that while he would never call humanity noble, he had to admit that they worked harder to be noble than he had thought.

 

In Q Who, did he send the Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant to encounter the Borg just to force Picard to humble himself and ask for help, or did he do it to prepare the Enterprise and Earth for the Borg? His benevolence is ambiguous in that episode, but in Deja Q, he thanks the Enterprise for helping him get his powers back by allowing Data to experience genuine laughter, showing he’s not such a bad guy after all.

 

In Qpid, he’s pretty much a good guy, whisking the Enterprise crew off to Sherwood forest to play Robin Hood, give Picard relationship advice, and show that Worf is not a merry man.

 

He gave us this scene. How can you not love Q?

 

He promised Picard that he would look after his old flame Vash and years later would keep is word in the DS9 episode Q-less. He’s a Q of his word…sort of. In the earlier TNG episode Hide and Q, he loses a bet to Riker that he can make Riker want Q powers, promising that if Riker gives up his taste of godhood that he’ll leave humanity alone forever.

Needless to say, he never got around to fulfilling his end of the bargain.

 

He’s a Q of his word to those he likes.

 

In Tapestry, (one of the best episodes of TNG by the way, I highly recommend it) Q appears to Picard in the afterlife and gives him the chance to go back and relive his life, correcting what he thought were errors in his youth, but Picard came to realize that those errors made him the man that he was and asked Q to set his timeline right, mistakes and all.

 

He also cosplays as Jor-El, so there’s that.

 

In All Good Things, the final episode of TNG, Q shows up in his judge role again. He tells the Enterprise that the Q have decided to put humanity to the test again, and this time the test involves anti-time. Don’t you just love it when Star Trek goes full comic book? In the end, Picard is able to prevent a time paradox from wiping out humanity, with a few hints from Q. Q remarks that while the test wasn’t his idea but the Contiuum’s, giving Picard an assist was all his idea. So Q, via a little nudging, ended up saving all of humanity.

 

But his most benevolent act comes from the comics, and has nothing to do with the main Star Trek universe but, if you can believe it, the Kelvin timeline. Yeah, you know, the JJ Abrams Star Trek where everyone is younger, sexier, and duller. In the IGN Star Trek comic storyline Q Gambit, Q appears to the Kelvin Kirk and tells him that there is in fact such a thing as the no-win scenario. Kirk tells the strange alien man to prove it, and Q responds by…not sending him to the Delta Quadrant, but to a possible future of the Kelvin timeline where the Kelvin Klingons have conquered Earth and the Kelvin Dominion have expanded unchecked allowing the Kelvin Pah-Wraiths to kill all but one Prophet.

 

Surprise! It’s not a Kelvin episode at all, its a DS9 episode!

 

During the story, Kelvin Spock discovers that the only one to defeat all the Pah-Wraiths is to have the last Prophet combine with Q which supercharges Q to such a level that he’s able to kill every single Pah-Wraith.

 

After saving the (possible) future of the Kelvin timeline, Q went back to his bff Picard to show off his new supermode, because of course he would.

 

 

Prophet Q is quite likely the most powerful being in the entirety of Star Trek and will not be considered in this match.

 

Q has also helped out his own race, the Q Continuum. The Q Continuum was a stagnant, oppressive race who kept a short leash on their individual members, but Q’s acts of rebellion and chaos got the Q to start thinking and consider new possibilities. One Q in particular named Quinn was inspired by Q to try something that would really shake up the Continuum, something that no Q had ever tried in all of eternity–dying.

 

Though Q complied with the Continuum’s orders to track down Quinn, he was secretly on the suicidal Q’s side, and took his powers away to allow him to kill himself in the Voyager episode Death Wish. Quinn’s suicide would kick off the Q Civil War, a conflict fought among the Q inside the Continuum using Q weapons, weapons capable of harming Qs which were so advanced humanity couldn’t even perceive of them. When presented with a Q weapon, the human mind “filled in the blanks” and made it appear as a familiar weapon–a gun, a sword, a phaser, etc.

 

The Q Civil War was fought between the status quo faction and the opposition faction, of which Q was a member. The Voyager Crew was brought into the conflict due to the war causing supernovas across the universe as a side-effect (similar to how Galactus fighting Mephisto caused cosmic destruction across the Marvel universe). Q presented the war in the Continuum as a pastiche of the American Civil war (hence why the episode featuring the Q Civil War is called The Grey and the Q) with his team as the Union and the other side as the Confederacy.

 

…Shouldn’t the opposition faction have been the Confederacy since they were the rebels? I know, slavery bad, but in the context of the metaphor, the Union was the status quo…

 

Anyway, if anyone ever complains about fights between reality warpers in comics not looking epic enough, remind them that this is what the Q Civil War looked like:

 

 

See that guy up there? That’s Colonel Q. He’s a leader in the status quo faction. He sips mint julaps and is stronger than your favorite anime. And when he really wants to shake up the universe, he doesn’t blow up stars, he says the n-word, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

Oh, and Q also tried to get a child with Janeway because he thought a Q/human hybrid would help end the war and that was just…no, Q, no. Of all the women in the universe man…

 

Grey and the Q ends with Q hooking up with a female Q–thank god–and showing the cosmos what Q sex looks like.

 

This creates Q Junior and brings an end to Q Civil War with the status quo faction agreeing to chill out. In the episode Q2, the final appearance of Q on television, and that’s final, the Voyager crew gets saddled with Q’s el goblino abomination, and he’s got the attitude of a spoiled millennial. He totally didn’t make Discovery in order to satiate his puerile and degenerate interests.

 

I suppose it could have been worse. If Janeway was the mom, Q Junior would have crushed the stars beneath his feet.

 

Q2 ended with the Continuum ruling that Q had to be responsible for his brat and take custody of him, and father and son ascend into the Continuum together…but given how Q junior hasn’t shown up in any of Q’s other adventures, Q probably dumped him on mom so he could run around the universe having fun.

 

And that’s Q’s history.

 

All of it.

There isn’t anymore.

 

“But Otto, what about when he showed up in–”

 

There isn’t anymore.

 

…But I do want to talk a little more about Trelane.

 

 

Given the similarities between Trelane and Q, it was obvious to have the two interact, and the two have throughout Star Trek canon. In the TNG novel Q-Squared by Peter David (the guy best known for reviving the Guardians of the Galaxy), its revealed that Trelane is a Q, and what’s more, Q’s godson and possibly illegitimate son (time travel would also make it possible for him to be Q Junior…and that would explain a lot). Trelane gets a super form by absorbing something called the Heart of the Storm which allows him to seal off the Q Continuum, merge three timelines together, and exile the Q across time and space. Q would eventually defeat Trelane by sending a message to himself in the past and turning into a sword that Picard would stab Trelane with.

 

In Star Trek Unlimited 7, Q and Trelane would play a game with the stakes being that the winner would be allowed to reshape reality in their image. They decide to have a fanboy fight and alter reality so that Picard is captain of the TOS Enterprise and Kirk the captain of the TNG Enterprise. They wanted the two captains to fight (guess which captain Q picked as his champion,) but Kirk and Picard put a stop to their fanboy squabbling by working together.

 

 

Good thing the captains worked together because with Kirk as his champion Trelane was totally going to win the game, just saying.

 

Their plans foiled, Trelane and Q then decided to play a new game–mortal combat, with Q using a bat’leth and Trelane using the phaser rifle from Where no Man has Gone Before.

 

Given that the universe remained as it was, either Q won, drew, or the game is still being played in a different form…

 

In the comic Q-Conflict, which is a very fanficy but very fun read, Q, Trelane, a Metron, and an Organian have a big cosmic brawl that, like the Q Civil War, causes supernovae as a side-effect in local space-time. Q says the purpose of their squabble is for the Continuum to show the upstart space god races who’s the alpha dog, meaning that Trelane isn’t a Q in this story (ah, licensed media and continuity!). Wanting to avoid cosmic level bloodshed, Q proposes what’s essentially an expanded version of his previous game with Trelane bringing in the Voyager crew and DS9 crew to be champions for the Organians and Metrons. Q later reveals that he set up the game knowing that the crews would find a way to turn the tables on the space gods (they did, but no spoilers here because duh, of course they would) and bring about a quick and bloodless end to the conflict without any side losing face.

 

Ah, see, Q’s such a good cosmic whatsit!

 

During the games, Q turns to Trelane and goes “Hey, remember that one time when you…” like he’s an old friend, probably as a reference to Unlimited 7, and when the crews get supplied Q weapons from Amanda and Wesley and storm the Continuum, Trelane offers to lead the forces Q summons to fend them off while the Metrons and Organians sit the fight out. While they compete with one another, it thus seems that Trelane and Q have a friendship.

 

So who is Trelane to Q?

 

Personally, I like to think that Trelane isn’t Q Junior, just a friend of Q. You know that one friend you had growing up that took games too far and was a little immature for his age? That’s Trelane to Q.

 

Q’s Powers and Abilities

 

 

Q is a member of the Q Continuum, which refers both to beings like himself (all named Q with few notable exceptions) and the reality in which they reside, an unfathomable domain that has to be translated through metaphors to outsiders. For instance, the Q Quinn showed it to the Voyager crew as a broken-down roadhouse by a long stretch of highway. The highway was the universe. They could go anywhere and do anything, but they lacked the drive to do so, for in their agelessness and omnipotence, they had exhausted all possibilities, and lost the desire to do anything but sit around.

 

Though Q typically appears as a human, this is only because he has a fondness for humans (he revealed that when the Continuum depowered and exiled him in Deja Q, he was told that he could spend his exile as anything so long as it was mortal. He picked humans). His true form has never been depicted, and is likely as incomprehensible as the Q Continuum itself. The closest we have to a “true form Q” is this energy being from Star Trek/Legion of Superheroes:

 

 

So while you can punch Q’s human avatar (Sisko did just that and found it extremely satisfying,) you won’t really hurt him. You can even cut his head off, he won’t care.

 

 

Q is quite fond of playing dress-up. It’s part of his effervescent personality. He’s been a Napoleonic Commander, a space judge, a Christian monk, God (the one where he’s all in white), a mariachi player, a Starfleet officer, etc, etc.

 

Oh, and if you’re wondering why Picard looks like that, its because the 90’s Star Trek: The Next Generation DC Comics had Q turn the Next Gen crew into Klingons….and then androids. God only knows what he would have done next. Hortas, maybe?

 

 

As a Q, Q can do pretty much anything he wants. Create things, change things, destroy things, etc. The Waypoint comics special features a story where he welcomes V’ger (yes, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture) to the Q Continuum, implying that the Q aren’t so much a race as a clubhouse of anyone that ascends to a certain level of power. He tells V’ger that he’s capable of doing anything and everything and that first he must learn to control his emotions so “he doesn’t destroy the multiverse in a hissy fit” and that “when you exist as we do, the slightest emotional outburst can damage the omniverse in ways you can’t imagine.” He describes creating a universe as something V’ger, novice god that he is, should be able to do easily.

 

From his perspective, the beginning of the omniverse is the same as the end. It’s all one big interconnected tapestry and he can go to any point he wishes, or make new points (he’s created several timelines branching off not just from the main timeline, but the Kelvin timeline.)

 

 

No place in the omniverse is off-limits to Q. When he chased another Q named Quinn across the universe and beyond, he revealed that he even knew of a secret hideaway outside the universe at the dawn of the big bang which he had used to hide from the Q Continuum in the past.

 

He’s even  gone to the DC multiverse in Star Trek/ Legion of Superheroes, or more specifically, a peculiar timeline that branched out into the DC universe and Star Trek universe. It’s hard to explain. Just read it yourself, it’s a pretty good comic and I highly recommend it, it’s very fun.

 

Oh, and by the way, Vandal Savage and Flint from the TOS episode Requiem for Methuselah are the same person, Van of the Stone, just in different universes. We at Capeworld call them Fox echoes!

 

No word on whether or not Gary Seven is included in the Van of the Stone gestalt. My headcanon says he is along with Ugh the caveman.

 

Q never showed up in any of the three Star Trek and X-men crossovers. I guess he’s a DC guy.

 

Huh. That explains the Jor-El cosplay…

 

Q, as chaotic as he is, is not destructive, and most of his direct feats involve creation. He created Sherwood forest, a legion of Napoleonic themed alien soldiers, an afterlife, a planet, and a courtroom. He is highly skilled in manipulating matter and energy even beyond what these feats would suggest. In the Waypoint issue, he disassembled V’ger back into his component parts with a wave of his hand. That’s nothing to sneeze at since pages ago he said V’ger had the power to threaten the omniverse.

 

 

As powerful as Q is, his durability is still greater. We know this because of Quinn. Quinn wanted to die, and yet for all his powers, he could not commit suicide until his Q powers were taken away. His own Q powers were not enough to end his life, and that should logically extend to other Qs. Quinn knew of and made use of Q’s old outside-the-universe hideout, so he could have dove right into the big bang if that was enough to kill him. Q can weather a big bang easily.

 

Though he describes himself as omnipotent, omniscient, unfathomable, etc, he is not, not truly, and has been thwarted and defeated on several occasions, most often from other Q. While one Q is just as strong as any other Q, several Qs working together can overpower an individual Q. When he refused to honor his bet with Riker in Hide and Q, he was forcibly recalled to the Continuum and punished by exile. For sending the Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant in Q Who, he was punished further by having his powers stripped until he proved worthy of them in Deja Q. In the comic Q Conflict, he engaged in combat with the Prophets from DS9 after disturbing their wormhole. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to see what they would do.

 

 

 

The fight was stopped by another Q (canonically nameless but identified in fandom as Q2) who remarked that though Prophets don’t have the raw power of a Q, they have more control over time and space, and despite what Q thought, he was not winning his fight with them, though its likely he could have taken a couple of Prophets on his own, just not the entire race.

 

In Star Trek/Legion of Superheroes, he was also captured and put in an orb by Van of the Stone, a combination of Flint from Requiem for Methuselah and Vandal Savage, who siphoned his power to conquer first the Earth and then the stars.

 

Did you know the mysterious meteor that gave Vandal Savage immortality could trap space gods? I didn’t, but apparently it can.

 

And in the IDW storyline Q Gambit, Q found that he was unable to use his powers inside the Bajoran wormhole, the seat of power for the Pah-Wraiths.

 

 

Q is also sometimes just wrong about things. He was wrong about Riker giving in to godhood and in the Alien Spotlight comic took over Picard’s body fully thinking that he could do just as good a job at diplomacy as Picard himself and was surprised and humiliated to find that he was too used to just having his way with godhood to understand the finer points of negotiation.

 

 

Q can be overpowered, outwitted, and defeated, its just very hard to do so, not just because he’s powerful, but because he’s smart. His acts of rebellion against the Q Continuum were nothing but self-serving aggrandizement at first glance, but they led to Quinn which led to the Q Civil War which ultimately led to a freer and more libertarian Continuum. In the comic series Q Conflict, he defused what would otherwise have been a long and brutal god war that would have damaged local space time under the guise of cosmic playtime. He’s not an infallible schemer, but he can run a fairly decent keikaku game. He’s a trickster hero favoring guile over raw power. It might be why he picks Picard over Kirk.

 

Or it may be because he has no taste. I mean, have you seen his space judge costume? What’s with the cloak? What’s with the hat? He looks like Lord Licorice fused with the Pope. I can see why a guy like that prefers Picard over Kirk.

 

So, Who Wins?

 

The Great Gazoo loses to the greater Q.

 

They share a lot of similarities power wise. Both are superhumanly intelligent. Both can make things vanish, alter matter, create matter, shapeshift, travel through space, travel through time, and lord over puny humans with science so advance it may as well be magic. Both can be depowered. Both have been depowered and bossed around by other beings of their race. But Q has some features that puts him over Gazoo.

 

Not every day the toon loses.

 

Q has shown an ability to just do more. The Great Gazoo has never created a planet, or an afterlife, or changed the gravitational constant. He’s never split apart a being that can create universes and endanger the omniverse with an outburst like Q did to V’ger

 

He’s also not used to fighting beings of a similar power level while Q participated in the Q Civil War and had fights with Trelane. Q is also less vulnerable than the Great Gazoo. While both can get slapped around in their human/Ziltoxian forms if they aren’t careful, Q has never gotten sick and needed medicine like Gazoo, and Q are generally so durable that for all their phenomenal power, they can’t die. Like Quinn, they can’t even kill themselves. They have to have their powers taken away from them by another Q first or be wounded by specially-designed Q weapons that can only be conceived of and built by several Q working together. And while Q’s physical form isn’t his real form, Gazoo’s physical form is, and if its destroyed, there’s no energy Gazoo behind it.

 

The Great Gazoo is capable of wiping out the universe with but a push of a button, but I’m not sure that would work on Q. Take Quinn for example. The dude had a hiding spot outside the universe watching the big bang. He wanted to die. If he thought that it would have done anything to him, he could have hugged the big bang tight. But lets assume that Gazoo could kill Q in one great big ZAM. Q has a way to avoid being destroyed along with the rest of the universe. He can just slide into Quinn’s hiding spot outside the universe (Q remarked that he used it well before Quinn found it to hide from the Continuum.)

 

Gazoo also has a weakness that Q can exploit–a lot of his powers come from technology. Even his big ZAM was in the form of a button that he could be separated from and his general powers, as revealed in episode 12 of the comic series, are dependent on his belt functioning properly, and it can be turned off remotely from Ziltox.

 

And on the whole, Gazoo is just a lot more fallible than Q. Sure, Q lost his bet with Riker, but Gazoo has had his rays reflected by mirrors. He accidentally made Fred’s car come alive. He said it himself, he’s a kook, and sometimes he just screws up. But when Q tries to work his magic, it always works out the way he intends it to.

 

The Great Gazoo could conceivably come up with a way to beat Q–but it’s not as likely as Q coming up a way to beat him first.

 

How would a fight like this play out? I would make it very slaptstick. Taking Star Trek down to meet Flintstones would be easier than taking Flintstones up to meet Star Trek. Q comes to prehistoric Earth and decides to do the Encounter at Far Point bit. He sees that stone age man isn’t much, and decides to put Fred and Barney on trial as exemplars of mankind. He is, of course, dressed as a caveman.

 

Gazoo intervenes, telling Q that only he is allowed to bully his dum-dums. Q and Gazoo snap each other across the multiverse. Cameos galore. Think of it as a mix between the Q vs Quinn scene and Hanna Barbara’s notorious reputation for reusing backgrounds. Q and Gazoo don’t move, the backgrounds do, and eventually they cycle.

 

Then they try transforming each other. Visual gags plus Hanna Barbara canned laughs (those in the biz call them sweeteners.)  Gazoo gets turned into a leprechaun. Q gets turned into a letter Q with angry eyes. And so on and so on.

 

Gazoo tries cloning Q, but as in Double Troubles, its an imperfect “nothing” and can only go PICARD PICARD PICARD.

 

Q gets tired and declares that they should fight by Triskelion rules, meaning mortal combat in an arena–and the arena is a spare universe.

 

Fred and Barney watch from an interdimensional screen while Gazoo and Q face each other with clubs and remark that it seems a pretty simple and brutal way for high-tech guys to fight. Q remarks that they only see the weapons as clubs because they’re primitive dunderheads, and then loses all dignity by exchanging bonks on the head with Gazoo. Gazoo makes a joke about how Q isn’t smart enough to wear a helmet.

 

The clubs get bigger and bigger, knocking over stars and galaxies until Q gets the upper hand and shatters Gazoo’s club.

 

Gazoo then decides he’s got nothing to lose and brings out his ZAM device. In one big ZAM the entire universe dissolves–but then Q teleports back into the void and conks Gazoo over the head with a club, explaining how he learned a long time ago that when universe destroying weapons start getting used to go outside the universe.

 

Q is about to smite Gazoo with a club so massive it breaks into the speed force (Sonic vs Wally cameo) and the multiverse from Zatanna vs Scarlet Witch. Gazoo looks at the club and remarks “Oh, that doesn’t seem so bad.” Q puts a sticker on the club that says multiomnihyperwtfbbqversal.

 

“Oh now its bad!”

 

Fred and Barney intervene, telling Q that Gazoo is innocent. If Q has a problem with humanity, then he should fight them, not Gazoo, and that they’re fully ready to fight Q even if they have no chance. Touched that the cavemen would lay down their lives for their friend, Q reveals that Earth has passed the test. If they’re willing to die for a total alien, then perhaps mankind will one day abandon their violent, destructive ways.

 

Q departs, telling the Great Gazoo that he fought well for someone so conceited and small, and that he’ll sneak in a good word at his next parole hearing. Gazoo is left to reflect with Fred and Barney that while all his power couldn’t save the day, the stupidity of the dum-dums could, and perhaps there’s some spark of potential in humanity after all.