Q's DVD style trial

[FaxModem1]

Right before the Farpoint mission, Q decides that humanity's trial will be to see how humans act with foreknowledge of their actions, and what they will do if they have this information. Q decides to have the Star Trek DVDs, all of them, appear on the Captain's chair. Picard and crew now have access to the Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, The Animated Series, and all the movies(including the two reboot ones) in DVD format. For convenience sake, Geordi is able to figure out a way to make them playable or convertible with the ship's computer.

What happens now that Picard and crew essentially have the next 15 years or so of future knowledge in their laps?

[Channel72]

Well, since they have All Good Things, and other Q episodes, they also know what Q will do in the future - including at Farpoint Station, which is sort of paradoxical.

[FaxModem1]

It's Q. Paradoxes aren't really a worry for him.

[The Romulan Republic]

They probably do very little with it, despite much agonizing over the morality of letting disasters happen. They won't want to alter history.

In fact, the DVDs may be promptly confiscated by Starfleet and classified.

[FaxModem1]

So what happens when all the high up Admirals of Starfleet, many of which have been villains on the show, suddenly find out that their careers are destroyed because of the crew of the Enterprise, or that the Borg are coming, or the Dominion?

[Enigma]

Tasha will get to live and Troi will end up avoiding the area of that tar monster. That happens and Sela ceases to be.

Anyone with that alien parasite will be placed in custody and interrogated.

DS9 becomes a hell of a lot more heavily defended and Starfleet along with the Klingon Empire will be (hopefully) prepared to deal with the Dominion.

Things will get a bit awkward for Troi, Riker and Worf.

With better understanding of the Borg, plus all the tech gleaned from the DVDs, the first encounter with the Borg would probably end up with Picard ordering the total destruction of the Cube.

Pegasus will be retrieved without (hopefully) the Romulans knowing. What happens afterwards, I do not know.

Data gets his emotion chip early and Lore will remain disassembled.

E-D crew will be better prepared to deal with the Duras family but I do not know if Worf will still end up having Alexander.

That's all that I can think of as of this moment.

[Elheru Aran]

IIRC Alexander was conceived *before* TNG happened, but I could be wrong about that. In that case Worf still has Alexander.

[Prometheus Unbound]

IIRC Alexander was conceived *before* TNG happened, but I could be wrong about that. In that case Worf still has Alexander.

He was conceived in season 2.

[Elheru Aran]

Hmm. Klingon children grow up fast, I suppose. *checks MA* One Earth year is equivalent to three Klingon years. Huh. Guess all those old-timer Klinks that pop up every now and then are *really* old, like Kang and Koloth and all that...

[Tribble]

Well, the real question is what defines a "pass" for the test. Is a pass allowing history to take its course, or is it using the information to their advantage? Because if the Federation fails the test they get wiped out, so its the only thing that really matters.

[FaxModem1]

Passing the test is amusing Q, and seeing how civilized the Federation acts with this new information, as this is essentially future-Q rewriting the timestream.

[FaxModem1]

I, for one, wonder about how Picard and crew evolve as individuals. Picard in season 1 is a lot different from the Picard we knew in Nemesis. Will he be less proud, and take the DVDs as a warning of a path he could go down, and what the cost of his hubris could be. Will this humble Picard, or will he still remain the preachy, proud man he was in season 1?

[Tribble]

I, for one, wonder about how Picard and crew evolve as individuals. Picard in season 1 is a lot different from the Picard we knew in Nemesis. Will he be less proud, and take the DVDs as a warning of a path he could go down, and what the cost of his hubris could be. Will this humble Picard, or will he still remain the preachy, proud man he was in season 1?

Well, Season 1 Picard once congratulated Riker for not using his Q powers to save a dead little girl... so ya, chances are they wouldn't even to watch the DVDs past the first couple of minutes because he'd destroy them the moment he realized they contained knowledge of the future.

[ZOmegaZ]

They might have Data watch them alone, and trust him to keep his mouth shut about things that are not existential threats. There's precedent for Data being ordered to not tell things.

Assuming that, it's all going to depend on what parameters Data is given. Personal crises or things that end well enough are not things he's going to mess with. He could prevent Picard from being assimilated, for example, but that costs the Federation a huge tactical advantage the next time a cube shows up! There aren't many utter catastrophes to prevent; I'd expect him to leave everything exactly as it is, up until maybe the Dominion War. That he might alter, simply due to the death toll and the relative lack of known positive consequences. So he'd need a way to either win the war early, or to prevent it from happening at all.

How does Data with foreknowledge make this happen? Well, he could just close the wormhole, but that's arguably just delaying the Dominion conflict until the Federation contacts them through normal space, and delay is in the Founders' favor. Plus, the Dominion war led to improvements in the Federations' diplomatic relations with its neighbors, so avoiding it entirely isn't necessarily optimal. I would perhaps suggest mining the wormhole early, to take out the Dominion fleet before it goes to Cardassia. Or building a heavily-armed station on the other side. Or maybe, here's a thought, saying "Hi, Dominion. What are your borders, so we don't cross them by accident? Really want to be friends, plz." Obviously knowledge of the Founders' capabilities will be a huge plus; by preventing Martok's replacement he could prevent the Federation-Klingon war.

I'd also expect him to do something about the destruction of Romulus, thereby preventing the entire reboot timeline. Since he has no information about what good might come of that (if any), there's no risk to that.

[Borgholio]

Even in cases where many deaths are involved, it's still running into the same problem that has been discussed before regarding events such as World War 2 and the Holocaust. Sure, by stopping the Holocaust we'd save millions of innocent lives...but then we'd never have such a terrible event to learn from and it might just happen eventually in the future...and be worse the second time around on top of it.

[FaxModem1]

Considering that these millions of lives are Federation citizens, it's probable that some action will be taken to stop this by Data, Picard, or Starfleet Command. Unless Temporal Investigations has higher jurisdiction over this sort of thing than head of Starfleet, or maybe even the Federation President if it continues up the food chain, I think they'll be fine with using this to their advantage.

Knowing what the Romulans are plotting in regards to a Klingon civil war, what the Cardassians are up to, that they have spies in their government, etc, will be something that a lot of Starfleet brass will want to prevent. Especially since as of right now, Starfleet is infiltrated(or about to be) by aliens from beyond the Federation's borders.

[biostem]

Now what would be more interesting is if Picard, at the same point in time, had access to stardestroyer.net and its related databases.

Either way, I feel that Picard might get all self righteous and refuse to utilize the information. Also, are we assuming that "fate" isn't in effect here - that events aren't destined to happen a certain way, no matter what?

[Tribble]

Now what would be more interesting is if Picard, at the same point in time, had access to stardestroyer.net and its related databases.

Either way, I feel that Picard might get all self righteous and refuse to utilize the information. Also, are we assuming that "fate" isn't in effect here - that events aren't destined to happen a certain way, no matter what?

Well, the fact that Q gave the DVDs is a "fate" of sorts, as he's deliberately doing it to test (and screw with) them. Events in Star Trek aren't "fixed" though, as a virtually infinite number of alternate universes are known to exist. This would just create another one.

I can't see season 1 Picard even watching all of the DVDs, let alone use that info and/or pass it over to Starfleet. Far more likely that once he realizes what they contain he'll destroy them to prevent anyone from "upsetting" the course of events.

Now if this happened immediately after "Q-Who" things would be different. At that point Picard's faith that the Federation could handle anything had just been proven spectacularly wrong by Q. Just as importantly Guinan had warned Picard that Q had already altered the timeline by making official contact with the Borg come far sooner than it should have, so he wouldn't feel as obligated to stick to the established chain of events. In this case I could see Picard seriously considering using the info, or at the very least sending it over to Starfleet HQ.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ok, to avoid the self-righteous Captain issue, what if Q simply dumps the information straight into Picard's brain?

[Gaidin]

Ok, to avoid the self-righteous Captain issue, what if Q simply dumps the information straight into Picard's brain?

Information overflow? I mean, Picard is only human...

Here's 7-10 years for god knows how many humans. Have fun. He might get certain key points jumping out at him like his borg assimilation and be tempted to stop that, but then as people have noted, other key points, his knowledge would then help with their attempt in the First Contact movie so would he leave be? But so many of those episodes were, in the end, basic days on a ship, they might just flow right in and be nothing.

Or would it be too much?

[ZOmegaZ]

Q didn't seem to have any problem dumping days of information into Picard's brain in objective seconds during All Good Things...

[Gaidin]

Q didn't seem to have any problem dumping days of information into Picard's brain in objective seconds during All Good Things...

Days for him or a decade for multiple ships?