This could get interesting!
Welcome to the weekend and here's Saturday's challenge to start you off. While there are 700-odd episodes there are many millions of lines and speeches to choose from. I could think of at least ten off the top of my head that would fulfil this question easily. Would it be Worf's "merry man" from Q Pid? Sisko's final speech in Call to Arms? Picard drawing his line in First Contact? Spock's Kobayashi Maru lines from the end of The Wrath of Khan?
Then there's the popular ones too - the Borg catchphrase, Klingon success, the USS Enterprise ship motto... and we're only skating on the very top of a whole library of stunning lines. It's not just about it being a great one-liner though, it might be that the speech has resonated with you over time, means something personal or hooked you just because of how beautifully the lines were written and fitted the actor/character.
I decided on a Q speech in the end. In fact I think a few of my favourite quotes come from Q as I do love some of the lines he gets in All Good Things..., Tapestry and especially in the first encounter with the Borg in Q Who.
With the Enterprise on the run from the regenerating cube, Picard finally turns to Q and "begs" for his help before they are destroyed. Returning the ship to its starting location in the Alpha Quadrant, Q leaves the captain with some choice words after what is an unusual defeat;
If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid.
Truly Q has awakened a sleeping beast, exposing the crew to the Borg, but at the heart of it he has also shown Picard that humanity's arrogance and self-believing invincibility is ill-founded. There's a lot more out there than they have appreciated from exploring their tiny quarter of one galaxy. There are some great things out there but discovering them may well come at a cost and the Federation will need to be prepared for that. Not everything is a cake-walk.
I love the delivery from Q here; you can hear John de Lancie almost spit the words at Patrick Stewart to emphasise just how silly the Federation is being in its blinkered exploration and the contempt that exists as I don't think he believes the experience in J-25 has properly sunk in. For me this was Q at his finest before the writers started to mellow him out for Deja Q and beyond and make him more of a sparring partner for Picard rather than a full blown nemesis.
What's your favourite? Any of the ones we've mentioned or is there another speech or one-liner that stands out for you as extremely memorable?
Come back tomorrow for our eighteenth question, live from 1pm.
Come back tomorrow for our eighteenth question, live from 1pm.
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