12 Abandoned Star Trek Ideas That Would Have Been Incredible

After the tumultuous production of The Next Generation's first season, head writer Maurice Hurley was ready to pack in the whole bridge crew and start a-fresh. He had said in an interview with William Shatner that he had hoped to kill off the main cast and build the second season around finding a new crew for the Enterprise. Pretty drastic.

Maurice Hurley eventually left the show at the end of the second season and the 1988 Writer's Strike put paid to many of his plans. Many of the episodes that he had intended weren't produced and those that did make the screen were often last-minute replacements to scrapped plans. Hurley's plans for Q would have been extensive.

The idea was that early in the second season, Q would pay another visit to the Enterprise, to torment Picard and warn him of the dangers that were out there. Because of this, Q would be stripped of his powers and have to live on the Enterprise for a time, until he was able to regain his abilities. If all of this sounds familiar, it's because this plot was condensed into two episodes, Q Who and Deja Q. The missing Q arc was essentially Q having to adjust to humanity and learn how to get along with Picard as an almost-equal.

Ronald D. Moore later commented that Hurley's plans were more plot focussed and after his departure from the series, the show become much more character focussed. He stressed that they didn't want to overuse characters like Q, which this arc may well have done.

Pivotally, however, there was one difference in Q Who that didn't make it into this arc. Q wouldn't have introduced humanity to the Borg, that would be something else entirely.