Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Guinan
The enigmatic bartender is still a great mystery in Star Trek, but what we learned along the way?
At TrekCulture we have previously listed several of the biggest mysteries about Whoopi Goldberg's beloved El-Aurian, yet what have we learned in the years since?
This earlier article was composed before the character's appearance in the second season of Star Trek: Picard, so has much changed on this front? If so, has it been for the better, or for the worse?
Since her first appearance in The Child, we have seen her rootin' tootin' with a rifle, we have seen her concoct the perfect cocktail, and we've even seen a change of faces as time went forward...and backward...and somewhere in between. But whatever else, Guinan remains one of the most intriguing characters from the entire franchise, embodying Dr. Boyce's original line:
Sometimes, a man'll tell his bartender things he'll... never tell his doctor.
10. A Question Of Q
One of the early mysteries that surrounded Guinan was her relationship with a certain trickster. Q, Who introduced the fact that these two characters knew each other, though at that time exactly how was unknown. There was, however, enough animosity to give even a being as powerful as Q room for pause.
This was further explored in the second season of Star Trek: Picard. It turned out that far from Guinan and Q being personal enemies, the entire Q Continuum and the El-Aurian race had engaged in a 'cold war' for many years. This war was brought to a close, as many often are, over a bottle.
In this case, that bottle was quite literal. The El-Aurian people saw 'unity through food and drink,' and therefore had evolved to capture a moment of time within a bottle. This bottle could then be used to summon those directly affected by it - as was demonstrated to varying levels of success in Monsters and Mercy.