John de Lancie's irrepressible Q has been a familiar face on Star Trek for over a decade, and the actor says he'd be happy to play the role again, especially if he had the chance to discover more about the omnipotent being.

"If I were to do it again, I'd be interested in hearing people say, 'He's all over the map and yet it all seems very justifiable!'" de Lancie told Star Trek Monthly's Ian Spelling (via Sci-Fi Pulse). "I think it makes sense that he could be loving and innocent one moment and hateful the next moment, and on and on like that. Will I get the opportunity to do that? I don't know. I've not spoken to [Enterprise executive producers] Rich Berman or Brannon Braga about it, but sure, I'm open to coming back again."

Despite his frequent appearances in comic episodes, de Lancie said there's more to Q than having a joke at the expense of mere mortals. "I think the element about the character that is most fun, is that he is never really one thing for very long. He doesn't have one characteristic or play one emotion. When people started to write that he was funny all the time, or angry all the time, that never worked for me. I felt it was best when I could play him as a very, very mercurial character. I'd love to find more depth in the mercurialness."

Nevertheless, the actor is in two minds about whether another appearance would be one too many trips to the well. "There's definitely an impression that I did more than the eight or nine episodes of The Next Generation I was actually in. I'm somewhat of the opinion that less is more. The Marx Brothers did four movies and everyone thinks of them as all being brilliant, where actually I think only two of them truly wonderful and two of them weren't. That works, to a degree, in respect of the Q as well. But there's a part of me that says, 'Boy, I would have liked to knock off a couple or more Q episodes.' So I'm of two minds about it. I'm happy he made an impact, and I'm pleased that people think I did more than I really did, but I wish that I'd actually done a few more of them."

The full interview can be found in the latest issue of Star Trek Monthly, out now. Alternatively, extracts are available here at Sci-Fi Pulse.

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