Wolf 359 also prepared the Federation in dealing with a potentially superior technological foe. A lot of the fleet improvements would come online by the time the Federation came in contact with the Dominion. A pre Wolf 359 Federation would have gotten easily conquered by the Dominion.
To add to it, Voyager bright back a lot of technology after its travel, a lot of which got adopted by the Federation once Voyager returned. So you had two major technological jumps to the Federation with Q involvement.
Lupus@feddit.org 3 days ago
Isn’t that even argued in the episode? Like Q wanted to humble Picard when he doesn’t want to accept him onto the Enterprise as a crew member and Picard criticizes his interference. Then Q says something like “You are not prepared for what awaits you”. Indicating that he has other motives than his usual tricksterdom.
Q has always had a certain curiosity for humanity and his actions are always layered but in this instance I think the layers are only.hiding his intent on helping humanity/Starfleet prepare for threats bigger.than anything they have ever encountered.
And later he says something like “If you can’t handle a bloody nose you should go home and hide under your bed” meaning something like “if you’re out here you have to be prepared to face threats and horrors unimaginable to man.”