too much screen time compared to the main cast, Handlen noted, while the overall plot involving the "stealth alien" embryo "plays like an abandoned script from early in TNGs run, and an example of a fascinating concept reduced to a perfunctory MacGuffin," Handlen wrote. Keith DeCandido, in a review of "Q-Less" for Tor.com, praised the relationship between Vash and Quark and thought that it should have been explored further. Like Handlen, DeCandido also felt that Q did not quite fit in DS9, but acknowledged that his performance in this episode was an improvement over his later appearances in Star Trek: Voyager. DeCandido described the boxing scene where Sisko punches Q as "wonderful" and "spectacular". However, he thought that aspects of the plot had too much technobabble; for example, the embryo plotline could have been resolved by a form of Customs procedure. "Ultimately", DeCandido concludes, "none of this matters, because it comes down to one great moment of Sisko decking Q. Bliss." In Atara Stein's The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television (2009), she compared the role of Q in both "Q-Less" and "True Q" as one where he reprises his "satanic role" and "in each case [tries] to lure a woman to join him". Stein also states of the Q/Vash relationship that "Q's demeanor toward Vash is clearly coded as that of a potential rapist. He pushes her onto a bed and shows no compunction about threatening and brutalizing her." In Stein's view, despite this treatment and the feminist stance taken by Vash, Q is treated sympathetically by the writers of the episode. It is made clear that Q could have won Vash around if he chose to, and so the character seemed "sensitive and vulnerable, and Vash seems cold-hearted by comparison.". Home video "Q-Less" was first released for home media in the United States on VHS on November 19, 1996. It was released in the United Kingdom on DVD as part of the season one box set on March 24, 2003, and in the United States on June 3. The episode is also included in the Star Trek: Q Fan Collective compilation DVD set, which was released in the United States on June 6, 2006, and later that year in the UK on September 4. On February 8, 1997 this episode was released on LaserDisc in Japan as part of the half-season box set 1st Season Vol. 1.