In this paper we study the orthogonality conditions satisfied by the
classical q-orthogonal polynomials that are located at the top of the q-Hahn
tableau (big q-jacobi polynomials (bqJ)) and the Nikiforov-Uvarov tableau
(Askey-Wilson polynomials (AW)) for almost any complex value of the parameters
and for all non-negative integers degrees. We state the degenerate version of
Favard's theorem, which is one of the keys of the paper, that allow us to
extend the orthogonality properties valid up to some integer degree N to
Sobolev type orthogonality properties.