“Tapestry”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Les Landau
Season 6, Episode 14
Production episode 40276-241
Original air date: February 15, 1993
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s Log: An away team that includes Picard, Riker, Worf, and three security guards beams directly to sickbay. Riker says they were ambushed—Picard’s been shot in the chest, and his artificial heart has failed. As Crusher works we fade out to Picard in an all-white region, greeted by a figure in white robes: it’s Q, who declares, “Welcome to the afterlife, Jean-Luc. You’re dead.”
Picard is skeptical that he’s really deceased, since he refuses to believe that the afterlife is run by Q—“the universe is not so badly designed!” So Q produces an image of Picard’s father, Maurice, admonishing him for attending the Academy and saying that after all these years, Picard is still a disappointment. Q then provides Picard with the voices of people who died through Picard’s actions—or inactions—and gives Picard the chance to say something to them, which Picard refuses.
Q pushes Picard to see if he has any regrets, but the only regret Picard will admit to is dying and finding Q on the other side. Q tartly points out that he didn’t kill Picard, his artificial heart did. Q asks what happened to his original heart, and Picard simply says it was a mistake. Pouncing on that, Q asks if that’s a regret he hears. Picard admits that he regrets many things from those days.
With a gesture, Q displays young Ensign Picard’s fight with three Nausicaans, one of whom stabs him in the back. Young Picard looks down at the blade protruding from his chest and (just as he described it to Wes Crusher in “Samaritan Snare”) starts laughing before he collapses. Picard describes his younger self to Q as arrogant, egotistical, undisciplined, unwise—in other words, more like Q. He was young and cocky, and if he could do it all over again, things would be different.
A moment later, Picard is wearing the ensign’s uniform he wore thirty years ago and is being slapped in the face by a woman, while two other ensigns watch. He soon realizes that he’s back at Starbase Earhart with his classmates and best friends Cortin Zweller and Marta Batanides, who are delightfully amused at his getting slapped. They go ahead to nearby Bonestell Recreational Facility while Picard stays behind—ostensibly for yet another date.
After Zweller and Batanides leave, Q appears and assures Picard that it’s not a fantasy, but reality—a reality, anyhow. Picard is twenty-one again, and Q is giving him a chance to fix some of those regrets. Picard expresses concern about alterations to the timeline, but Q assures Picard that nothing he does will have any ripple effects on the rest of the universe—“to be blunt, you’re not that important.” The only thing at stake is Picard’s life, Picard’s peace of mind. What he chooses to do with his second chance is up to him.
Picard, Zweller, and Batanides came to Starbase Earhart after graduation to await their first deep-space assignments. It’s two days before Picard’s fateful encounter with a Nausicaan blade. If Picard manages to avoid the fight and not get stabbed, Q promises to bring Picard to what he thinks of as the present, except with a real heart. And if he doesn’t avoid the fight and does get stabbed, then he dies on Crusher’s table.
Q asks why that woman slapped him, and Picard explains that Corlina was upset because, in addition to taking her out on a date, Picard had also set another date for later that night with another woman named Penny. Q is impressed; “I had no idea you were such a cad.”
Picard heads to Bonestell to meet up with Penny, an older woman who is obviously into younger men in uniform. Picard tries to act like a civilized adult, which is totally not what interests her, and she eventually throws a drink in his face and storms off. Picard goes over to the dom-jot table, where Zweller is kicking ass and taking names. A Nausicaan then challenges Zweller to a game, and Picard recognizes him as the one who will stab him in the back in a couple of days. Picard tries to convince Zweller not to accept, but his classmate’s a bit too arrogant to listen. Picard explains to Q that the Nausicaan is cheating, and that Zweller will find out and rig the table in his favor for the rematch—with Picard’s help. But the Nasuicaans are sore losers, and when Zweller wins the rigged rematch, they start the fight that ends with Picard being impaled.
Sure enough, after the game, the trio return to Starbase Earhart and Zweller proposes that they rig the table to get revenge. Picard tries and fails to talk Zweller out of it—and Batanides backs him up. Zweller isn’t happy about it, and storms out. Batanides is impressed with Picard’s newfound maturity, and starts to make a bit of a pass. Then Q enters with flowers, and Batanides remembers that “Johnny” is a big-ass womanizer and leaves. Q hopes he was interrupting something sordid, but Picard insists they were just friends, and that Picard does not regret that friendship.
Q also says that Zweller is at Bonestell rigging the dom-jot table alone. Picard once again tries to talk Zweller out of it, this time threatening to go to the gambling foreman. Zweller agrees, and again storms out. Later, Picard and Batanides talk about it, and this time they fall into bed together.
The morning after, Picard wakes up with Q next to him. (And a thousand works of slash fiction are born!!!!!) Q throws the “we’re just friends, nothing more” line back at Picard (with John deLancie doing an excellent Sir Patrick Stewart impersonation), and then Picard returns to Bonestell to find Batanides distant, as she fears their friendship has been spoiled, and now it’s going to be much harder for her to say goodbye when they go off on their separate assignments the next day. Q enumerates Picard’s tally thus far: he’s been slapped in the face by one woman, had a drink thrown in his face by another, and alienated his two best friends. Not bad, so far.
That night, the trio’s last hurrah is an awkward occasion. Then the Nausicaans show up asking Zweller for another game. The Nausicaans try to provoke the trio by calling Zweller a coward and making eyes at Batanides, but Picard keeps the inevitable fight from breaking out, even though it sends Zweller ass over teakettle. After the Nausicaans laugh at them and wander off, Zweller makes it clear that their friendship is done, and Batanides also walks away angry.
Q congratulates Picard on avoiding the fight, and the next thing Picard knows he’s on the bridge of the Enterprise—as a junior-grade lieutenant in the sciences division. Worf asks if “Mr. Picard” needs help. Picard is holding a padd which should be delivered to La Forge in engineering. Data inquires if he’s feeling all right, and Picard asks what his position is. Worf, confused, replies that he’s an assistant astrophysics officer; when Picard asks who the captain is, Data and Worf exchange worried looks and Data identifies the captain as Thomas Halloway. When Data offers to escort him to sickbay, Picard declines, saying he can find his own way.
However, Q is waiting for him there (having dressed as God, a starship captain, a bartender, and a flower delivery boy, he now is a doctor, wearing a white lab coat, suit, magnifying glass, and stethoscope). Q explains that he’s done exactly what he promised: returned Picard to the present, where nothing has changed—except Picard. He’s done exactly what he said he wanted to do, to wit, change the man he was as a youth. The result is that he now has a real heart, and he gets to live a long, safe happy life running tests and making analyses and bringing reports to his superiors.
Picard goes to Ten-Forward to speak with Riker and Troi about his career prospects, and their answer is less than encouraging. They don’t see him as anything other than a middling officer. Data interrupts by summoning senior officers to the captain’s ready room, and Picard has to visibly force himself not to stand up. La Forge then crankily contacts Picard wondering where the hell his statistical analysis is.
Heading to engineering, Picard finds himself instead back in the all-white space. He says he can’t live out his life as a person bereft of passion and imagination. Q counters that that’s who Picard wanted to be: someone less arrogant, someone less like Q. That Picard never had a brush with death, never realized how fragile life is. So he drifted through a career, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves, never leading an away team that saved an ambassador’s life, never taking command of the Stargazer when her captain was killed. He played it safe and he never got noticed by anyone.
Q walks away, and Picard admits that Q is right, and says he’d rather die than live out the life he saw. Q smiles, and Picard’s back at Bonestell, the Nausicaan once again calling Picard, Zweller, and Batanides cowards. Only this time, Picard starts the fight, which plays out just as we saw it earlier. When he sees the blade sticking out of his chest, Picard laughs with relief.
He’s still laughing when he wakes up in sickbay, with Crusher assuring him that he’s going to be all right.
Later, after he’s recovered, Picard tells Riker what happened. He has no idea if it was a dream, a trick of Q’s, or what. But Picard realizes that he owes Q a debt. Riker, meanwhile, says he wishes he’d gotten to know that younger Jean-Luc Picard who picked a fight with a Nausicaan—which starts Picard on a story of another encounter he’d had with a surly Nausicaan….
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: A compressed teryon beam to the chest can fuse an artificial heart, which kinda sucks for Picard.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: When Lieutenant Picard goes to see Troi and Riker, and asks them for a frank assessment of his career, it’s a rhapsody in damning with faint praise, using words like, good, thorough, dedicated, reliable, and, after a bit of a struggle, punctual. When the lieutenant makes it clear that he has delusions of command, Troi gently slaps him down, pointing out that his career is an endless stream of lofty goals with no drive to achieve them.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Picard was apparently quite the ladies’ man as a youth, going through numerous conquests. The more mature Picard re-living that life sees Batanides as more attractive than Penny or Corlina, but after they sleep together, it ruins the friendship.
I Believe I Said That: “You’re dead, this is the afterlife, and I’m God.”
“You are not God!”
“Blasphemy! You’re lucky I don’t cast you out, or smite you, or something.”
Q claiming divinity and Picard not buying it.
Welcome Aboard: This is John deLancie’s third appearance as Q in the 1992/93 season, having appeared just the week before on Deep Space Nine’s “Q-Less,” as well as earlier this season on TNG’s “True Q.” Ned Vaughn and J.C. Brandy do quite well as the Porthos and Aramis to Picard’s Athos (or, if you prefer, the Harpo and Chico to his Groucho). Clint Carmichael is nasty as the Nausicaan, Rae Norman is adequate as Penny, and Marcus Nash gets stabbed well as young Picard.
But the best casting is Clive Church as Picard’s father, Maurice, who is perfect—he looks exactly like what you’d expect someone who was the father of both Sir Patrick Stewart and Jeremy Kemp to look like.
Trivial Matters: This episode picks up from the second season’s “Samaritan Snare,” which established that Picard has an artificial heart, and the episode provides us with the full details of the story of how he got that heart as told by Picard to Wes Crusher in that episode.
Q’s description of the method of Picard’s ascension to command of the Stargazer will be dramatized in Michael Jan Friedman’s novel The Valiant, which served as the springboard for Friedman’s six-book Stargazer series that chronicled Picard’s first year or so in command of that vessel.
Picard will briefly go to an alternate timeline that matches the one in which he stopped the fight and became a junior science officer on the Enterprise-D in your humble rewatcher’s novel Q & A, albeit at a time contemporaneous with that novel’s post-Nemesis timeframe. In the intervening eleven years, that version of Picard was promoted to lieutenant commander and made a bridge science officer on the Enterprise-E by Riker shortly before he took command of Titan. Captain Thomas Halloway is still in charge of the Big E in that timeline. In that novel, Q also brings Picard back to the all-white “afterlife,” and Picard’s laughter when he was stabbed is also critical to the plot.
Speaking of Halloway, he’s fleshed out a bit not just in Q & A but also in the bookend stories “Meet with Triumph and Disaster” and “Trust Yourself When All Men Doubt You” by Michael Schuster & Steve Mollmann in the TNG anthology The Sky’s the Limit, and in the TNG novel The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett, all of which establish that Halloway was in line to command the Enterprise-D, but declined the honor, at which point it went to Picard.
The Nausicaans—named after the Hayao Miyazaki movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, in turn based on a manga of the same name and also derived from a character in The Odyssey by Homer—are seen for the first time in this episode, after being mentioned in “Samaritan Snare.” They’ll go on to appear in “Gambit Part I” and a bunch of times on Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise.
This episode also establishes the game of dom-jot, a combination of pool and pinball. Quark’s Bar on DS9 has a dom-jot table, and it’s a game at which Jake Sisko excels.
Zweller and Batanides both appear in the 11th issue of the Starfleet Academy comic book by Chris Cooper, John Royle, and Tom Wegryzn and in the Section 31 novel Rogue by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin. Batanides also appears in the Lost Era novel Well of Souls by Ilsa J. Bick, the DS9 novel Hollow Men by Una McCormack, the Corps of Engineers novella Echoes of Coventry by Richard C. White, the Destiny novel Lost Souls by David Mack, and the TNG novel Losing the Peace by William Leisner.
Although not seen, Dr. Selar is once again mentioned. She went on a Q-related odyssey of her own at the time of this episode, as chronicled by Terri Osborne in the short story “’Q’uandary” in the New Frontier anthology No Limits.
The Bonestell Recreational Facility was named after hugely influential astronomy artist Chesley Bonestell (after whom the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists named their annual awards for artistic achievement, given every year at the World Science Fiction Convention).
Make it So: “Is there a John Luck Pickerd here?” If you’d told me before February 1993 that a Trek riff on It’s a Wonderful Life—one of my absolute least favorite movies ever—would turn out to be one of TNG’s finest hours, I’d have laughed in your face. Yet, here we are.
And make no mistake, this is a brilliant episode. Ronald D. Moore takes what we know of Picard’s youth from the one bright spot in the otherwise dismal “Samaritan Snare” and extrapolates it to a wonderful examination of how rash choices of youth can affect one’s life. Picard is simply awful at acting like a twenty-one-year-old, which makes it hard to show any kind of camaraderie with the other two twenty-one-year-olds he’s hanging out with (well, except for sleeping with Batanides, which turns out to be a mistake). Best of all is that Moore takes the punchline of the story Picard told Wes, that he laughed when he saw the blade sticking out of his chest, and makes it critical to the episode.
The alternate Enterprise scenes are brilliant; seeing the great and noble Jean-Luc Picard as a middle-management functionary is epic. The moment when he humbly tells La Forge that he’s on his way, ending with a very subservient “sir,” your heart breaks at how the mighty have fallen. (Am I the only one who wanted the astrophysicist to whom he was assistant to be played by Gary Cole talking in a monotone? “I’m gonna need you to go ahead and take this statistical analysis to Commander La Forge, ’kay? That would be great. Thanks!”)
But what makes this episode particularly brilliant is that it embraces the element of Q episodes that makes them sing: putting Stewart and deLancie together and letting them go. The lion’s share of this episode is the two of them together and those scenes are what sell it, culminating in Q’s rant on Picard’s career, listing all the great things he did because he had that near-death experience as a youth. One of deLancie’s strengths is delivering lengthy speeches well, and this is his best since the “You can’t outrun them, you can’t destroy them” speech in “Q Who.” And the pair of them play off each other magnificently.
In addition, director Les Landau plays the transitions beautifully, keeping them quick and subtle and unobtrusive instead of the usual flashiness that we get in Q episodes. Points also for the matching choreography of the two iterations of the fight with the Nausicaans.
Just as with “Ship in a Bottle,” this is something that seems like a bad idea on the face of it, but is executed phenomenally well.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at Philcon 76 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey this weekend. Check out his schedule here. He’s moderating a panel on TNG at 25, alongside Glenn Hauman, Kim Kindya, and Allyn Gibson, on Saturday at noon. Come check it out!
Well, I do love It’s a Wonderful Life, but I don’t know if that relates to my enjoyment of this episode :)
Really, the line you quoted in the ‘I believe I said that’ portion is laugh out loud funny to me, every time I watch it. And I definitely remembering asking my husband, “Oh my goodness, there is probably Q/Picard slash, isn’t there?” after the bed scene, haha. (No, I am not a slash fan). This is what I mean where I say Q is able to come off as really funny here, whereas I found him as rather creepy in True Q.
I guess my only real (minor) nitpicks with this episode is this idea that in order to be successful or bold or whatever you have to be an insuffrable asshole growing up. I can appreciate the theme of understanding that certain experiences in your life really do change you – even for the better, despite the experiences being negative. And I do think it is a pretty cool idea to explore in this episode. But it always grates on me a tiny bit when there is an implication that those kinds of negative experiences are necessary to learn those lessons. But I could be reading a bit much into it. Also, does he really think of his astrophysics officers as dull people in dreary jobs?
Also, the idea of yet another one-note species is a little irritating.
What I am kind of curious about is if the ‘changes’ Picard made in his alternative timeline stuck. Did he actually sleep with Marta or not?
But still, I love this episode, mostly for watching Q and Picard spar with each other.
Unfortunately, I saw this episode when I was around 14-15 and I lay in bed sleepless that night realizing that if I wanted to get ahead I needed to be stabbed in the heart.
Now that I’m older I can see that it’s a technically a good episode but I can’t get over the first impression I had which is to be great you need to be stupid.
I think the issue that I had is the episode is looking backwards on a life while I was looking forward on mine.
@@@@@Lisamarie “What I am kind of curious about is if the ‘changes’ Picard made in his alternative timeline stuck. Did he actually sleep with Marta or not?”
I’m in the camp that it was all an illusion by Q. Mostly because Q seems to have a plan that he is going for the entire time. Q spends the first part pushing Picard to have a regret and then tempting him to change it. I see this as being very manufactured on Q’s Part.
I always got more of a Quantum Leap vibe off of this episode than an It’s a Wonderful Life vibe. I always expected Dean Stockwell to show up holding a handlink.
— Michael A. Burstein
@Lisamarie “I guess my only real (minor) nitpicks with this episode is this idea that in order to be successful or bold or whatever you have to be an insuffrable asshole growing up.”
I wouldn’t say you need to be an asshole to be successful or bold. Picard WAS an asshole, and that asshole would’ve gone on to have the mediocre life that Picard experienced after he avoided the fight. His brush with death was what gave him focus, to get him out of his assholish behavior and to become the great man that he later became.
It was 40 years earlier, not 30:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Picard
I’m in the illusion camp too. I never bought it when Q created some hypothetical reality and said “Oh, this is real” and never explained what that meant. I mean, it’s not as if he’s the most honest guy in the universe. And how the heck is a version of Sherwood Forest out of an Errol Flynn movie “real” in any way? For that matter, we have no proof that Picard actually died on the operating table or that he needed Q to “resurrect” him. If anything, the ending suggests the opposite, since Picard reversed the decision that led to Q “saving” him. Indeed, we have no canonical proof that Q actually visited Picard at all. It’s implausibly elaborate for a dream, but there’s no proof either way.
I liked J. C. Brandy as Marta. She was lovely in a Jodie Fosterish kind of way. Why are there no pictures of her in the recap?
I’m going to guess that Picard must have been admitted to the Academy early or skipped a couple years or something, because if his classmates were played by 21 year olds, I’ll eat my left sandal (as long as some deep fat fries it and covers it in salt and catsup). At least Batanides appearing older lessend the May-December-ishness of their sleeping together.
@7: IMDb gives J.C. Brandy’s birthdate as November 1975, which would’ve made her only 17 when this episode was made. And I think that’s consistent with her appearance at the time. I’m surprised you thought she looked older than 21.
However, Ned Vaughn, who played Zweller, was 28 at the time.
Start frying that sandal, Cloric, because J.C. Brandy was 18 when “Tapestry” was filmed. (Ned Vaughn was, in fact, in his late 20s.)
Never assume. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I have no problem with Ned Vaughn (Zweller) being 28 and in the academy, or for that matter JC Brandy (Marta) being 18 when they graduate- Starfleet Academy seems to be a little less structured than our military academies about who they let in- it seems that as long as they get through the (very wacky) approval process they are let in, so it may be that it is more based upon readiness than age.
Brilliant choice to have Patrick Stewart as his younger self (except that first scene with the white background) and just wipe it away by saying to everyone else he looks 21- if they had cast a younger actor as the 21 year old Picard , it probably would have led this episode to a quick disaster so plus 1 to the writers for explaining away that little problem.
But more than that, this is a great scene because it not only develops the captain and gives us a huge window to his past, but it also is an episode with univeral appeal. After all, who doesn’t look back at the decisions they made when they were younger and wonder about the road not taken, and then maybe wonder where they’d be if they’d taken that road. In Picard’s case we see that the road he did take led him to be captain, and the other road lead him to misery. I do love these episodes with univeral appeal though- no moralizing, just a fascinating take on it.
I know this was never anyone’s intention back when they wrote “Fairpoint” but having Q as a reoccurring nemesis lead to an absolutely brilliant episode.
Thanks to Memory Alpha, I did find Justine (C.) Brandy’s official website:
http://www.justinebrandy.com/Home.html
As Tom Paris might say, “Wow.” And as Tuvok might respond, “Wow, indeed.”
I seem to be out of the mainstream here, not in my appreciation of the episode (which is large; this is certainly one of the 10 best if not the 5 best), but in my belief that Q had absolutely nothing to do with it. To me it feels like the whole thing is happening in Picard’s subconscious with Q as a symbol. Perhaps the biggest clue is that Q doesn’t show up later to gloat. It’s totally out of character for him. If he thought there was any chance that Picard wasn’t sure who taught him this lesson, he’d be there to rub Jean-Luc’s nose in it.
@1,
“Does he really think of his astrophysics officers as dull people in dreary jobs?”
That bugged me about this episode too. Is the message supposed to be that life is only worth living if you’re a senior officer? The middle management are better off dead? I guess that’s why we’re not supposed to care when Red Shirts die by the scores.
I suspect that if you asked the writers, they would say that wasn’t supposed to be it. None the less, I would have appriciated it if we’d seen that Lieutenant Jean-Luc is unhappy because he can’t make friends or something other than just he hasn’t achieved the pinnacle of success.
I’ll be the first to admit when I’m wrong, but WOW, she’s a mature looking 18 year old. Of course, I still get surprised seeing the kids standing outside our local junior high sporting a thicker mustache than I can grow at 36.
@9: Brandy would’ve been 17, not 18. She was reportedly born in November ’75, and the episode was aired in February ’93, which means it was probably filmed around the end of ’92 or the start of ’93.
One other argument in favor of this being a dream rather than the true past is that I don’t completely buy Q’s assertion that nothing Picard changes will have any ripple effects in the future (“You’re not that important”). If that is indeed the case, then who did the Borg assimilate into Locutus? Captain Thomas Halloway? Or, alternatively, in this altered future did Q bow out of interfering with the Enterprise crew so that Encounter at Farpoint was a one parter and Q Who never happened, so The Best of Both Worlds never happened either? (On the other hand, if Q never meddles with Starfleet in seasons 1 and 2, does he still have to step in when Amanda Rogers grows up?)
Yeah, I know, I’m analyzing the (dis)continuity way too much.
Easily one of my favorite TNG episodes, for pretty much all the reason you said. I have to wonder, though, if I’m the only nerd who read this and thought that young Picard was really more of an Aramis. Now older Picard, that’s Athos.
Quoth Lisamarie: “Also, does he really think of his astrophysics officers as dull people in dreary jobs?”
The point isn’t that he’s an astrophysics officer, the point is that he’s in his 50s, has been in Starfleet for decades, and he’s only advanced one grade in rank and is still an assistant astrophysics officer.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
No need to argue about the moral of the episode. Picard makes it clear at the same time he’s explaining the title. “There were many things in my youth that I’m not proud of… they were loose threads… untidy parts of myself that I wanted to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads… I unraveled the tapestry of my life.”
And my interpretation is that it’s not a dream or time travel. Q knows Picard will ultimately survive and is taking the opportunity to torment him with these illusions. It’s consistent with Q’s character – he doesn’t want to meddle with these events or change history, he just wants to score a philosophical point over Picard.
@11,
Indeed.
Regarding astrophysics being “dreary” I think that having been a captain, and probably the best captain in the fleet, *Picard* would certainly view that job as dreary. And this is from his point of view.
Here’s a thought. What if his job was dreary but he had a fantastic family. Which route would he pick?
Heh, well, maybe I just think astrophysics sounds really cool, but point taken. Also, I used to be a grad student so I know how it is – even if the subject is cool – if I found out that at 50 I’d still be a grad student I’d probably go nuts – especially compared to what I do now ;) I think part of it is just that I’ve never been that into things like rank or advancement, as long as I like what I’m doing. But obviously, he likes being a captain and is good at it :)
I never considered that Q wasn’t really there (nor did I think he was ever really dying, I think Q was just bluffing there), and I do agree it probably makes more sense that Q manufactured the whole thing and didn’t REALLY send him back in time. But if that’s the case, how do we know the future isn’t just Q messing with him? Then again, I’m not totally sure what his motive would be, unless it’s just to do what he thinks is a favor for Picard by making him appreciate his mistakes, but in a very Q like way of doing favors.
I absolutely love this episode. Rewatching it is an entertaining though often uncomfortable shot in the arm for me to reevaluate my own life. However this episode always left me confused as to why Ronald D. Moore chose to present Piccard’s attempt to establish a meaningful relationship with Marta as a mistake. Was it that Piccard at 21, at least prior to Q returning Captain Piccard to this individual’s life, was such a player that he couldn’t have established the personal connections and emotional grounding necessary to successfully deepen the relationship? Did Marta interpret the night they spent together as Piccard, one of her closest friends, enjoying nothing more than a night of casual sex, because that’s the only reasonable conclusion that Piccard’s personality could allow?
Maybe I’m looking at it through my own past’s lament on letting someone I cared about get away. In my case, I feel I lacked sufficient boldness, but this episode underscores the advantages of even foolish and hasty boldness over tepid inaction. So I resonate with its message of regret, but this particular moment, at least as I interpret it, seems incongruent with my experience.
@20: “Here’s a thought. What if his job was dreary but he had a fantastic family. Which route would he pick?”
I think the question is somewhat missing the point. It’s not about what job he had. The job is just a symptom. The problem is that in this version of his life, Picard became too cautious, never took chances, and thus never lived up to his potential. It therefore follows that he wouldn’t have taken chances on a personal level either and wouldn’t have found true love or had a family.
@21: “…how do we know the future isn’t just Q messing with him?”
If you mean the Halloway version of the present, it could’ve been just an illusion Q created, but I think it’s likely to be his projection, his simulation, of a possible future. Being essentially omniscient, he could predict with considerable accuracy how the timeline would unfold under many different conditions. But I think it’s likely that, of the various possible futures that could’ve unfolded if Picard hadn’t been stabbed and had been that cautious in his youth, Q probably chose the one that best suited his argument, or weighted the simulation to favor such an outcome — so that it was still a possible future, but not necessarily a guaranteed one.
@22: With Marta, I think the idea was that Picard had always looked back on Marta and entertained a fantasy of what might have happened if he’d acted on his attraction to her, and the point was that his idealized image of “how it could’ve been different” wouldn’t necessarily have turned out that well after all.
deLancie is just spot on in this episode. In addition to a few of the quotes mentioned here (well, you didn’t mention the comedic chomping of the vegetable after his ticking off Picard’s mistakes) I also like the line where Picard is telling him a story and he says, “it gets you right here.” I thinking watching Q (and Picard) in this episode is what makes it great on a rewatch–because quite frankly, after seeing this an uncountable amount of times, I think the parts where he’s interacting with the other ensigns gets a little dreary.
@5: Yes, according to official timelines, it is more like 41 or 42 years, but Keith is going off of the dialogue here, which says 30. Star Trek never does well with matching official timelines when characters are giving timeframes off the cuff.
@16: I was also wondering if Thomas Halloway became Locutus.
Something I thought was funny here: La Forge bugs Picard about the statistical analysis right after the senior officers were called to the Ready Room.
Picard needs to contact Marta and see if she now remembers having sex with him 30 (or 40) years ago, assuming she’s still alive. Though I suppose Q could’ve implanted that memory in her so she thinks they did, even though they actually didn’t because it was all an illusion, or a dream, or whatever.
@24 re: LaForge demanding that report. 1) I always figured Geordi need it for whatever meeting was going on in the Ready Room. 2) Looking back, it seems silly that Lieutenant Picard would be hauling the report around on a PADD when it could be uploaded to LCARS and retrieved by LaForge that way. (Retro nitpick, FTW!) (I know, it gives Picard something bureaucratic to do.)
@26: Characters delivering reports by hand, or keeping different documents on multiple padds, continued to be a conceit of modern Trek series all the way through Enterprise, well after such practices had become outdated in real life. But that’s because TV is a visual medium, and doing it the old-fashioned way is more visually informative and interesting.
It would’ve been funny if Lt. Picard had a full head of hair. Captain Picard is far too big a man to be concerned with baldness, but Lt. Picard, drifting and unfocused in his career, likely continuing with his womanizing ways, probably would go to greater extremes to keep all his locks. At the very least, a toupee.
@27: Yes, I’m fully aware of that, hence my ending comment. Like many things in Trek, the multiple PADDs, etc., are included because of the medium of television and cinema, not because they make any sense from a practical design standpoint.
First, a bit of pedantry (skip this paragraph if you hate pedantry). Picard was not “impaled.” He was stabbed transversely through his body. Impalement would be up through the center of the body. Classic impalement is actually a torture-execution method; I won’t go into details here because they’re too gross.
I share your hatred for It’s a Wonderful Life.
There are two possible interpretations of this episode. One is that you shouldn’t wish for your life to be anything other than what it was, because it made you who you are. If you’re not terribly happy with your current life, however, you may wish you could go back and get stabbed through the heart!
@30: I think the message of the episode is that our mistakes are part of what make us who we are, that it’s better to move forward using what we’ve learned from our mistakes than it is to linger in recriminations and wish we could erase them.
Although, of course, it was mainly Q making a point that it was the younger Picard’s more Q-like qualities that helped make him the man he is. So it was really kind of a self-serving exercise on Q’s part — that is, if you believe it was really Q at all rather than a dream/hallucination.
Wow I am out of the mainstream opinion on this one. I detest this episode. I don’t like the portrayal of the afterlife. I don’t like the Q Picard interplay – it feels tired here to me. I don’t buy the premise of a Picard with no drive to be the best assistant he could be. Ugh. 3 of 10 max.
@32: I profoundly doubt this episode had any intention of presenting that as an actual “afterlife.” We only have Q’s word that Picard was “dead,” and Q is an infamous liar. More likely it was just Q reaching into Picard’s mind and inducing an imagined scenario, or Picard simply hallucinating the whole thing while Crusher was treating him.
On the one hand, they did leave it ambiguous (and they didn’t have to; it would have been easy for Q to leave some sign of his presence). On the other hand, the idea that Picard had a long and complex edge-of-death dream involving Q of all people bringing him to an emotional realization about his life strikes me as significantly less likely than that Q–who is, after all, a meddling omnipotent being with a personal interest in Picard–was in fact there.
If it was a dream, that says new and interesting things about Picard’s subconscious view of Q, given that this is the most helpful Q has ever been at this point in the show, and Picard acknowledges as much at the end.
I tend to agree with above – I think it was Q (or at least that we’re meant to think it was) although never did really believe Picard was truly dying.
As for what Q gets out of it…who knows.
The term everyone is groping for is ‘Near-Death Experience’, or NDE for short.
It’s a fantastic episode, but Picard basically insults people who don’t have the same personality profile as he does. It’s remarkably un-Picard… and un-PC. Picard makes command decisions, but the people Picard derided do the actual work that’s needed to keep things going, especially as statisticians DO put passion into their work. Picard’s insensitivity just seemed wrong.
And that we must all apparently do the same things he does and succeed – which also flies in the face of another season 2 story, where Picard states “You can do all the right things and still fail – it’s called ‘life'”. That’s the Picard that won me over. Now he’s just an arrogant jerk. But in defense, Q is playing a mind game with him… still, if pressure brings about peoples’ true selves, what must Picard really be like?
Kirk adored President Lincoln, as Lincoln tended to value people – and it’s reflected in Kirk, who will risk his life to save others. But which political figure might Picard prefer? Pol-Pot? Mussolini? Granted, that’s harsh as I don’t see Picard revering either of them, but Picard’s insistance on the Prime Directive to let people die has crossed my mind before (“Pen Pals”, “11001001” – albeit before this aspect to Picard would be solidified but he WOULD say “no” to the Bynar request)…
After Best of Both Worlds, this might be my favorite episode.
Let’s not forget that not only did Picard find himself in a completely different career upon his return to the present, he’d also lost all the relationships he’d created with the Enterprise crew. Though he feels the same towards them, they see him as completely different and treat him as such, which is hard pill to swallow on top of finding yourself in a career you have little to no interest in.
i love star trek
Classic episode.
There is a difference between risking your life because you were called a coward and risking your life because someone’s life is at risk (such as saving the life of an ambassador). In fact, the reason for doing so for the first is the opposite of the second.
So the actress who played Marta was 17 when Patrick Stewart sucked face with her making this episode? I dunno, that kinda weirds me out, but no more so than the sight of the implied-nude Picard in bed with Q….. >shivers
This is one of my all time favorite episodes! If you like it I recently wrote a post on my blog inspired by this episode and it’s lesson…
http://tinyurl.com/p8cmaye
I’d love for you to check it out!
I fail to see the appeal of this episode to so many. In order to be a success in life one must bar-hop and get into fights? Sleep with as many women/men as possible? Be a jerk first, then learn a ‘valuable life lesson’ and grow up? As for Picard’s choosing to return to his ‘death,’ well really not much of a choice is it? Between being the Captain of the USS Enterprise and the hero of the Federation and being some anonymous nobody ‘who never took a chance,’ wow really hard decision to make. Tasha Yar ‘took a chance’ and died for it, an ensign in another episode ‘took a chance’ on infiltrating Cardassian space and died for it. Fairly sure those parts of their personal tapestries are ones they’d like to get a do-over on. This episode is a textbook example of ‘no mustn’t change the past in any way the results are always horrible’ meme. An episode in which Picard had a different life that was as good or better than his first, but in which he chose to return to this one, that would have been challenging. As it is, Tapestry is The Emperor’s New Clothes of ST:TNG.
Those of you who commented that this episode somehow communicates that you have to be wild and fight in your youth to be successful are missing it. Picard realizes that he is the man he is today because of ALL of his past experiences and lessons. Not just the events where he acted responsibly or honorably. ALL of it is woven into the tapestry of his life. Living life with regrets about the past does nothing for your present, and attempting to undo events in your past can only undo who you are today. Maybe that helps. BTW this is definitely a Top 10 all-time episode, great review.
I’ve never seen an episode of television drama that had such a tenuous
handle on its staring character.
Like the other fella said he was driven from child hood to be a star fleet
captain spending nights staring at the stars and days aceing school and
wining the blue ribbon.
he wins the academy marathon as a freshman and as the only first year to
EVer do it gets the undying respect of admiral hanson.
He then stands up a smoking hot woman in his early star fleet career
(manhiem’s wife)due to his utter commitment to the job.This is not a man
who was coasting through anything at any point in his life,ever.He
certainly didn’t need a violent knifing to get him to the captains chair.
The worst part is ron d moore later said its was a parallel of his life
,dropping out of college and somehow getting into writing for star trek .So
the mistakes in his life somehow putting you in to the right path(ie
picards fight with the bon jovie predator clones/nausicans.
So the premise is this obsessed,driven, marathon winner who wanted to be an
explorer from childhood would have somehow,magically been a loser if he
hadn’t been skewered by alien heavy metal fans and taught some humility
???
This ep ranks up their with Masks for worst episode ever.
good god ron be ashamed
@50: I think you’re misreading what “Tapestry” said. It was saying that Picard would’ve amounted to less if he had been as conservative in his 20s as he was in his 60s. It began with Picard looking back on the hotheaded, driven youth he’d been and regretting his mistakes, wishing he’d had the benefit of the maturity and wisdom and caution he had in the present, so Q let him go back and relive those decisions with his modern mindset. And because he played it safer the second time around, because he was less driven than he had really been, he amounted to less.
dregj: Christopher is correct. In fact, your argument is the same argument that the episode itself is making.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“dregj: Christopher is correct. In fact, your argument is the same argument that the episode itself is making.”
No. The argument Tapestry supposedly makes is nullified by how that argument is presented. Frankly, John de Lancie’s ST: TNG comic concerning Jean-Luc Picard and his little brother did the job far better than the dreck that is Tapestry. The short-lived tv show Twice In A Lifetime and The Batman animated series episode Seconds also did better than Tapestry.
Just wanted to add my comment that it’s one of my favourite STTNG episodes. For me, the message is well presented and my interpretation is fairly simple: you have to fail and do stupid things so that you can learn from them and improve. If you avoid failures and stupidities at all costs, you’ll be a very boring person. :)
Some people seem to be missing the point. You determine your life’s course. It’s not “It’s better to be traversed through the heart to become captain,”, it’s “If you want to succeed, there are inherent risks you have to take. I disagree that Picard continued womanizing after he walked away from the fight, b/c that Picard had the style and memories of the older, present-day Picard. The experience of getting stabbed made Picard as Q said, realize how important life is and how risk is part of the game if you intend to get anywhere. It’s not saying that astrophysics officers are dreary or their job is tedious and without meaning. For the present-day Picard, he’s seeing all these people through his lens of command. Like Sito Jaxa and Sam Lavelle in “Lower Decks,” when the senior staff go into the conference room, the junior officer Picard is left behind when Riker and Troi are called. As Q said “You’re not that important,” everyone else in that universe was the same: Riker was commander, Troi was ship’s counselor, Data was lieutenant commander, LaForge was chief engineer, Worf was lieutenant. Only Picard b/c of his conservative, risk-averse mentality as the older Picard, is not the same. Picard’s personality is as Riker said in “Time Squared” “One of your strengths is your ability to evaluate the dynamics of a situation and then take a definitive, preemptive step, to take charge.” In this universe, Q said “He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda…” A completely different personality. It would be like the world’s top neurosurgeon, with all his knowledge and experience, suddenly waking up and finding himself an assistant orderly. There is absolutely nothing wrong with assistant orderlies, they’re crucial (as I unfortunately know from personal experience) in a hospital and very important to assist patients. But the world’s top neurosurgeon, with all his previous knowledge and experience, will not be happy or do a good job as an assistant orderly. That’s the difference. Everyone has things in their past they want to change. But unless your situation is really crappy, such as you’re in prison for a violent crime, usually the experiences you had are vital for you being where you are now. Embrace it.
Q probably saved Picard from another embarrassment when he popped into Crusher’s office towards the end. Lieutenant Picard probably shouldn’t be calling her “Beverly”.
I like the touch that Troi and Riker said they’d talk to La Forge about Picard transferring but since Picard annoyed La Forge by not delivering that report he’d probably reject Picard. Even this lame avenue for advancement is blocked.
Great episode. I loved seeing Picard in the old-school movies uniform. I loved the idea that he was this Kirk-esque womanizer (though somewhat less successful) in his “misspent youth.”
Probably my favorite part of the episode, though, was when Riker struggles to come up with something nice to say about LTJG Picard and finally settles on “… punctual.” Frakes perfectly nailed the delivery of that line.
You have to wonder about all the other Starfleet officers in that bar who never made the slightest move to intervene when they saw three young ensigns mixing it up with a gang of Nausicans
You know upon seeing Tapestry, my mind draws to comparisons between this and the missed opportunity of having then 12 year old Lion-O be the young Jean-Luc Picard, WilyKit to his Marta, and WilyKat to his Cortan. That would have expanded the friendship between the Thunderkittens and Lion-O being best friends growing up just Picard did with his two best friends. That would have been interesting in Thundercats.
I have come to add to a debate that is schisming the TNG fans!
Both takes on this are simultaneously present in this episode.
A.) The tapestry of your life would unravel if you tried to nullify your trials and tribulations (you’re welcome for this almost reference to a fav DS9 adventure).
B.) The lines written for the very few scenes we see of Picard’s new life do disregard the work that non-senior officers do. “To get ahead you have to stand out” [paraphrase] and criticism for not being noticeable are classic American capitalist values delivered by our senior officers here. I would expect the egalitarian quasi-socialist fantasy of ST to provoke questions from the senior staff like “Are you meeting the goals that fulfil your life, Jean Luc? What areas of the ship or teams can offer you a chance to contribute more? Let’s work on this over the next x stardates and reflect at that time on what has changed for you.”
It’s just kinda a sloppy episode that doesn’t square with the blue ribbon achiever Picard we know from Family. It’s got fantastic acting, but a delusion of CEO get-aheady-ness that is fundamental to productive workers contributing more of their personal labour resources to the system.
Love y’all xoxo
@60/Ronnie D.: Great point. I’ve never liked the episode, and this may be one of the reasons why.
(This episode was on H&I TV last night.)
If you have kids, like me–you can’t lament a single solitary thing that you did before your kids were born, because if any little thing about your life had changed prior to their conception, your kids would not exist. You might have kids, but they would be different kids. No one would wish their kids out of existence (even when they’re getting on your nerves). This episode would not have worked had Picard had kids.
I was disappointed near the end when Lt. JG Picard went to see Dr. Crusher, but was instead greeted by Q. When he walked into sickbay calling for her by her first name, I wanted to see how she would have reacted. Considering the different path his life took after not being stabbed through the heart, it’s quite possible he never would have met Jack Crusher nor Beverly, let alone being close friends with them. It would have been interesting to see how she would have reacted to some subordinate whom she may only have had passing knowledge of, addressing her in the familiar.
I’ve never read Q & A, so I don’t know if their relationship was ever established in that timeline or not, so forgive my ignorance in advance ;)
I’m not sure if anyone else has remarked on it before but the way the main ensigns, basically the two friends of Picard, act and are depicted felt reminiscent of TV/movies portrayal of young 1950s American servicemen. Maybe it’s because they refer to Jean-Luc as “Johnny” and their hairstyles? Anyway, I found that depiction to be cute, and ties into the whole nostalgia factor for Picard.
And I had no idea that this episode was so controversial with Star Trek fans and wasn’t universally loved by everyone! Count me in as being in the camp that really enjoyed it. As others have more eloquently stated than myself, the message here is not a knock on the everyday working schlubs that aren’t the CEO’s or the ambitious power brokers, it’s saying that just for Picard’s particular situation he wouldn’t be satisfied if he ended up as anything less than the dynamic decision-making captain that we all know and love. Showing Picard in his youth womanizing and getting into his fights is just an effective way to contrast with the mature, deliberate and considerate Captain Picard, plus it just makes for better dramatic viewing in the visual medium that is television.
@13: I think the point is that Picard, specifically, would not enjoy a routine analytical job – not that such jobs are undesirable or unpleasant for everyone. Nor is everyone in such a job necessarily unambitious – but if you are (like me, unlike Picard) some who does analysis and loves it, your ambitions may be directed at being a better analyst, rather than at command.
I can think of plenty of jobs I’d be miserable doing without necessarily assuming that people in those jobs are unhappy and unfulfilled. (There are always construction workers around my office building. Sometimes I think “those poor guys, working out in the heat/rain/cold” – and then wonder if they’re thinking about us and going, “those poor suckers, having to work a boring desk job all day”.)
@65, I agree with what you’re saying and to harp again on my earlier point, there’s nothing wrong with being a dependable and “punctual” (oh, Riker! Lol) assistant astrophysicist in an elite organization on the flagship of the Federation, but that’s as far as you can get from the ambitions and dreams of Picard. Another person could be perfectly happy with that career, but it’s not for Jean-Luc. So Riker and Troi are appropriately taken aback when this alternate universe Picard suddenly springs on them his desire for command. They’re not thumbing their noses at him because he’s some lowly 50-something year old assistant astrophysicist, but because nothing in his background or character has shown him as deserving of what he’s now asking for.
@66/GarretH: But I think the fact that they couldn’t think of any way to praise his work other than “punctual” shows that he wasn’t excelling in his job, just doing it. Instead of being a man who’d started out bold and daring and learned to be more tempered and cautious with age, the alternate Picard had been cautious from the start and thus hadn’t taken the risks that let him excel, regardless of the specific job he was in. Q’s point was that Picard should appreciate the more brash, Q-like qualities he’d had in his youth.
I could have sworn I’d posted on this episode a year or so ago, but oh well.
This episode is one of my favorites, it’s a great “kick in the pants” episode. It’s widely-reported that “The First Duty” has been (maybe still is) shown to cadets at the Air Force academy. Well, that’s not a bad choice, but as someone at the midpoint of a career as a one-time Navy, now Air Force reserve officer, I would show Tapestry alongside First Duty, were that in my hands. I’m not sure it would have made a difference in my career. I’m not sure I would have been happier if I’d found my way on to the “golden” track. But I do see where I could have made different choices, and the foibles of LT Picard resonate with me to some degree. I can say I never backed down from a challenge – I wasn’t the sort of do-nothing the alternate Picard seems to be – but the unfortunate truth is that for someone of my temperament, standing out and rising to the top is a challenge.
I agree with a lot of the comments above: it does paint lower, non-command officers in a dreary light; you do have to wonder why, if the bolder Jean-Luc is more successful, his pushing the relationship with Marta further is a failure; it does give the impression that to be successful, you have to be an arrogant, bellicose prick. But hey, not everyone is cut out to be the boss. That said, even the happy worker bee types may be called upon to take charge now and then. I’m not sure what to make of the thing with Marta. He ruined a great friendship? With someone he apparently never saw after he shipped out anyway? I don’t know, I guess on that one, I would have liked the idea that they could have been more. Not in terms of hooking up (what does that alone really add?), but it would be nice to imagine Picard having a real love in his life. I guess that might be the one weak part of the episode: what’s so special about the friendship he ruined is hard to tell.
On the point of the successful Picard “needing” his arrogance and cockiness, needing to be stabbed in the heart, I guess I have my own take on it. I don’t think the intent is for the arrogance and cockiness being enshrined; I think the key piece of it all is when Q says “That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is or how important each moment must be.” And “He learned to play it safe – and he never, ever, got noticed by anyone.” In particular, the “safe” part. It goes back to Q Who, where Q says “It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.” It’s the fact that the canonical Picard took risks, didn’t back down from challenges, but was tempered by his brush with death. It made him realize that life wasn’t something to be wasted, but neither was to be put under a bushel and never risked.
Life is full of platitudes like “don’t back down,” or “be true to yourself.” It’s really hard to present the message of Tapestry to someone in an up-and-coming role. There will be some who, in error, will take it in the “be arrogant, take stupid chances” light that has been discussed here. But, especially in these risk-adverse times, there also has to be someone who’ll push people to take a chance, be willing to risk something real. That mentality is not what you could call “safe,” but one of the few guarantees I’ve found in life is that exclusively playing it safe is the quickest way to mediocrity.
This is an episode that I don’t remember that well from the first time I saw it. It may have only registered as a 7 or 8 / 10, but as I’ve gotten older and found more of a sense of urgency, it’s shot up to one of my favorite re-watches. It reminds me that, even though I’m well past the wide-eyed Ensign stage of my life (and I was an Ensign once), there are still many opportunities, and that making them most of them involves risk. I don’t think I’ll ever be something comparable to a starship captain, but there’s still a lot I can do if I take the chance and set myself to it. It’s easy to get comfortable in a bland routine, but there’s nothing in Trek that’s opened my eyes and made me think about what I’m doing with my life quite like Tapestry. For that, I give it a standing 10.
@68 – Thoughtful, pleasure to read. Thanks for taking the time
@RaySea2387 (Comment 17) — Maybe Young Picard is Charlie Sheen Aramis, and TNG Picard is Jeremy Irons Aramis.
What convinces me that it’s a complete fabrication by Q and not a “simulation” of some kind, is that very conversation with Riker and Troi. I wouldn’t expect them to be so dismissive of the aspirations of a junior officer that was clearly competent but undistinguished. Riker would start talking about what achievements would be necessary to get onto a command track–what qualifications to earn, evaluations to pass. He might speak realistically about how difficult they are and how few people qualify, but he wouldn’t discourage him from trying. Troi–(as RDM already mentioned) would offer to work with him. Neither would tell him to give up. For that matter, Troi should have been startled at the difference between Lieutenant Picard’s reputation and what she sensed from his feelings. She would feel the emotions of a man very different than Lieutenant Picard.
So it’s all a sham. That was just a moment for Q to needle him using the faces of his friends.
@70/tjareth: That’s an interesting observation, except for one thing. It was meant to be a representation of what Picard’s life would have been like if he’d played it safe all along. So it was simulating how Troi would react to that version of Picard, not the real one. If she could sense the difference, it would defeat the purpose of showing him “This is who you would be in that other life.”
Point taken, though I’m still convinced without it that it was more puppetry than simulation.
I agree that this is a wonderful episode. The moment Picard walks towards “god” after his death and discovers that it’s Q is priceless. Count me among those who believe that Q really transported Picard back in time and created an alternate timeline for him. It was mentioned several times before that Q is perfectly capable of doing this. This interpretation gives the experience much more weight than a mere illusion.
The only nitpick I have is a certain disbelief that a more responsible and mature Ensign Picard would still be Lt. Junior Grade after 30 years of service. I can see that he would not have been in command of a starship without the character traits that led him fight the Nausicaans and without the resulting near death experience. But with his intelligence, thirst for knowledge, dedication to his work and ambition (remember as how ambitious and competitive the adolescent Picard is described in “Familiy”) he would still have made a career, e.g. as a science officer.
@73/ThomasE:
I have to agree that Picard still should have been more successful than he evidenty became in this version of himself. However, it wouldn’t have been as poignant an episode if he had been depicted that way.
Great episode but the one thing that irked me was Picard’s line that he’d rather die than live out a live as a mid-level grunt on the Enterprise. I know it’s supposed to mean that he doesn’t want to live as this other Picard, but it comes off as an insult to all the junior level officers in Starfleet and since this is supposed to be an allegory, it seems like an insult to the vast majority of people in the real world who work similar jobs.
And the episode only works if it really did happen and wasn’t just an illusion from Q. If you have the powers of a God, why would you create an illusion? It’s not Q’s style to fake it.
@75/Tommy Tutone:
I never took it as an insult to the lower ranks, whatsoever. We all have an idea what is fulfilling to us and some people enjoy being simply a cog in a machine. I personally would never be happy as a leader type. It doesn’t mean I’m not motivated to be the best I can be at what I do. Since Riker and Troi deal with personnel reviews, they would know that Lt. Picard is not happy with his lot in life, but doesn’t seem to have the strength of will to grow beyond what he is. So again, it’s not Picard trashing people in his position, it’s about his own expectations for himself that never grew beyond Assistant Astrophysics officer in the altered reality.
@75/Tommy Tutone: “And the episode only works if it really did happen and wasn’t just an illusion from Q. If you have the powers of a God, why would you create an illusion?”
Key word, “if.” Just because the Q claim to be omnipotent doesn’t mean we should trust their word. Remember “Who Watches the Watchers,” and Picard’s speech about how even a bow and arrow would look like the work of a god to people who’d never seen one? The Q are more advanced than us, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re infinitely advanced. I never believed that the Q were really as all-powerful as Q boasted they were.
Besides, Q’s whole schtick is illusion and deception. He’s a trickster. His very first appearance had him jumping between different historical costumes, and of course even his human appearance is just another costume, another illusion.
If someone asked me what my favorite episode of TNG is, well I’d find it impossible to give one answer. Just too many great ones and my personal favorite probably changes based on what I’ve watched most recently. But I think “Tapestry” would be the one that most often leaps to mind first. The review and the comments have thoroughly covered all the things that make it great, so I have nothing really to add. Just personally, it’s the combination of Q (who I always love), time travel (of a sort, but that’s a theme I always enjoy), getting a look at Picard’s past, the lesson he learns and the feeling I get that this is the point Q kind of tips his hand that he’s actually on humanity’s side and does what he does ultimately for the benefit of the people he torments, and those two scenes in the white space especially. Such fantastic acting in those parts and amazing, concise storytelling. And the Nausicaans, with their thuggish laughter and suggestion that humans have no gramba. I just intensely love every moment of this one.
This has nothing to do with the episode, but just an observation on how much the look of the show changed at this point. The last scene that features Picard and Riker having a discussion in the observation lounge is very brightly lit – almost painfully boring. In HD, you can actually see the set’s warts. Compare that to previous seasons where the lighting is dark and much more moody (especially Season 1). And why did they remove all the Enterprise models from the interior wall??
@79/Electone: “And why did they remove all the Enterprise models from the interior wall??”
Apparently the lounge set was redressed for use in The Undiscovered Country between seasons 4 & 5 of TNG, and the producers kept the new wall piece that was built for the movie. Maybe they thought it looked better, or maybe it was just easier to leave it there. I kind of wonder if maybe it was to obscure the fact that the rough Enterprise-C model doesn’t exactly match how it ended up looking in “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
This episode aired today here in the UK and, as is my wont, i referred to the rewatch notes soon after.
Now in answer to krad’s question “Am I the only one who wanted the astrophysicist to whom he was assistant to be played by Gary Cole talking in a monotone?”
I don’t know whether you were, but I first read this not as Gary Cole but as Gary Coleman and now I can’t unthink it.
So having coincidentally reached this episode on my TNG rewatch a week and a half after the end of Picard season 2, I must say that this premise–Q helps Jean-Luc come to terms with the demons of his past using time travel–works a lot better as a single one-hour episode.
I always felt this episode could be a two parter and they might have given Junior Lieutenant Picard a bit more dignity and made it more of a temptation for Jean Luc (I know it’s not a temptation story at all). Imagine for example if Junior Lieutenant Picard the Astrophysicist had actually married Captain Marta and she was the Captain of the Enterprise? That he’d chosen to be safe and sedate rather than dashing but that had opened new opportunities for him? Perhaps resulting in children.
Perhaps it’s because I think that Star Trek shouldn’t be so hard on those who don’t choose dashing lives.
Picard is the kind who would but it would be better to explore the alternative, I feel.
@83/C.T. Phipps: “That he’d chosen to be safe and sedate rather than dashing but that had opened new opportunities for him?”
That would’ve defeated the purpose of the story they were telling.
C.T.: Christopher is correct, your proposed alternative would ruin the entire purpose of “Tapestry,” which was to show that the people we become is formed by the people we were, and that making mistakes as a youth is sometimes a route to becoming a better older person. It has absolutely nothing to do with choosing “dashing lives,” whatever that means, it has to do with being able to learn from your mistakes — but also the teaching value of making those mistakes in the first place.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think I actually have to downgrade my previous acclaim for this episode. I’ll always still find it very entertaining, with the acting by all of the main players and guests, the repartee between Picard and Q, and a look at Picard as a fresh Starfleet Academy graduate. But what I’ve come to find implausible is the characterization of Picard in this episode because it conflicts with what’s previously been established. He’s always been driven to succeed and reach his goals since he was a boy and in the academy (“Family”, “The Best of Both Worlds”), and recognized he was too cocky when he was at the top of his class (“Samaritan Snare”). So it just doesn’t follow with me that just by trying to avoid getting stabbed in the heart this one time that he’ll never take chances or risks in his career. He simply just wanted not to die because of a mishap with his artificial heart. In “Samaritan Snare” Picard even remarks that he became the disciplined officer that he was as a direct result of his foolishness that led him to get stabbed. So he acknowledged that that incident needed to happen before he wisened up. To suddenly make Picard have regrets in this episode is just justification for this episode to even exist and really is paralleling writer Ron Moore’s own personal experiences. I’d rate this one a 6.
# 87.
I don’t think the logic is faulty at all – when it’s taken into the context of really being about Picard as a repressed, disciplined, perfection-oriented person who is ashamed of that one incident in his past. He literally carries a mistake in his heart, and that bothered him. (See the lengths he went to hiding it from everyone in “Samaritan Snare.”)
It’s not about the mindset that it takes to achieve success in life. It’s about learning from mistakes and openly acknowledging them in adulthood in order to look back and realize you can change for the better as a person, no matter how brash and stupid someone was in their youth. And our youths are very stupid. That’s what an education looks like.
Forget ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ I just got through ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ and at one point in the last half hour or so I exclaimed out loud, “Now hold on just a minute here, this is that one episode Star Trek: The Next Generation!”