Pulling the Thread

Story: Tapestry
Written By: Ronald D. Moore
Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Year: 1993

“Tapestry” is not only in the Top 5 best episodes of TNG, it is probably in the Top 5 of the whole franchise, if not it is definitely in the Top 10. It is a terrific episode, and there isn’t a dull or bad moment in the whole 45 minutes.
Picard is wounded, and his artificial heart is going to fail, he then moves into a white light, could he be dying, dead, heading to some kind of afterlife? Then he meets god: Q. It is the best return Q has had since “Q Who”.

Q tells Picard he would have survived had he had a real heart, and Picard laments what he considers to be a bad decision his youth, and Q gives Picard the chance to fix this “mistake”. So Picard gets to relive this period in his youth and stop the fight that caused him to lose his heart…then he awakes on the Enterprise…in a blue uniform…as a lieutenant. He of course learns a lesson, that by playing it safe he stunted his life and his career…he didn’t make the mistake to learn from, and he didn’t learn that occasionally taking risks is good.

It is about regret, about how even the moments we regret get us to the place we are today, and sometimes those regrets are part of what make us who we are.

NEXT TIME: Mogh Alive?