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| Picard's greatest regret - the one that almost killed him. |
An energy beam during a sudden ambush causes a malfunction in Picard's artificial heart, effectively leading to a massive coronary. Dr. Crusher works frantically, but her efforts appear to be for naught...
Leaving Picard in a white void, with only one companion: Q. His old adversary welcomes him to "the afterlife," and pushes him to reveal any regrets. It doesn't take much prodding before Picard relives the story of how he got his artificial heart, letting his youthful ego lead him into a fight with three Naussicans. Picard observes that, given the chance to repeat that moment, he would behave much differently.
Q grants him his wish, returning him to his days as an ensign fresh out of the Academy, when he and two friends visiting a recreation facility while awaiting their first assignments. Q offers Picard a bargain: If Picard can manage to avoid the fight, then Q will return him to the present to go on with his life with a real heart instead of an artificial one. "You'll die," Q assures him, "Just at a later date."
But even with Q honoring the exact terms of his arrangement, Picard soon discovers just how much of a difference a tiny moment in time can make to a life...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: This episode is absolutely focused on Picard: The Picard we know, the Picard of the past, and the Picard who might have been. As such, it is a showcase for Patrick Stewart, who is at the center of virtually every minute and is as good here as he was in Chain of Command. In some ways his work here may be even more impressive, because Picard is not reacting to torture or deprivation, but simply to the twists and turns of life. I particularly like the way Stewart plays the scenes of "Lieutenant, Junior Grade Picard" in the altered present. His bearing is a little more clenched, a little more hesitant and nervous, making him feel genuinely diminished. It's a subtle difference in performance, with nothing showy that draws attention, but there's enough of a difference to make him feel smaller on screen as he interacts with one-time subordinates who are now his superiors.
Q: This episode's Q is very different from the Q of several other episodes. He isn't really stirring up trouble. His powers give Picard access to an altered reality. Beyond that, he is content to sit back and watch, occasionally popping up to provide some wry commentary about Picard's success or lack thereof. "You've managed to get slapped by one woman, get a drink thrown in your face by another and alienate your two best friends. Doing pretty well so far." John de Lancie gives a suitably restrained performance, reflecting Q's more restrained role, but still lets enough of Q's impishness shine through to add a note of irreverence to the proceedings.
THOUGHTS
Tapestry is widely regarded as Star Trek's best "Q" episode. I would say instead that it is the best episode to feature the character of Q. Much as in Season Two's excellent Q Who, Q is not the focus of the story but rather its catalyst. The story is about Picard - Q simply enables it to happen.
The story itself is nothing too innovative. The basic template is a direct lift from the last third of It's a Wonderful Life. Only instead of seeing how the world would be like without him in it, Picard sees what his life would have been had he done a few key things differently. As with George Bailey, Picard is shown that those results would not have been what he would have liked.
The story itself is a worthy one, but Ronald D. Moore's excellent script makes it into something special. We all have certain things in our lives we wish we could do differently - Whether it's the girl we wish we had kissed or the stupid, thoughtless thing we wish we hadn't done. Moore's script doesn't only have Picard change his life by "playing it safe" with the Naussicans. Picard also avoids playing it safe by engaging in a romance with pretty young Marta Batanides (J. C. Brandy) with whom he remained "just friends" in reality. The results of fixing both regrets are the same: Things are made worse - palpably so, as we see when the narrative cuts forward to Picard's new, far drearier present.
Credit also to the script for taking an incident from Picard's past that had previously been mentioned in the episode Samaritan Snare and fleshing it out to a full story. We see clearly what Picard has not - That his brash young self really wasn't at fault. In Samaritan Snare, when he talked about this incident with Wesley, he clearly remembered himself as having instigated the fight. He remembers it that way again at the start of this episode, telling Q that he "picked a fight." But when we see it play out, we clearly recognize that the Naussicans are spoiling for a fight.
To avoid that fight, Picard has to do more than merely behave responsibly and with restraint. He has to go beyond what even the older Picard would do, suppress his own nature to actually be the coward the Naussicans accuse him of being. Only then does he avoid the brawl. It's that act, in which Picard goes against not only his nature then but his nature now, that I think makes the "altered present" scenes feel believable. To avoid getting stabbed, Picard has to become a different person, and so he is shown the future of that person. It's a future he wants no part of, the future of a man who "never got noticed by anyone."
With a sharp script, better than average guest performances, and Patrick Stewart yet again showing his versatility in a role that he now wears like a comfortable suit, Tapestry is an outstanding episode. One of the series' best.
Overall Rating: 10/10.
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