It’s all Spock ever wanted!
I agree with this. The episode suffered from a heavy-handedness that plagues the entire series. It wasn’t enough to make Picard a science officer, they had to demote him to the lowest rank possible, and keep him there into his middle-age. “Take an interesting premise and shackle it with extreme hyperbole and condescension” is the running theme for ST:TNG.
When I watch this episode, I can’t help but think if there is a lost TNG episode that no one has ever seen, the premise of which is exactly the same as Tapestry, only it’s Q giving the same chance to the Enterprise’s Captain Reginald Barclay and Barclay in the end decides he’s happier as humdrum Lt. Barclay.
Because basically, that’s what this episode is about- Picard doesn’t want to be Barclay.
No one wants to be Reginald Barkley.
Not my favorite episode, but a very good one, esp. for its insights into who Picard is, and how he came to be that way.
Agreed.
Also agreed.
He was a lieutenant (junior grade), not an ensign. It’s just one paygrade up from ensign, true, but he’s still a commissioned officer and not in Starfleet’s basement.
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I don’t think Q was actually present in that episode, it was all Picard’s delusion.
If Q was present, he was just fucking with Picard, he didn’t really show him the accurate future based on his decision to not fight, he created a present day Enterprise out of whole cloth, similar to the way he did the Robin Hood scenario, to prove his point.
I’m okay with the idea that it’s normal to have regrets about decades-old stupidities but if you could go back and undo them, you’d be changing your formative experiences and be replaced by an alternate - possibly quite dramatically alternate - version of yourself.
That said, for dramatic purposes, Picard’s alternate life had to be worse in some readily-graspable fashion (he could not, for example, have turned into a successful archaeologist, as might be suggested by the episode “The Chase” - because this might seem a perfectly acceptable alternative), and for budgetary reasons, his alternative life would have to be filmed on the Enterprise set (meaning he would still be working there in some capacity) and involve interacting with established TNG characters like Riker and Troi. Given these constraints, I can’t feel too much concern that alternate-Picard is some kind of “loser”. There just isn’t time in the episode to craft a radical alternate history that in some ways might actually look better than Picard-prime’s life, i.e. he got married, had children, didn’t have to spend his days dressed in maroon spandex etc.
Q was just trying to teach Picard a lesson
the whole series is just Q helping Picard grow
That if you can do it all over again you should immediatly bone any girl you regretted not doing.
Not only was he a low rank, but judging by Worf’s reaction to his mistake, he wasn’t a very good officer either.
Q was definitely in the episode. Best part was when he comes to the door with flowers for, “…a John, Luck, Pick-kard?”
Just to be clear, (which you may have understood), I wasn’t claiming that John DeLancie was not in the episode, or that he was not ostensibly playing Q. I just beleive all the appearences were Picard’s delusion, and he knows Q well enough to imbue his delusionQ with Q’s personailty. It just works better for me as Picard’s subconcious working out his regrets on his own using a familiar fantastic element.
This episode ranks in my top ten for TNG. Maybe 8th or 9th.
It makes a valid point that natural leaders are risk takers and somewhat impulsive. Highly confident and they rarely second guess decisions after they’re made. Those character traits unraveled when Picard choose to live a calmer, stable, and sensible life. He became just another crewman. A interesting life lesson for the Captain.
Imagine Patton without the ivory handled revolvers, swagger, and ego. Just another Mechanized Infantry Officer, would he have inspired troops to do the extraordinary? Made the dash (in terrible weather conditions) across France to save encircled troops at the Battle of the Bulge? I think not. True leaders have that edge that’s hard to define. Their flaws are part of their greatness that can also be their undoing.