Do you believe that Captain Picard truly died in "Tapestry?" Or did Q intercept him while he still had a tiny speck of life?
Generally, one would assume that "tiny specks of life" don't allow the victim to have complex and coherent fantasies; the brain not only shuts down for good pretty easily, but also starts slacking early on in the process. So Picard's vitality probably played no role in what transpired, and Q took care of everything in the "afterlife"; Picard may have been happily alive, teetering on the edge, or completely dead during the proceedings, and we simply can't tell. Did Q have something to do with Picard dying in the first place? Perhaps not in the sense of actively putting him in harm's way on Lenara - but more like noticing that Picard was seriously wounded in the line of duty, and stepping in, pushing Picard past the edge, and having fun with the corpse for a while. Crusher doesn't exactly act as if Picard's death would have been inevitable or his recovery a miracle... So if Picard really was dead for a while, Q may have been a necessary extra ingredient there. There's also the possibility that there was no Q, and that Picard just had a funny dream. After all, this would be the only Q episode without the capital Q in the title... Timo Saloniemi
Or that what Picard perceived as Q was really a portion of his own psyche, the equivalent of the parts he didn't like himself and regretted. In which case Q was the ideal personification.
Ultimately, if it really was Q, then Q outright told Picard he was dead, I might be missing something, but for all his mischief, I never remember Q actually lying to Picard ever. He threw him into elaborate fantasies, & games, but he never told him something untrue, to my recollection He might have died, & Q knew they'd bring him back, & used the event to stick his nose in
Well, if Picard truly died, then God must've allowed Q to do this. Although, of course, Q claimed to be God, which shows Q's massive ego!
I'm pretty sure that Picard was only mostly dead. And as we all know, "there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do."
Peter David's "Q-Squared" takes the position that Q did save Picard, or at least, establishes that the episode did in fact happen as we saw. Granted, it's a novel and thus not canon, but I'm perfectly fine with the episode on its own either way. I kind of like the ambiguity of it all.
I don't recall the exact wording, but I do remember Picard conversing with Q, and Q referring to the events of "Tapestry," only to have Picard's otherwise memorable response: "That actually... happened?"
Yesterday's Enterprise/Tapestry/Parallels whetted my appetite for alternate realities aboard the Enterprise. I'm grateful DS9 played around with the mirror universe. I wish TNG had done the same thing.
What, all on his own he had a dream of doing the girl he never got for real, punching a pal he always hated, and reliving the glorious event that secured his reputation as a really heartless badass? Unbelievable! Timo Saloniemi
This was one of my favorite TNG episodes, but I haven't seen it in years. First, I think you need to define "dead". If it's when your heart stops, then Zombie Picard is captain of the Enterprise, but I think Carcazoid's mostly dead answer is really the most accurate. He was critically injured, in a coma, but not dead. Q really liked Picard, for a inferior being. Q could probably have had a sense of Picard at any moment and sensed that he was near death and wanted to see him. Picard treated him humanely when he had lost his powers and he probably developed an affection for Picard. Maybe like a researcher has a favorite rat, or maybe as a friend. Either way as Picard lay near death, Q visited and asked Picard about what he was regretting, Picard thought if he still had his own flesh heart instead of a replacement he wouldn't be dying now and Q allowed him to let go of that false recrimination. So, it may have been a dream to Picard's sense, but I think Q would have found it interesting. And I think Beverly saved his life, but any competent Starfleet doctor would have been able to do so.
OK, pardon the thread revival, but it was a toss-up between this or starting a new thread. Just watched this episode for the first time in years yesterday. To my knowledge it's a highly regarded episode among fans, but it falls a little short for me. My main issue is that Q practically herds Picard into changing his past, offering him little choice otherwise (You won't just die, you'll have to spend eternity with me!). Thus the motivation for Picard changing his past isn't Picard's own, and it lacks the dramatic oomph of, say, It's a Wonderful Life, in which the protagonist is ready to kill himself and thinks that everyone would have been better off if he'd never been born. Of course, if it wasn't really Q, but all in Picard's mind, then that changes everything, and the episode becomes more dramatically satisfying.
To me, it was effective as a reminder and a realization that Picard's thrill of living is vital to whom he is. His passion is what the bionic heart is all about, not the assholed stupidity of his past. I don't think it's at all unnatural for Picard to view his mechanical heart as a sign of weakness. It's not, by any means. It may even be superior to the original, in every way. But its not what someone would ever choose, or even want. And I think this episode kind of put that puppy to bed, the lingering doubts that Picard might've had about himself as a man ... maybe even as a Human Being. And I think Q would've wanted to make sure that Picard put the focus of his situation more on that than concentrating on his actual life and death struggle.