"Tapestry"- Canon or hallucination?

[Richard S. Ta]

Alternative Conclusion:

Ready Room

Picard is seated at his desk, drinking tea and looking at his flute or some archealogical whatever (if the flute episode hasn't happened yet)

The door chimes.

Picard: Come!

The door opens. Riker enters.

Riker: You wanted to see me, Sir?

Picard: Number One, good. Take a seat please. I had something to discuss with you.

Riker: Is it related to what happened with you and Q?

Picard: Indeed, Commander. In fact I was just wondering-

Riker: When is he going to come back?

Picard: No, not that.

Riker: How can we stop Q from interfering in the future?

Picard: No, it's not that. I doubt we could stop him, even with the finest technology of the Federation... No... it's...

Riker: Sir?

Picard: Well... Was it Canon, Number One? That's what I want to know. Was it Canon? Because that's the most important thing when taking anything into consideration isn't it? Canon... Canon... Was it Canon?

Riker slowly stands up, gives Picard a contemptuous glare

Riker: With respect, sir... It doesn't matter. I have to go do some actual work now.

Riker walks towards the door

Picard: Number One! Will! Wait!

Door opens. Riker stands on the freshhold

Picard: Is the work you have to do, Canon? Because if it's not Canon, why bother?

Riker: You are not Canon. You suck. Fuck off, Jean-Luc. I'm going to see Deanna.

 

[at Quark's]

I don't see the 'or' in the title? Could very well be both.

That is, in my view it's most definitely canon (we saw it happen in a canon TNG episode, after all), it's just that whether it 'really' happened or not, it didn't happen in the main timeline. It could have been a hallucination.

Similarly, since Star Trek VIII starts with Picard hearing voices in his head, is the whole movie a schizophrenic hallucination?

In that case, you'd still have to explain the 7 of 9 remarks on that topic, and the ENT: Regeneration episode.

Well, I suppose you could hypothesize those were hallucinations, too (or, for that matter, everything that we saw after FC).

 

[carcinoGeneticist]

Before Tapestry he didn't know why he laughed after he was stabbed. In Tapestry, we can interpret it as him being relieved he got his original life back. So I do think it really happened and was a timey-wimey loop thing

That's how I choose to interpret the episode. LOL. Just curious how others felt about it.

 

[at Quark's]

That's how I choose to interpret the episode. LOL. Just curious how others felt about it.

That's a bit of the opposite of Kira in Accession, who can still remember the original timeline, when Akorem didn't finish the poem, and now has to live with the question why she still would remember that original timeline

 

[Mojochi]

I honestly can't imagine Picard preoccupying himself on his deathbed with imagining himself embroiled in Q shenanigans. Q has not been THAT significant a part of his life to merit such an end of life preoccupation. IMHO these are legit Q shenanigans, that Q saw a window of opportunity to inflict.

Now, is what he's experiencing real? That's more deliberately ambiguous. Certainly we otherwise see it's within Q's ability to move someone about in time, even placing them into themselves at different points in their life, like he does in the finale.

I certainly don't think Q would have the patience to manufacture all the nuances of variance in the people Picard actually knows, a married Geordi, a Riker/Worf feud, or a failed marriage with Bev that he actually remembers, etc... When Q wants to manufacture realities to trap people in, he's way less developed about them, e.g. Hide & Q or Q-Pid. Any more effort would bore the crap outta him lol

No, I believe both Tapestry & the finale have him experiencing actual realities, which certainly Q would have the ability to know about... All those different potentialities that exist in Star Trek's take on dimensions, which we see in Parallels.

Q sees all those, which puts him in a position to easily just plug-&-play Picard anywhere he wants to, in order to satisfy his point of the day. Ultimately, I kind of take them at face value.