“Tapestry” is episode fifteen of season six of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Captain Picard and others are beamed directly to sickbay and Worf lifts the captain, whose tunic has a scorch mark over his heart, onto the diagnostic bed. They were attacked outside the conference room. The captain’s artificial heart is having problems and he’s in cardiac arrest. Picard himself wakens in white place with a white robed figure. It’s Q. And he welcomes Picard to the afterlife. He’s dead.
The captain asks what’s going on. Q says Picard is dead, this is the afterlife and Q is God. The captain’s life ended a few minutes ago. Picard doesn’t accept this. He refuses to believe the afterlife is run by Q; the universe is not so badly designed. Q says he will provide more evidence. First, the captain’s father, saying he’s a disappointment. Then, lots of voices, the voices of all those who died through the captain’s actions. Or inactions. It’s time for the captain to make peace with his past and he and Q are free to spend a little time together. Eternity.
Q checks that the captain has no feelings of regret and guilt. If he’s really dead, the captain regrets finding Q here. Q says he wasn’t the cause of death. Picard’s artificial heart was. He might have lived, had he a real one. How did the captain lose his? A mistake. Q asks if that’s a regret. Picard regrets many things from those days. Q shows a younger Picard fighting three Nausicaans. The last one stabbed him in the back through the heart and the captain, as he told Wesley in “Samaritan Snare”, started laughing at the sight.
Q thinks it’s unlike Picard to have a sense of humour. Especially over being stabbed in the back. The captain says he was a different person. Arrogant, undisciplined, too much ego, too little wisdom. More like Q. Q thinks it’s a pity he changed. The captain thinks it’s a pity he had to be impaled with a knife to learn the lesson He started the fight because he was young and cocky. He’s more responsible these days. Q says with his real heart, the captain wouldn’t have died of a random energy surge 30 years later. The captain says if he was to do things over, he’d do them differently. And he’s elsewhere, in a different uniform, as a woman slaps him.
The captain is dressed as an ensign in an older uniform and two other ensigns applaud. Picard recognises them; Corey Zweller and Marta Batanides. Corey says he’s heading to eat, then the casino; the captain says he’ll come later. After the other two go, Q appears. Q says this isn’t a fantasy; it’s real. Picard is 21 again, just out of the Academy. The captain doesn’t look it, but Q tells him he does to everyone else. The captain regretted things from this time; Q states this is his chance to change them. Picard tells Q he won’t alter history. Q tells him he isn’t that important. But Q will guarantee that anything changed will only affect Picard.
The captain is on the starbase he went to after graduation, awaiting deep space assignment. Two days before the fight with the Nausicaans. If Picard can make it without being stabbed, he will be back in the present with a real heart. If he fails, he and Q will spend eternity together. The captain is not impressed. But Q is curious; why did that attractive woman strike Picard? The captain remembers. He’d arranged to take her out. Then she discovered he’d made a second date with another woman, Penny. She was naturally upset. Q had no idea Picard was such a cad. He’s impressed. Picard checks the time. In fact, he’s late to meet Penny.
Penny is older than the captain’s age of 21. By a couple of decades possibly. This conversation doesn’t go well and he gets a drink thrown over him. Q says the captain was quite the ladies’ man; the captain thinks he was a puerile adolescent. Corey is playing a game, dom-jot, and he wins. Then a Nausicaan challenges him.
The Nausicaan wins, because he was cheating. Corey discovered this and did the same in a rematch. Leading to the fight and the captain getting stabbed in the heart. The captain needs to stop this fight if Q is telling the truth, so he doesn’t die when his artificial heart is damaged 30 years later. The ‘tapestry’ of the title refers to the captain’s life being a tapestry. He’s the man he is now because of the man he was then, not despite it.