Star Trek: The Next Generation "Tapestry"

1992, NTSC

Brand new and factory sealed

Captain Jean-Luc Picard is shot and slips into unconsciousness. He awakes to find himself in a world of white, and the only other inhabitant is Q. He explains that the energy blast that hit Picard destroyed his artificial heart, but that a natural heart would have survived. Picard lost his original heart years ago when he was stabbed through the chest during a bar brawl, an event that he regrets. Q sends Picard back in time to two days before the brawl, where he meets with fellow cadets and friends Corey Zweller and Marta Batanides. They are surprised by the personality changes in Picard, and he becomes alienated.

Zweller is cheated by a group of Nausicaans at a bar game, and he plans his revenge by rigging the next match. When the game takes place, the Nausicaans are enraged. But instead of joining the fight as he did before, Picard grabs Zweller and leaves. After arguing with his friends, Picard is returned to the present by Q. Instead of being the Captain, Picard finds himself as a junior lieutenant in the astrophysics department on board the Enterprise. Q explains that due to the change, Picard never took any risks in his career and so it became unremarkable and routine. Picard speaks to both Commander William Riker, and Counsellor Deanna Troi, but while they consider Picard a competent and hard-working officer, his aversion to risk means he never distinguishes himself.

Picard confronts Q, who tells him that although the bout with the Nausicaan nearly cost him his life, it also gave him a sense of his mortality. It taught him that life was too precious to squander by playing it safe. Picard realizes that his attempts to suppress and ignore the consequences of his indiscretions have resulted in him losing a part of himself. Picard then declares that he would rather die as captain of the Enterprise than live as a nobody. Q sends him back to the bar fight and events unfold as they did originally, with Picard being stabbed through the heart and laughing as he collapses to the floor. In the present, Picard awakens in sickbay, a Captain again. As Picard recovers from his injury, he wonders whether he really journeyed into the past or whether it was merely a hallucination or one of Q's tricks. In any case, he is grateful for the insight the experience gave him.