The 15th episode of the sixth season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was called “Tapestry”, considered by several fans of the series (and the author of this article) as one of the best of the series. In it, Picard dies and finds himself sharing the afterlife with Q. Picard is skeptical of what is happening and does not discount the fact that it may be a dream or a hallucination. , but regardless, Q offers to send Picard back in time. point in his youth when he was injured in a bar fight with a group of Nausicaans and lost his own biological heart. Picard had an artificial heart in “Next Generation,” and it was the thing that was going to kill him. If Picard can stop the bar fight in his past, then he’ll have a biological heart to save him in the present.
Picard goes through a test of character during which he learns that making reckless and youthful indiscretions was, in fact, an important part of his life, and that our mistakes – as fatal as they may eventually prove – are vital to who we become as mature beings; in a twist reminiscent of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Picard can see what his life would have been like had he never been in that bar fight, and it’s pretty pathetic. Picard wakes up in the present with his artificial heart intact and a smile on his face. Was it a Q essay? Was this the real afterlife? “Tapestry” is cleverly ambiguous in this respect. Incidentally, Picard would have his artificial heart – and his entire body – replaced with an android body at the end of the first season of “Picard”.