Plot Synopsis: After being shot on an away mission, Picard dies and meets Q in the afterlife who offers him the chance to change a crucial moment in his history and prevent the mistakes he made in his youth.
Plot A and B Analysis: The teaser gets right to the point. Riker and Worf beam directly into sick bay along with Picard, who’s been shot in the chest. Beverly tries to help him, but we fade to white and Picard finds himself looking at Q welcoming him to the afterlife, telling him he’s dead. Plot A is about Picard choosing whether to change his past, there is no plot B. Q learns that Picard’s regret in life is being so cocky and arrogant in his Academy days, which resulted in the artificial heart that lead to his death, so he takes Picard back in his life to make a different choice if he desires. If he can avoid getting stabbed Q will let him live, if he can’t, he will die. Picard does his best to make good choices and instead messes up his life one decision at a time. He does avoid getting stabbed, only to return as a junior grade science officer who is a bit of a wimp. When Q lays out for him the benefits of his reckless youth and brush with death, Picard asks for another chance and learns a great lesson about himself. The plot is interesting from start to finish, every minute is good, and you can’t see the twists coming.
Favorite Scenes: This is an episode full of them. I’ve never forgotten Q’s line when he enters as someone delivering flowers:
Q: Flowers! Is there a John Luck Pickerd here?
One of the best scenes involves Picard avoiding getting stabbed, but finding out he’s alienated his friends at the same time, and is brought to the present as a lowly science officer. The other best scene is Q’s speech about why when Picard objects:
Q: He is the person you wanted to be… That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face-to-face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is or how important each moment must be… He never led the away team to Milika III to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer’s Bridge when its captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone.
Use of Cast/Characters: This is Picard’s episode, and it’s one of his best. What he learns and what it means to him can be summed up by his line, “I would rather die as the man I am than live the life I just saw.” He even meets his father, who was disappointed in him for joining Starfleet. With this episode and Where No One Has Gone Before, we’ve met both his parents. Talk about character development. This not an ensemble episode at all, however. Riker and Troi have one scene with ‘lieutenant Picard.’ The others, including Data, Beverly, and Worf get almost nothing. Geordi doesn’t even appear in this episode, he just gets one voice-over line. Ned Vaughn and JC Brandy play Cortan and Marta respectively and are good.
Blu Ray Version: If you pause at around 7:21 when young Picard is fighting, the first Nausicaan loses his wig when he falls. Pause at 18:28, and ask yourself why are those two guys kneeling in the foreground? It’s got to be so the audience can clearly see the table. This episode also has commentary and deleted scenes. The commentary includes Ron Moore who wrote the episode, it’s worth listening to. The first deleted scene takes place in the ‘white limbo’ where Q taunts him a bit more, but isn’t worth keeping. The second one takes place the morning after Picard and Marta hook up. She talks a bit more about how they met and there’s nothing wrong with it, it could have stayed in. The third deleted scene features lieutenant Picard reporting to engineering, in which we actually see Geordi this episode. I’m fine with it being out, it’s not essential.
Nitpicks: Where is Walker Keel, or Jack Crusher? I was thinking they should be there, because they were virtually inseparable according to Conspiracy. Maybe he meets them after these events. I will say deLancie’s performance as ‘God’ in the early part of the episode was a little lackluster.
Overall Impression: A frankly outstanding episode, and one of the few where Picard has something to learn. This episode doesn’t just teach Picard something, it teaches the audience something. Maybe it’s not a new lesson, but one worth repeating: life is precious, take the most advantage of it you can! Take chances, live your life, don’t just be a passenger on it. It makes me want to do better with my own life! How many episodes of television do that? Even the title makes sense. I happily rate this episode 5 out of 5 stars.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: Ron Moore said of all the episodes he wrote, this was his favorite. He described it as autobiographical, because he had flunked out of college his senior year and really regretted that, but in retrospect if he hadn’t flunked he never would have ended up in Los Angeles and having the career that he’s had. “I wanted Picard to look back and realize that things that you thought were like, these traumatic screw-ups in your life actually got you where you are now.”
For some reason TNG is able to do time travel right. From Yesterday’s Enterprise to Cause and Effect, Time’s Arrow, Tapestry, and All Good Things, they do a good job. The artificial heart prop seen here is the exact one we saw back in Samaritan Snare. The whole scene in the 25th minute has a backdrop that was originally from the movie Logan’s Run. John deLancie had just appeared the week before in the DS9 episode Q-Less, and in it he says he should pay Picard a visit. Here he is! This is also one of only five episodes that does not have a given stardate.
I’m not the only who thinks this episode is great. TV Guide ranked this the 9th best episode in all of Star Trek history, Entertainment Weekly ranked it the 4th best TNG episode ever, and Star Trek 101 listed this one as one of the ten essential episodes of TNG. Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton named this his favorite episode of TNG.
Missable/Unmissable? Completely unmissable. Watch this episode! Invite your friends who don’t like Star Trek to watch this episode. The next one is a bit of a step down, but most episodes would be.