10 Most Satisfying Star Trek Moments

The seminal Star Trek The Next Generation episode Tapestry is a deep dive into the character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard as he lies dying on the operating table. His artificial heart has been shot and he won't make it through the night, so his old friend Q stops by to whisk him into a white void and ask him why he's got such a heart in the first place.

Picard explains that as a reckless young man (with hair, apparently), he picked a fight with some Nausicaans and was stabbed through the heart. A brief description here can't possibly do justice to the depth of this episode, where Picard is the opportunity to do things differently and avoid the bar fight, hook up with an old friend and be a different man.

The problem is that Picard realises that his very cautious and diplomatic nature has relied on knowing the consequences of getting stabbed in the heart. Q helps him to realise that as an older man, a wiser one, he valued every risk and seized every opportunity because Picard knew what it was like to brush up against death. Picard then demands to be allowed to die as the man he was, not as someone he would never want to be.

Q, impressed by Picard's realisations, allows him to live and at the very end of the episode, we return to the operating table that Jean-Luc is dying on. He smiles, he laughs and the episode fades to credits. Perfectly satisfying.