Tapestry

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Vid
Title: Tapestry
Creator: Mary Van Deusen
Date: before 1992
Format:
Length:
Music: "Tapestry" by Carole King
Genre:
Fandom: Star Trek: TNG
Footage:
URL:

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Tapestry is a Star Trek: TNG vid by Mary Van Deusen.

It is a sad Tasha Yar vid, that told her whole first-season story through a frame of Data putting away her things.

From Textual Poachers:

Subplots introduced and developed across a number ofepisodes are restructured into compressed narratives. One M.V.D. video, based on Carole King's "Tapestry," examines the romance between Yar and Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although the two characters make love in "The Naked Now" and Data is shown in "The Measure of a Man" as having kept a hologram of Yar in his study, program publicity has sought to deflect fan interest from this relationship (which a studio publicist has characterized as a "one-night stand") and denied that the android feels emotions. These claims are steadfastly rejected by fans who insist that the episodes reveal a different interplay between the characters. Adopting this position, M.Y.D. traces the Yar-Data relationship across the program's first and second seasons. The video includes their hesitant coupling. ("He moves with some uncertainty as if he didn't know just what he was there for or where he ought to go") and its uncomfortable aftermath at the episode's tag; it also spotlights Yar's death and funeral and Data's later contemplation of her hologram in his study, moments where the relationship is explicitly acknowledged in the program narratives. She also incorporates earlier scenes which suggest romantic possibilities, such as moments when the characters exchanged affectionate glances as they work together or when a bemused Yar watches Data's clowning. Fans, already familiar with the aired episodes, gain a new perspective on that relationship as a subplot recognizable only retrospectively. As M.V.D. explains, "What comes through in 'Tapestry' is a tremendous sadness for the potential of that relationship that was lost and for the fact that this inhuman android still loves her, even after death.

Reactions and Reviews

This is slow, and sweet, and near perfect. (And isn't it amazing what a hold Tasha's character still has on fandom. I mean, she was only in about 10 eps. Give us more strong women!) [1]

References

  1. ^ In 1993, Sandy Herrold posted to the Virgule-L mailing list a letter that she had mailed to the new letterzine. It is reposted here in its entirety with permission.