Routinely regarded as one of the best episodes of Star Trek across all franchises, “The Inner Light” represents an incredible departure from not just common Trek fare but television in general. The plot can be summed up in a sentence, and yet, the experience of the episode sticks with you, long after you watch it. When the Enterprise encounters and unknown probe in space, the probe reaches out and grants Captain Picard the experience of living an entire life in a culture that disappeared a thousand years ago. That’s really it. That’s all that happens in the episode. Sure, the episode occasionally flashes to the Enterprise, in which the crew attempts to discover the nature of Picard’s incapacitation, but the meat of the episode concerns Picard’s life as “Kamin,” an iron-weaver from the village of Ressik on the planet Kataan. Really, the Enterprise crew almost disappear entirely, so that we can focus on the drama unfolding in Picard’s mind.

Other episodes, “Family” among them, have alluded to Picard’s wistful meditations on what might have been. In Star Trek: Generations, the Nexus grants Picard everything he never had, including a family of his own, gathered around a beautiful Christmas tree, but ultimately, like a certain other captain of the Enterprise, Picard forsook all the trappings of family life, choosing instead to devote his life to Starfleet. While nothing in TNG ever casts Picard’s life choices in a negative light, these moments in which he experiences the road not taken remain poignant, and frankly, had the Kataani probe chosen any other member of the bridge crew, the entire episode wouldn’t have worked. Because we are so invested in Picard as a character and know he sometimes wonders what it would have been like, the story can build on that knowledge and focus on the life the Kataani wish him to experience.

In the world of the probe, we watch Picard struggle against the scenario created by the probe though Kamin’s wife Eline and his friend Batai both try to argue with him otherwise, and they do so with nothing but love and support. Picard eventually settles into his role as Kamin, coming to accept Ressik as his community and Eline as his wife, even agreeing to have children with her. While moments pass on the Enterprise, we watch as Kamin grows ever older and his children grow up to have children of their own. However, the episode does not let us forget that Kataan is a doomed world; Kamin performs experiments and concludes that Kataan’s star will go nova and destroy all life in the system. He pleads with Kataani authorities to try for an evacuation, but the situation remains hopeless because the Kataani have not advanced to manned spacecraft. There’s no way to save their people, but they craft such an elegantly bittersweet solution to their problem. Kamin goes with his family to watch the very probe that has Picard in its thrall launch, and the characters that we’ve gotten to know over the course of the episode explain to him that the probe’s entire purpose was to pass on the experience of their culture to someone who would become a teacher, a voice for their people in the future. Kamin concludes that he, or rather Picard, is that someone. A proverb frequently attributed to the ancient Egyptians, teaches us that “To speak the name of the dead is to make him live again,” and the Kataani take the concept to an extreme. Picard will now not only speak their names but live for them, carrying their entire culture in his memory, and doing so is a heavy burden indeed.

Picard awakens from his experience, profoundly affected by it. He’s on the bridge, and even though nothing has changed for anyone else on the Enterprise, Picard must wrestle with the burden of mourning a life that was never his, no matter how real it felt to him and by extension, to us as the viewers, so that moment in which Picard plays Kamin’s flute in his quarters becomes not only an iconic moment in Star Trek but a deeply heartbreaking one as well.

The episode’s author, Morgan Gendel, conceived of a continuation of the story, in which Picard meets the characters we know as his wife and children, which he produced as a fan comic, and I’m entirely grateful that the idea never became canon. “The Inner Light” would lose some of its tragedy should any of these people have survived the death of their star. The episode is a gem that stands entirely on its own, and even now, I still cannot watch it without grieving the loss of the Kataani and Kamin’s family.

Rating: The whole pot of Earl Grey Tea

Stray Thoughts from the Couch:

1. The use of music in this episode is inspired. When “Kamin” finally starts to learn the flute, he plays “Frere Jacques” from Picard’s life. Then, for his son’s naming ceremony, he plays the melody that he will play in his quarters as the episode fades to black, linking Picard and Kamin through music as much as through Stewart’s deeply touching performance.
2. Daniel Stewart, Patrick Stewart’s actual son, plays Kamin’s young son Batai, and unlike his father, he actually learned how to play the flute for the episode.
3. The episode will spawn similar episodes in other franchise installments, but none of them will quite reach the impact of this one. Granted, DS9’s version, “Hard Time,” takes a much darker view, falling neatly in to the “torture O’Brien” genre.
4. A note on consent—there’s something a little problematic about how the probe never gives Picard the choice to experience Kamin’s life. Rather, the Kataani probe forces Kamin’s life on him, and even though the experience ultimately proves bittersweet rather than traumatic, there’s something really uncomfortable about that lack of choice.
5. Yes, I know that there’s something skeevy about the dichotomy between the apparent level of the Kataani civilization’s technological achievements in Picard’s dream and the technology required to create the sequence for him, but I do think that I prefer the episode’s hand-wave. How the Kataani manage to create the dream is far less important to the story than that they did, so I, for one, am content to accept the episode on its own terms.