The Inner Light

Next in the series of my favorite bittersweet episodes of TV shows (first was The Girl in the Fireplace), is the 25th episode of Season 5 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

The Inner Light

In this episode, the Enterprise encounters an unknown probe which scans the ship and directs an energy beam at Captain Picard, rendering him unconscious.

Picard wakes up to find himself on the surface of Kataan, a non-Federation planet. A woman identifies herself as his wife, Eline, telling Picard that he is Kamin, an iron weaver recovering from a feverish sickness. Picard talks of his memories on the Enterprise, but Eline and their close friend Batai try to convince Picard that his memories were only dreams, and acclimatize him into their society as Kamin. 

Picard begins living out his life as Kamin in the village of Ressik, starting a family with Eline, and learning to play the flute. Kamin spends much time outdoors studying nature. As the years pass, he begins to notice that the planet is suffering a worldwide drought owing to increased radiation from the planet's sun. He sends reports to the planet's leaders, who seem to ignore his concerns. Ultimately, Kamin confronts a government official who privately admits to him that the government already knows this but wish to keep it a secret to avoid a panic. The official points out to Kamin that they only just recently managed to successfully launch artificial satellites using primitive rockets: their race simply does not possess the technology level needed to evacuate even a small colony's worth of people before their planet is rendered uninhabitable.

Meanwhile, on board the Enterprise, the crew continues attempts to revive Picard. They try to block the influence of the probe, but this only makes Picard worse, leaving them no choice but to let it continue. They trace the rocket's trajectory to a system whose sun had gone nova 1,000 years before, eradicating all life in the system.

Years pass and Kamin grows old, outliving his wife. Kamin and his daughter Meribor continue their study of the drought. They find that it is not temporary; extinction of all life on the planet is inevitable. 

One day, while playing with his grandson, Kamin is summoned by his adult children to watch the launch of a rocket, which everyone seems to know about except him. As he walks outside into the glaring sunlight, Kamin sees Eline and Batai, as young as when he first saw them. They explain that he has already seen the rocket, just before he came there. Knowing that the planet was doomed, the planet's leaders placed the memories of their culture into a probe and launched it into space, in the hope that it would find someone who could tell others about their species. 

Picard then realizes the entire context: "Oh, it's me, isn't it?", he says, "I'm the someone...I'm the one it finds."

Picard wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise to discover that even though he has lived a whole lifetime on Kataan, in reality only 25 minutes have passed. The now inactive probe is brought aboard the Enterprise and the crew finds a small box within it. A somber Riker gives the box to Picard who opens it to find Kamin's flute. Picard, now adept at the instrument, plays the melody he learned during his virtual life as Kamin.

That brought tears to my eyes just watching it again. Here is another video with more of the episode, but only with the flute melody that was composed for full orchestra.

*Trivia*

From October 5–7, 2006, the Ressikan flute was one of the items up for bid at the Christie's official studio auction of Star Trek memorabilia. The prop flute, which cannot actually be played, was originally estimated to have a sale price of $300. Auction directors admitted that their estimates for many items did not "factor in that emotional fury generated around this kind of material". In the days leading up to the auction, Denise Okuda, former Trek scenic artist and video supervisor, said: "That's the item people say they really have to have, because it's so iconic to a much-beloved episode."

It sold for $48,000.