TNG S5E25 "The Inner Light" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

The crew runs across an unknown object in space, and all of sudden the captain has gone unconscious. Efforts to move away from the object result in harmful effects to the captain. They must wait it out and see what happens. On the bridge. I think this is the first time I've seen someone entirely treated in place. Why drag all that equipment to the bridge when you could just beam him to sickbay? Anyway, that's not the story here. The story is what is going on in Picard's mind.



Picard is on a planet where asking questions like "Where is my starship?" get you odd looks. He also has a wife that he doesn't recognize. The locals chalk up his missing memory and wild ideas to a recent illness. Picard ages, and as he does becomes a more respected member of the community. He goes about setting up a life on the planet, but continues to search for a way out. We're supposed to be invested in his relationship with his wife, whom he decides to have children with, but it just doesn't come across in the writing. The strongest bond that they share is that she puts his shoes away. He does have more chemistry with his adult daughter, as you can see he is very proud of her choice of science as a profession. Less so with his son, who wants to join a band. Speaking of music, over the years Picard learns to play the flute, which really isn't a flute but rather looks like a child's recorder from elementary school.

Picard is now getting much older, as evidenced by the increasingly unkempt ring of hair around his bald head. He now has grandchildren, but regrets that they won't get to grow up because he has found that their sun is going to explode. Pisser. The people of the planet gather to launch a probe....the very probe that 1000 years later encounters the Enterprise. At the launch, his family speak to him knowingly, and a dead old friend even comes back to help explain the situation. Okay, so they were in on it the whole time? I don't understand. Picard hasn't been given the memories of someone else, because he made his own way on the planet with his free will. He decided to have kids. So was it a simulation? What's the point in that? Just so he could get to know their ways? Why not just write it down? Wouldn't a thumb drive containing their encyclopedia be more useful if they just wanted people to know that they existed?

Also, nothing in the story would show evidence that they are a people capable of creating a space probe that alters the mind of starship captains. This technology seems way out of their league. Granted, you could spend a month at my house and not walk away thinking that my people have been to the moon or created cloned sheep, but with Picard's and his daughter's interest in science, you think they would have mentioned if their technology had evolved beyond adobe structures.

Further complicating all this is that after the captain wakes up, startled that he's back where he started, they bring the probe aboard and inside it is the flute. Wait, so was he an actual person back then? Is it a time travel device? How did the flute get there? If it's just a simulation, what if Picard hadn't chosen to take up the flute? What if he looked at it, decided it wasn't for him, and then in honor of his former first officer spent a lifetime becoming an accomplished trombonist? Then the gift of the previously discarded flute would have seemed like a cruel joke.

"The Inner Light" is a decent bit of story telling, and I always enjoy Picard-centered episodes. But unless I'm just dense, none of it really makes much sense. Furthermore I didn't become very committed to Picard's new family. In order for this to really work, I would have needed to genuinely be concerned that they were going to be obliterated, and genuinely miss them after his return. That didn't happen. I feel like I'm being too hard on this episode, when actually I rather enjoyed it. Also, maybe it's just the HD tune-up, but the makeup was really well done. Overall it's a great concept, but there were just too many flaws in the story for me to become immersed in it. For that reason, it was only Adequate.

Published September 26, 2018