Anyone find the Kataan race cruel in "The Inner Light"?

[The Rock]

I mean think about it........the probe the Kataan people made forced Picard to live an entire lifetime in REAL time in a simulation. In other words, Picard had to live out an entire 20-40 years (or however long Kamin lived) years before the "simulation" ended. That felt unnecessarily cruel to me. It's basically a prison that Picard (in his mind at least) was stuck in for 20-40 years. It would've been one thing if that probe just showed Picard the highlights of Kataan's life but nope, he was forced to live out every single one of Kataan's years. Every single month. Every single day. Every single hour. Every single minute. Every single second! That was just wrong.

Anyone else here feel the same?

I also wonder how Picard didn't have PTSD after waking up from that. He forgot that he was Picard during the simulation and then when he wakes up, he remembers who he really is and that everything he has experienced was just a simulation.

 

[Tosk]

Miles got the nasty version, Jean-Luc got the nice one...provided you don't mind living in some boring-ass village.

Not only do the Kataan force their story on him, they lay a major guilt trip about him now being the sole method of their story being told. For reasons I can't fathom, they made the probe a one-use item. So odd.

 

[XCV330]

For people who were so advanced in virtualization, seems odd they didn't try the Morlock route and go underground, or even deep virtual, waiting on a better period of time to reclaim their world. it might have been hard work but many people enjoy playing settlers of Kataan. Anyway, still a good episode.

 

[1001001]

Miles got the nasty version

So did the crew of Voyager.

 

[Oddish]

Not cruel, just desperate. And very technologically lopsided.

 

[Qonundrum]

They are, as shown on screen:

1. Myopic: They set up a probe, designed to seek out one and only one person and keep in mind they're not looking for any human specifically, then deposit stuff into that brain the same way that goose overheard just dropped a deposit onto the paint job of the vehicle below the pedestrian walking underneath that forgot their umbrella that day, hands out a flute as it's also a funky candy dispenser, then shuts off automatically and forevermore. One problem with that, since dialogue in the script also states:
2. Pompous: They built the probe not out of rock'n'roll but to tell the universe how great they are. See point 1 above as there's a bizarre contradiction in their mindset that I'm amazed nobody called out in any of their town meetings. Just imagine little Beriberi there squeaking up and asking "Wait, we want to tell the universe about how great we were, but it's set up to find only one person, shove all our experiences into them, then shut down permanently? Give them this flute while you're at it but sanitize it first since we don't want our ecosystem's bacteria damaging theirs." Now depending on how far one wants to think into this script, one can spend hours hypothesizing any number of goofy explanations. May as well say "everybody's human", but that doesn't quite work, even though that's true and season 6 gives us the answer to that too... So ultimately, is the story just rushed for a deadline, or is the probe's "seek out one then shut down" so literally deliberate, pointing out this species' own-- mmm, naah. Given how some dialogue is handed out so heavily, it's likely an oversight or hard deadline result, and not doing a gauche fourth wall gag of the sort that certain sitcoms do incessantly. They had only basic word processors then, which were better than typewriters but not anything as advanced software development tools that make it easier to track characters and plotting nowadays.
3. Impressively insensitive: Did they bother to think of how potentially dangerous the probe's beam was? Forget Orville-style jokes (many of which were funny IMHO, but before I digress) the Kataans just cobble up this laser beam thing that penetrates any number of species' tender juicy brains -- stochastic and heuristic pattern detection aside to figure out who gets the juice, they wouldn't know or fathom that the beings they find have universal translators and can convert text languages already. So they're as hapless. Or wanting to take the most direct route to commit this bizarre one-off thing before auto-shutdown occurs. But will Jean-Luc there have a brainy disease later on, like Irumodic Syndrome (originally given to him by Q as an alternate-future gag, but becoming literal later on in the franchise. The same series finale episode had Dr Crusher discovering a parietal lobe defect, which may have been caused by this probe. Like how you get infected with TB but the blood test won't show anything for months, which is why Crusher's medical scan at the time showed him being all hunkydory. )
4. Impressive in finding ways to prevent any alien technologies from remotely turning off the beam prematurely, since doing so might harm or kill the person being afflicted by the beam. Oh well, at least it gives more credence to season 6's "The Chase"
5. Magical. What's been powering this probe for all these thousands of years?
6. More myopia: They should have done what Jor-El did and send off his only kid, said kid's cousin, and all the other unknnown kids he was flinging out without anybody knowing until those spinoffs start, toward a certain blue/green planet with yellow sun so it would develop superpowers, if for only prevent extinction for the lifespan of said offspring. But why only 1 and not 100? Anything to prevent both extinction and, worse, "inbreeding depression" that would become inevitable and irreversible if the DNA combinations were too few.

For some episodes, it's easier to go with the vague and undefined stuff, but this episode is just trying way too much and any explanations given are unintentionally silly.

All that said, two lines of dialogue stick out positively:

Picard: I haven't reached any conclusion, a good scientist doesn't function by conjecture.
Meribor: A good scientist functions by hypothesizing and then proving or disproving that hypothesis. That's what I did.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Picard cherished the experience and grew from it. He received decades of insight into another culture and himself in that existence in totality and he was richer for it.

And it only took a few minutes of his real life.

I don’t think it was cruel at all. Without it, he’d never know a life outside of Starfleet. Picard was blessed.

 

[DonIago]

While there are, as noted, a lot of practical questions surrounding the probe, looking at it from the viewpoint of what Picard experienced and how he seems to have reacted to that experience and the net effects of that experience that we are able to observe, I don't really see how it qualifies as 'cruel'.

Most significantly, Picard himself doesn't seem to regret having had the experience. Indeed, he seems to consider it a bit of a blessing, perhaps one that positively altered the course of his life from that point forward.

 

[Oddish]

Myopic: They set up a probe, designed to seek out one and only one person and keep in mind they're not looking for any human specifically, then deposit stuff into that brain the same way that goose overheard just dropped a deposit onto the paint job of the vehicle below the pedestrian walking underneath that forgot their umbrella that day, hands out a flute as it's also a funky candy dispenser, then shuts off automatically and forevermore.

Indeed. In a joke fanfiction I intended to write for a contest but didn't finish in time, the thing unintentionally locks on Spot. The cat spends 40 subjective years on Kataan, but due to having a typical feline attention span, has forgotten it all by the time Data returns.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Picard learned to play a mean-flute as a result, which helped him to get it on with another musician later in the show.

If I recall correctly.

 

[Oddish]

^ You do. The "duet" (not the DS9 episode) scenes were the best thing about that morality play disguised as a Star Trek episode.

 

[Kor]

And what if the probe had been discovered by someone who was not willing to pass on the knowledge about the Kataan civilization? Someone who's embarrassed or enraged about having their brain hijacked, and destroys the probe and the flute and sweeps the whole thing under the rug.

Or what if a Borg cube encountered it? What would happen then?

Kor

 

[Richard S. Ta]

What if it got Barclay?

What then?

What then?

 

[DonIago]

I daresay "The Inner LIght" is an episode that works much better if you just allows yourself to run with the premise and try to empathize with what Picard is feeling than it does if you try to analyze the practical aspects of the premise.

 

[Oddish]

^ Well said. Overanalyzing many of the greatest Trek episodes is a mistake, but it's especially the case with "Inner Light".

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I’ve been slowly rewatching TNG, dipping in and out of each season and I’ve been purposefully avoiding obvious ones. I’ve been enjoying watching a lot of these episodes I’d seen once and forgotten for what feels like the ‘first’ time.

However, the well of less obvious is drying up and what I have left to watch is stuff like BotW, Chain of Command, Darmok, Sarek etc.

The Inner Light is in that crowd and I’m really looking forward to seeing it again. It’s been almost 20 years.

 

[Qonundrum]

What if it got Barclay?

What then?

What then?

Then it'd be much more interesting. (Seriously, it would be.)

I daresay "The Inner LIght" is an episode that works much better if you just allows yourself to run with the premise and try to empathize with what Picard is feeling than it does if you try to analyze the practical aspects of the premise.

I agree - roll with it and there's a good story in there. It's just some technical trappings that dampen it.

It's also easier to say it's just the TNG version of "The Paradise Syndrome", partially because TOS requires suspension of disbelief a lot more because of what they knew and not in the 1960s. IMHO it's easier to swallow the plot convenience of "Mirror Mirror" with how they get in and out of the mirror universe since, in Star Trek, it's just the two at this point - though it's not always easy. I could roll with "The Immunity Syndrome" and "The Doomsday Machine" as their stories do a better job of ignoring and bypassing the reality of space travel speed. The doomsday machine device can easily be headcanoned away and we don't know the inner spatial mechanics of the pace amoeba, except it's in an interface to a region that operates inversely (hence antimatter destroying it - there still is enough sound logic in-story.)

The real issue is, everyone has different thresholds for suspension of disbelief. As with a lot of season 5, too much in this one took me out of the story. "Disaster" is another one that hinges on some basic plot logic and character traits and screws that up royally as well. In short, the idea is potentially good if not great, but the execution is too hokey in rightfully key areas. But to be an all-time great, YMMV and how individual audiences will roll with the nitpicks or not. It's still just a tv show. After all, so is "Space 1999" and its premise is one of the dumbest ever. Roll with it, and - especially on season 1 - the stories do have a more consistent logic. It's a simpler and less convoluted premise as well...

 

[Qonundrum]

^ Well said. Overanalyzing many of the greatest Trek episodes is a mistake, but it's especially the case with "Inner Light".

Is it wrong to overanalyze, or to analyze, or discuss both pros and cons of the story, with people injecting more of one when the other gets too much time?

 

[Oddish]

Is it wrong to overanalyze, or to analyze, or discuss both pros and cons of the story, with people injecting more of one when the other gets too much time?

Don't see it as "wrong". It's just harder to enjoy the experience of the episode when you're overthinking the inconsistencies.

 

[The Rock]

Don't see it as "wrong". It's just harder to enjoy the experience of the episode when you're overthinking the inconsistencies.

It doesn’t make it harder for me. I still love the episode.