Inner Light, LOL

[Shat Happens]

^^Flutes can be very cool. Can you imagine Jethro Tull without Ian Anderson's one-legged flute solos?

Oh man, if only Katan/Picard played his flute like THAT.

Now I want someone (because I can't) to make a video of this idea and post somewhere like youtube

 

[Makarov]

Kirk would really "shat" himself if he came face to face with the borg though. In The Inner Light, he would react similarly to Riker.

 

[JD5000]

So....essentially....if the 'Inner Light' episode had involved going back and living for 40 years as Ian Anderson, Picard's bad-ass pistol-in-one-hand, rifle-in-the-other scenes in the movies would have made more sense?

For the record, I totally agree.

 

[Makarov]

I still don't think action hero picard is really out of character. Think about the tommy-gun against the borg scene. Picard plays out those detective novels on the holodeck all the time, I'm sure fantasized about doing that before.

Sure he got his ass handed to him by Soran, but would Kirk have beaten him 1v1?

 

[TrekAlliance92]

I'm also glad to know I'm not alone in thinking "The Inner Light" is an overrated episode. I simply find it dull and uninvolving. Just not my style of episode.

 

[Vandervecken]

I just think badassery is overrated

And you're NOT WRONG. If being a badass was all there was to being a great character, Alice from the Resident Evil movies would be considered the action hero ever created... because that's all she can do. She's so overpowered in her ability to tackle problems that hardly anything is presented as a challenge to her.

And making Picard a badass (darn you for making me type that) did Star Trek no favors. It felt out of character in First Contact and totally out of place in Nemesis. Climbing hoses is one thing, but firing a pistol in one hand and a rifle in the other went way too far. Oh, and that "I'm a badass!" entrance when he blows the door to the Scimitar's bridge fails big time, which made me cry because even Jerry Goldsmith was trying hard to make that moment work but couldn't.

If there was one thing that I didn't like about Inner Light was that it ended. I'm thankful that Picard's flute is brought back as well as the tune, but the whole experience of living a whole new life is not something I would brush aside and move on from so quickly. This was not just someone else's life he experiencing. This was Picard being put into a position where he actually accepted the possibility that his entire life as Picard was just a dream. I don't care how great your memory is, but if you move on from memories like that, you're going to forget some things.

I always thought it was too much to ask us to believe that the reset button was pushed so easily on this one for Picard. Picard has just experienced decades of another life subjectively. It shouldn't be that easy to go back to his old life.

Oh well, I guess if they could just push the button after "Genesis," they could do it here. Everyone just returning to their normal forms that easily was also too much for me to swallow, but sometimes ya just gotta go with the flow. Overall I did like "Inner Light," but I agree it's overrated (and harkening back to the beginning of the thread, I've always thought "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield" is underrated).

 

[JD5000]

I always thought it was too much to ask us to believe that the reset button was pushed so easily on this one for Picard. Picard has just experienced decades of another life subjectively. It shouldn't be that easy to go back to his old life.

O'Brien does it in Hard Time, apparently in the future it is very easy to spend a few hours living decades of another life and never suffer any repercussions beyond the time constraints of a television episode.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

I always thought it was too much to ask us to believe that the reset button was pushed so easily on this one for Picard. Picard has just experienced decades of another life subjectively. It shouldn't be that easy to go back to his old life.

O'Brien does it in Hard Time, apparently in the future it is very easy to spend a few hours living decades of another life and never suffer any repercussions beyond the time constraints of a television episode.

I don't agree with this. In "Hard Time", O'Brien is clearly shown to be suffering serious post-traumatic repercussions of his experience - it's what the episode's about. Yes, it's confined to that single hour, but at least the issues arising from such an immense, life altering experience are dealt with head on.

This is the problem with "The Inner Light" - Picard seems to "shrug it off" with alacrity save for a few bars of nostalgic flute playing. DS9 is the winner here for me, "Hard Time" is a far superior episode.

 

[BillJ]

DS9 is the winner here for me, "Hard Time" is a far superior episode.

This.

I also think that Voyager's "Memorial" is also a far superior episode to "The Inner Light".

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think that while Picard's experience seemed to occur in real time while it was happening, when he came out of it, it could have been like waking up from a dream. Thus things that had happened to him recently wouldn't have become distant memories. The Kataanians wanted to be remembered in a good way, they wouldn't have been out to traumatize him.

 

[JD5000]

'Trauma' is in the eye of the beholder. Picard's experience has been described as a 'mind rape' by many. Regardless of the intention, the damage was done.

 

[Jonas Grumby]

"The Inner Light" is a real heartstrings tugger, and it got me on first viewing on that basis. But its rewatchability quotient is rather low.

 

[{ Emilia }]

"The Inner Light" is a real heartstrings tugger, and it got me on first viewing on that basis. But its rewatchability quotient is rather low.

Thanks, so I'm not the only one.

I think Inner Light is a great episode but I've seen it too many times to get emotionally invested. Which means that it ends up being rather dull for me now.

 

[Armored Saint]

It had scanned me and I lost consciousness, and in the space of twenty five minutes I lived a lifetime on that planet. I had a wife, and children, and a grandchild. And it was absolutely real to me. When I awoke, all that I had left of that life there was the flute that I had taught myself to play.
So, it's more than simply a strange dream. It close to Kirk's experience in the Paradise Syndrom, but in decades instead of months.

 

[RAMA]

Is this Kirk vs Picard thing still raging? I feel some synapses closing..

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

"The Inner Light" is a real heartstrings tugger, and it got me on first viewing on that basis. But its rewatchability quotient is rather low.

Thanks, so I'm not the only one.

I think Inner Light is a great episode but I've seen it too many times to get emotionally invested. Which means that it ends up being rather dull for me now.

Too much of a good thing can temper any reaction. I HATE it when I rewatch an old comedy episode and I've seen it too many times and no longer get a belly laugh...Fawlty Towers comes to mind. I LOVE that show, but when I occasionally rewatch it, can no longer summon up a full laugh at some of my favorite scenes.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I never said that the experience itself was like a dream to him...I specified that it would have seemed very real as it happened...but that when he came out of it, it would have been like waking up from a dream. That is, his memory wouldn't be impaired about things like what he had for breakfast that morning. No matter how real it seemed at the time, the Kataan experience was a false, implanted memory. His real memories would have still been unhindered...which would be disorienting to be sure.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It's very likely that Picard's experience in Inner Light took place in some isolated part of his brain, but when he woke up, his rest of his brain was still wired the same way it was before the experience.

When I went to college, every time I came home from it, I started vividly remembering specific things I did the day or two before I left as if they were yesterday. The same thing would have happened to Picard, all the sensory cues from his environment would trigger his state of mind from right before he left, but it would happen even more so because the untouched parts of his brain wouldn't have any time lapse where it would have discarded that information.

I'm not saying there would be zero re-adjustment, but it wouldn't be nearly as hard as if he had literally gone to the planet for twenty five years and then came back to a place he could hardly recognize.

And anyway it's an episodic show.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Exactly.

 

[HarryM]

I always assumed that the Kataan mind link had something built in to avoid doing damage to the recipient, to compartmentalize it. The one problem I have with the overall concept is: what happens after Picard dies? The memories die with him, unless he slavishly writes it all down, but in that case the Kataanians could have just done the same and launched their written/recorded history into space. Maybe the probe will reactivate after a period of time, but Riker indicates not, so once Picard dies, it's gone for good.

I think it would have been a nice piece of continuity to have Picard go to Kataan when he enters the Nexus in "Generations".