I'm gonna shock people and extinguish The Inner Light Picard gets zapped by a random space drone thing and then we spend a whole episode with some alien farmers/suburbanites dressed in beige who brabble about their gardens drying up and in the end Picard plays a flute.
Also there ought to have been better options to preserve a memory of their culture than just uploading some rando's memories into a space drone thing and inflicting them on some other rando.
Also, in typical 90s network television manner, Picard is neither changed by this experience, nor does it have any long-term effects, except for occasional flute playing.
Though it was a nice touch to have the alien flautist's son be played by Patrick Stewart's real son.
90s, 80s, 70s, 60s... even 00s... can modern shows return to that type of weekly reset button trope? Or rather they can, but can audiences re-adapt? Heck, there are some shows that could be incorporating camp but everyone takes it literally as face value. I say "could be"; the makers letting audiences figure it out on their own, if that's what's going on. But I digress (no way!).
I got the impression that this myopic society's probe had shut down permanently after mind-raping Picard. Which would be even dumber that the probe throughout all of space is looking for just one suitable being, mind-rapes, then shuts down forevermore but not until a big long flute pops out, of which said being now knows how to play with masterstroke - so glad all beings have the lung capacity and power and are capable of playing a woodwind/reed instrument as such... Didn't the species tell the blasted thing that anyone organic it comes in contact with will die just like everything else in the way they perceive death as being? Chalk up one for "inane nihilism" on top of everything else.