The Real Kataan from "The Inner Light"

[polyharmonic]

"The Inner Light" is considered one of TNG's greatest episodes. But upon reflection, there are some questions I have about it.

Firstly, that society looks far too primitive to develop something so advanced as the probe. I mean does the Federation have tech that can make people live a full alternate life in half in hour of real time? That society looks and feels Stone Age! You'd think that a society capable of building that probe would be warp capable and able to get off their planet not be living primitive Stone Age lifestyles.

The other thing is how utterly human that society was. I mean, Kataan's culture and human people would totally fit someone like Picard or other humans. But what if the probe had reached a Klingon, Cardassian, Romulan, Breen, etc.? Maybe it was a huge coincidence that Kataan was so Earth-like and human-like or maybe the probe adapts itself to present its people and society as matching that of the probed person?

But if the probe "adapts itself" based on the person being probed, then what is the point? I mean in that case the adapted portrayal is fake and wouldn't reveal the "real" Kataan. I mean isn't the point to preserve Kataan culture? But if that portrayed culture is fake, then it defeats that purpose.

All of these thoughts let me to think. What was Kataan really like? Because I am thinking that the Kataan we see is very likely not the "real Kataan" as in their physical features and their actual culture and lifestyle.

 

[Kor]

Stone age? I don't recall the inhabitants primarily using stone implements.

We only saw one small corner of this planet. Sure, the lifestyle in the village was rural and traditional. But there are plenty of places like that on Earth right now, sometimes due to lack of access to modern conveniences, but sometimes purely by choice. A whole planet is a huge place, with lots of diversity and differences in the way people live.

Kataan had technology such as atmospheric condensers. So obviously there was advanced science on the planet.

Perhaps the committee that developed and programmed the probe had decided that a village such as Ressik would be the best representation of their cultural heritage.

Kor

 

[Paradise City]

I said this before. Maybe as a primitive probe it encountered a third party superalien and not entirely unlike in The Hotel Royale episode, the third party super alien enhances the probe to create that imaginary world Picard lives in solely on the basis of Kamin’s diary and perhaps some home footage.

 

[Tenacity]

"The Inner Light" is considered one of TNG's greatest episodes.

You're kidding, right?

I'd consider it definitely one of the worst. Picard stretched out on the bridge floor being mind raped by a alien probe.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

You're kidding, right?

I'd consider it definitely one of the worst. Picard stretched out on the bridge floor being mind raped by a alien probe.

No need to be insulting. In poll after poll, Inner Light is near the top if peoples' lists. Your opinion isn't galactic law.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Real Kataan, isn't that Kamin's first rap album?

 

[at Quark's]

Based on what we see, it could well be a civilization with major centers that are technologically on par with present-day earth. They have (primitive) space travel, and presumably telecommunications (by 'voice transit conductor'). It's just that the community we see seems more rurally inclined. But stone age, it certainly is not.

Though I agree that such a 'primitive' probe posessing such advanced mind-hacking possibilities seems like a bit of a stretch-- but perhaps their neurological science was centuries ahead.

As for how easily the 'depicted' Kataan could change according to the race it would find. well, it would be a bit harder for the flute to be adapted accordingly ... unless the primitive probe had a built-in replicator as well

 

[Leviathan]

So the episode summary is: "Picard gets mind-raped but by people who are very, very nice."

 

[Timo]

Some of the best entertainment consists of the hero(es) and/or villain(s) and/or more or less innocent bystanders getting beaten to bloody pulp. Why should this be seen as a problem?

Statistically, nearly every society out there is human-like in Trek. Doesn't mean the Kataan we saw would be the "real" one: the whole point of the probe was a propaganda tour, after all. But there are so many ways and degrees by which the Kataati could choose to distort the self-image. Perhaps this very village once existed, but a thousand years before the probe was actually launched? Perhaps the village is pure allegory for something completely different? Perhaps it's what Kataan always wanted to be but never was? Every interpretation is open to us, really.

But telepathic technology being beyond the means of iron age primitives? I doubt that. Telepathy is common as dirt in Trek, and does not require factories and refineries to develop, just wizards and optimal breeding committees. The Kataati could have built their equivalent of Pioneer 10 (okay, a lightyear in thousand years is pretty good going for such, but still) and then chanted mystically around it for an hour to achieve the effect.

The fancy mind beam is pretty much consistent with what the Satarrans had in "Conundrum", too. If Trek already bangs us on the head with the pseudo-fact that it is simple for an industrial civilization to develop antigravity and warp drive (even if moderately hard to get working teleportation), then we can accept this as yet another pseudo-fact about the Trek universe. Telepathic tech: easy to build and common enough, nigh-impossible to defend against, as Quark confirms in "Jem'Hadar".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

I never saw them as stone age, merely agro-centric. I took their way of life to be more about choice than necessity, which would jive with them feeling their way of life was worth trying to preserve in some way

Their human appearances would be more believable if it were an interpretation Picard's, & I do think it would lose some of the detail of their real culture, but beggars can't be choosers I guess. It beats the idea of some Andorian having to spend a lifetime among non-Andorians, & at least they could be chronicled in some way

As to the mind probe, well, it's sci-fi, but in truth, even we can alter, influence or corrupt mental function. If it helps to suspend your disbelief though, just remember that necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps many cultures would never need to develop this tech (or the one in Conundrum) but in their case, something developmental or environmental came along, that made this an avenue more likely to be explored, than warp or what have you.

 

[Timo]

Would Kataan have this technology in everyday use during the events Picard later relived through? That is, did everybody, unknown to him, actually have a "mindcorder" in his or her pocket or cranial cavity, as an everyday consumer item not worth commenting upon, but crucial to the fact that the recording of the ironmonger's life story did get made?

On the issue of whether this village was out of the norm for Kataan, the story does include the bit where the government knows all about the upcoming end of world even when the villagers do not. It is thus implied that the government at least has telescopes when the village does not...

Of course, there's also the issue of transportation, which we never see in Trek because alien vehicles or alien horses are too expensive to be included. Kataan did have transportation, and visitors from outside the village. The more advanced, the easier it would be to omit, really: donkeys need more infrastructure than atomic cars, at the village level. So having rockets outside the village would not be that major a leap from having said invisible transportation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Pity the Preservers didn't find them first...

 

[Timo]

Would we (or they) be better off? When ther Preservers saved Amerinds, they saved a teeny weeny lot that didn't even retain cultural identity, but was described by Spock as "a mixture of Navajo, Mohican and Delaware". The folks remaining on Earth probably fared better culturally...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Phily B]

The probe wasn't moving at lightspeed was it? It had traveled about a lightyear away from the star system of origin.

Also the planet and civilization were clearly in decline, it's quite possible that technologically they reached a certain point which involved fairly advanced space probes and never progressed because the planet began to die. This technology was kept on the backburner, stored away for the future while they tried to come up with ways to save the planet.

It's not really that important of a detail because as always in Trek the story is most important and it's a great story but logically they would've just sent a probe out with information about their culture - though maybe they did since they found space for the flute. Picard probably added all the information about their culture and people to the Federation database, so even if they're all long gone, that information remains.

 

[Timo]

We know two things about the speed of the probe: it was found about one lightyear away from the site of the kaboom, and the kaboom was a thousand years old. So the probe either could do one thousandth of lightspeed (assuming it was launched right before the star blew) or less (assuming the star did not blow right after Kamin's life story ended, but some appreciable time later). So we can choose between a drive system that massively outperforms what we can do today, and one that is no better than the little rockets we used to kick the Pioneers and Voyagers on their merry ways.

Was Kataan in decline? At first, Kamin's wife didn't appear to comprehend the idea of other star systems or even other planets, and a few decades the Adminstrator stated that the planet was beginning to dabble in rocketry. That appears like an upward curve, and perhaps one resulting directly from an effort to leave a monument. But the planet wasn't all pre-20th century Earth even back when Picard "arrived": they had telecommunications, and this voice-transit conductor of theirs might have been an early application of the mind ray technology, a field of science where the Kataati were a bit ahead of us. (Or then it was a fancy voicepipe and the Kataati had really good lungs.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

Would Kataan have this technology in everyday use during the events Picard later relived through? That is, did everybody, unknown to him, actually have a "mindcorder" in his or her pocket or cranial cavity, as an everyday consumer item not worth commenting upon, but crucial to the fact that the recording of the ironmonger's life story did get made?

There's really no knowing one way or the other. It's possible, but I'm inclined to think not, because everything about the probe launch seemed like a Hail Mary pass, that was put together just for the event. They seemed real hush hush about the plan for quite a long time, when the whole of the plan is really just rocket+mind probe. The only thing that would be worth being secretive about is the mind probe, I'd imagine. Though, I guess keeping the rocket a secret might be useful too. Wouldn't want to get anyone's hopes up for an evacuation

More than that though, the mind tech wouldn't be of much use in any cases except wanting to live vicariously through another person anyhow, like the tech in that movie "Strange Days". There'd be little point in low-jacking boring agrarian villagers. You'd want to link up people who's lives are exciting enough to be worth experiencing

 

[JirinPanthosa]

You're kidding, right?

I'd consider it definitely one of the worst. Picard stretched out on the bridge floor being mind raped by a alien probe.

I think he was talking about a bigger sample group than one person on a message board.

For example, I hate Bruno Mars, but the fact that I hate him does not change the fact that he is popular.

I find it a pretty average episode, personally.

 

[Timo]

There's really no knowing one way or the other. It's possible, but I'm inclined to think not, because everything about the probe launch seemed like a Hail Mary pass, that was put together just for the event. They seemed real hush hush about the plan for quite a long time, when the whole of the plan is really just rocket+mind probe. The only thing that would be worth being secretive about is the mind probe, I'd imagine. Though, I guess keeping the rocket a secret might be useful too. Wouldn't want to get anyone's hopes up for an evacuation

Further variables abound. Was it a secret in reality? Or was the secrecy just part of the simulation, or an artifact of Kamin's real fading mental acuity? After all, everybody but Kamin appears to know about the project!

More than that though, the mind tech wouldn't be of much use in any cases except wanting to live vicariously through another person anyhow, like the tech in that movie "Strange Days". There'd be little point in low-jacking boring agrarian villagers. You'd want to link up people who's lives are exciting enough to be worth experiencing

That's a bit like saying that telephones would only ever be needed by opera singers - applications of mind recording and replay in telecommunications would appear endless.

If allowed to complete evenly, from a common starting line, electromagnetic signaling would probably win over optical semaphore relay systems as easily as it would over Pony Express, and wireless EM might triumph over cable EM (although it's not doing so today). Mind rays might well be the preferred tech of the lot if they were lightspeed or faster, though, and certainly if they were the technology more easily discovered or (as per available natural resources) implemented. Alas, we never saw how telecomms (or transportation) on Kataan worked, so we missed out on key indicators on tech level.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[2takesfrakes]

Kataan did not cut it for me, on any level. For being an "Artist's Community," they were surprisingly uniform and bland. Where's the eclectic architecture? Where are the pretentious, flamboyant eccentrics? Where are the Party People? Not even any fairs and festivals, for crying out loud? This town is so sedate and boring. ... BORING!!! The worst sin you could ever have in entertainment. Jazz this berg the frig up, what the hell's the matter with these people? It's no wonder they could only figure out to how zap future minds from afar, instead of getting off that doomed rock to a less doomed one.

It pains me to see how celebrated "Inner Light" is in this franchise. Yes, it's charming to see Sir Patrick Stewart acting with his son. And the actress playing Kamin's adult daughter is absolutely gorgeous. Forgive me, but I did not care for Kamin's wife, at all. She's a passionless woman, it seems like, despite statements in the show to the contrary. And that's not the kind of woman that Picard would've settled on, I'm sorry. Yet, "Oh! We got to see Picard: The Family Man!" ... AT LAST!!! Please, with that shit. I much preferred his having a son in "Bloodlines," named Jason, I believe. Much better presentation of Picard as a father ...

 

[cgervasi]

Firstly, that society looks far too primitive to develop something so advanced as the probe. I mean does the Federation have tech that can make people live a full alternate life in half in hour of real time?

I think the recreation depicted an idealized version of an agricultural community during an early industrial time, like Little House on the Prairie. This setting was around the time when the first signs of the ecological disaster were discovered.

Perhaps after that time the death rate decreased, and eventually the birth rate decreased, causing population to plummet. This process may have taken centuries. The creators of the recreation took some artistic license in portraying the launch happening closer to when the ecological problems were detected because their goal was to show a positive view of their culture before their world recognized their world was doomed.