“The Inner Light” is the twenty fifth episode of the fifth season of the Star Trek: The Next Generation the penultimate episode of the season. The episode has an average rating of 4.8/5 on the official Star Trek website (as of July 29, 2009), tied with “In the Pale Moonlight” and “The Visitor“, both from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the highest rated episode on the site, including all of the Star Trek series, This episode originally aired on June 1st 1992. The first time I watched this episode I did not like it that much it was slow and had no space combat like what kind of Star Trek was that but as the years have gone by that episode has stuck in my brain along with a couple of other TNG episodes as being some of the best of that series. Who can forget the Flute that Picard learns to play while as Kamin he witnesses the slow death of the civilization around hin, powerful stuff something a younger me failed to appreciate. That flute would later go on auction at Christie’s and get 48,000 dollars about 48 times what it was supposed to, the symbolism had not been lost on the fans.
The Enterprise encounters a space probe, which scans the ship and sends an energy beam to Picard, rendering him unconscious. Picard wakes up on the surface of a non-Federation planet; a woman who identifies herself as his wife, Eline, insists that he is a man known as Kamin, waking from a feverish sickness that might have caused amnesia. Although Picard talks of his past memories on the Enterprise, Eline and Batai, a close friend, convince him that they were only dreams, and acclimatize Picard, as Kamin, into their society. He begins living out life as Kamin in the village of Ressik, working as an iron weaver, starting a family with Eline, and learning to play the flute. As the years pass in Kamin’s life, he begins to notice that the planet is suffering a worldwide drought due to increased radiation from the planet’s sun. He reports this to the planet’s leaders, who publicly dismiss it.
Years pass and Kamin grows old, outliving his wife, while the sun continues to raise the planet’s temperature beyond what life can tolerate. One day, while sitting with his grandson, Kamin is summoned by his adult children to watch the launch of a missile. As he walks outside into the glaring sunlight, Kamin sees Eline and Batai, as young as when he first saw them. They explain that he’s already seen the missile; he saw it just before he came there. Knowing their planet was doomed, they placed the memories of their planet and society into a probe contained in a missile, in hopes that it would find someone who could be a teacher, who could tell others about them. Picard suddenly recalls his earlier life aboard the Enterprise as he watches the missile launch.
Picard wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise. Only 25 minutes have passed since the probe arrived. In the meanwhile, the crew of the the Enterprise had tracked the probe’s course back to a scorched and desolate planet which was destroyed long ago by a nova, in hopes of understanding the probe’s purpose. The probe, now inactive, is brought aboard the Enterprise for examination. The crew finds a small box within the probe, which a somber Riker gives to Picard. Inside the box is Kamin’s flute. Picard, now adept at playing the flute, plays a melody he learned during his life as Kamin. “The Inner Light” was ranked among the top five episodes in a “viewers’ choice” marathon that was broadcast just prior to the premiere of the series finale. During a Q&A session at a Star Trek convention in Pasadena, Patrick Stewart was asked what his favorite ST:TNG episode was, and he responded that it was this episode. This episode won the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. The award was given at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco. “The Inner Light” was the first television program to be so honored since the original Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” won in 1968.
