 |
| Picard, coming to terms with a new life. |
THE
PLOT
The Enterprise encounters an alien probe, which emits a beam that "tethers" it to Picard. The captain collapses to the floor of the bridge, seeing his friends reaching for him as he loses consciousness...
...Only to wake up inside a dwelling, with the attractive Eline (Margot Rose) calling him "Kamin" and telling him that he has just woken from a days-long fever. Picard runs out of the dwelling, into a village square where a friendly man named Batai (Richard Riehle) also expresses concern about "Kamin's" recent illness. Picard quickly realizes that he is living someone else's life, with no apparent way to return to his own.
The village is Ressik, on the planet Kataan, home to a largely agrarian civilization with a limited level of technology, roughly equivalent to mid twentieth century Earth. It's a planet with a problem: A drought has fallen everywhere, and there is no end in sight. As that drought stretches on, year after year, Picard applies himself to studying it. He reaches a bleak conclusion. The light from the sun is growing stronger and more harmful, the soil is dying. Within a generation, Kataan will be a dead planet. Picard has arrived just in time to watch it die - with apparently nothing he can do to stop it!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: After some initial disorientation, he responds to his situation with typical intelligence. He realizes that behaving as himself will only result in him being hospitalized, so he begins attempting to fit in as Kamin. As the years pass, he becomes more and more Kamin and less and less Jean-Luc Picard, adapting to the life that has chosen him. But even here, he can't fully give up being the problem solver, applying his intelligence to the problem of a drought that apparently has no end.
Hot Space Wife of the Week: Eline (Margot Rose) is Kamin's wife - and therefore, as the years pass, she becomes Picard's wife. Rose is wonderful casting for the part. She's pretty and appealing, but is also convincing as a romantic partner for Patrick Stewart. She's also a good television actress, well able to handle the emotional beats of the script without overplaying them. In short, she feels "real," which helps tremendously to make this episode as effective as it is.
THOUGHTS
The Inner Light is an episode that always makes the "best lists," both for TNG and for Star Trek in general. It's an ambitious episode, a very personal and emotional story. It's definitely a change of pace. The story is low-key. There are no villains, with even the seemingly pompous Administrator (Scott Jaeck) shown to be less one-dimensional than he at first appears. External conflict is limited, with the bulk of the story simply following Picard as he lives out the life of Kamin.
There isn't much bad here, so I'll start with my one complaint: Picard's story is wonderful, but the episode doesn't have the confidence to just tell that story. As a result, we keep cutting back to the Enterprise, as if to reassure viewers that yes, they are still watching Star Trek. These cutaways serve little purpose and detract from the mood created by the story. After the titles, there should have been exactly one Enterprise scene to re-establish the situation for latecomers - and after that, we shouldn't return to the Enterprise until Picard does. Everything else on the Enterprise bridge is simply a distraction.
An unnecessary one, given the strength of Picard's journey through a life in Ressik. The performances by Patrick Stewart, Margot Rose, and Richard Riehle are outstanding, with Stewart doing quite possibly his best work in the entire series. It's beautifully shot, and director Peter Lauritson keeps all the cast - regulars and guest stars, veteran actors and the inexperienced, all performing in a low-key manner that makes all these people feel very "lived in."
The final scenes on the dying planet are given extremely, harshly bright lighting that emphasizes how little time these people have left, all while the people themselves go about the business of watching a rocket liftoff. That same lighting makes it all the more effective when the people start talking to Picard instead of Kamin, giving a feeling of these voices speaking to him from the afterlife. Which, in a way, they are.
Of course, this is the kind of experience that would fundamentally change Picard, as he lived out decades of another life before being returned to his old one. But this being Star Trek, this will have about as much effect on him as Worf's spinal injury, Geordi's brainwashing, or various other massive events in the lives of our characters. Which is to say, none.
Of course, TNG was rarely serialized in the way DS9 would be. With rare exceptions, each episode was mainly a unit in itself. And judged on that basis, The Inner Light is a great episode, worthy of its reputations as one of the series' best.
Overall Rating: 10/10.
The Enterprise encounters an alien probe, which emits a beam that "tethers" it to Picard. The captain collapses to the floor of the bridge, seeing his friends reaching for him as he loses consciousness...
...Only to wake up inside a dwelling, with the attractive Eline (Margot Rose) calling him "Kamin" and telling him that he has just woken from a days-long fever. Picard runs out of the dwelling, into a village square where a friendly man named Batai (Richard Riehle) also expresses concern about "Kamin's" recent illness. Picard quickly realizes that he is living someone else's life, with no apparent way to return to his own.
The village is Ressik, on the planet Kataan, home to a largely agrarian civilization with a limited level of technology, roughly equivalent to mid twentieth century Earth. It's a planet with a problem: A drought has fallen everywhere, and there is no end in sight. As that drought stretches on, year after year, Picard applies himself to studying it. He reaches a bleak conclusion. The light from the sun is growing stronger and more harmful, the soil is dying. Within a generation, Kataan will be a dead planet. Picard has arrived just in time to watch it die - with apparently nothing he can do to stop it!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: After some initial disorientation, he responds to his situation with typical intelligence. He realizes that behaving as himself will only result in him being hospitalized, so he begins attempting to fit in as Kamin. As the years pass, he becomes more and more Kamin and less and less Jean-Luc Picard, adapting to the life that has chosen him. But even here, he can't fully give up being the problem solver, applying his intelligence to the problem of a drought that apparently has no end.
Hot Space Wife of the Week: Eline (Margot Rose) is Kamin's wife - and therefore, as the years pass, she becomes Picard's wife. Rose is wonderful casting for the part. She's pretty and appealing, but is also convincing as a romantic partner for Patrick Stewart. She's also a good television actress, well able to handle the emotional beats of the script without overplaying them. In short, she feels "real," which helps tremendously to make this episode as effective as it is.
THOUGHTS
The Inner Light is an episode that always makes the "best lists," both for TNG and for Star Trek in general. It's an ambitious episode, a very personal and emotional story. It's definitely a change of pace. The story is low-key. There are no villains, with even the seemingly pompous Administrator (Scott Jaeck) shown to be less one-dimensional than he at first appears. External conflict is limited, with the bulk of the story simply following Picard as he lives out the life of Kamin.
There isn't much bad here, so I'll start with my one complaint: Picard's story is wonderful, but the episode doesn't have the confidence to just tell that story. As a result, we keep cutting back to the Enterprise, as if to reassure viewers that yes, they are still watching Star Trek. These cutaways serve little purpose and detract from the mood created by the story. After the titles, there should have been exactly one Enterprise scene to re-establish the situation for latecomers - and after that, we shouldn't return to the Enterprise until Picard does. Everything else on the Enterprise bridge is simply a distraction.
An unnecessary one, given the strength of Picard's journey through a life in Ressik. The performances by Patrick Stewart, Margot Rose, and Richard Riehle are outstanding, with Stewart doing quite possibly his best work in the entire series. It's beautifully shot, and director Peter Lauritson keeps all the cast - regulars and guest stars, veteran actors and the inexperienced, all performing in a low-key manner that makes all these people feel very "lived in."
The final scenes on the dying planet are given extremely, harshly bright lighting that emphasizes how little time these people have left, all while the people themselves go about the business of watching a rocket liftoff. That same lighting makes it all the more effective when the people start talking to Picard instead of Kamin, giving a feeling of these voices speaking to him from the afterlife. Which, in a way, they are.
Of course, this is the kind of experience that would fundamentally change Picard, as he lived out decades of another life before being returned to his old one. But this being Star Trek, this will have about as much effect on him as Worf's spinal injury, Geordi's brainwashing, or various other massive events in the lives of our characters. Which is to say, none.
Of course, TNG was rarely serialized in the way DS9 would be. With rare exceptions, each episode was mainly a unit in itself. And judged on that basis, The Inner Light is a great episode, worthy of its reputations as one of the series' best.
Overall Rating: 10/10.
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As you mentioned near the end of your review, supposedly life-changing experiences usually have little effect in subsequent episodes. However, this episode was revisited near the end of season 6 in "Lessons" where Picard's acquired love of music comes in to play.
ReplyDeletePost this under "Liner Notes":
If you are a fan of movie soundtracks, or just want to hear an orchestral version of the tune that Picard/Kamin created for the birth of his son, try to find a copy of "The Inner Light Suite" which expands the simple tune written by Jay Chattaway into a 6 and a half minute symphonic masterpiece. It remains one of my favorite pieces of music today.
Post this under "Trivia":
Kamin's grown son Batai is played by Daniel Stewart, Patrick Stewart's real son.