Variations on The Inner Light
What about The Inner Light was a multi-voiced cry after not finding it on my list of favourite Picard-centric episodes. Not surprisingly, given it frequently ends up on a lot of people’s Best Of Trek episodes, and Patrick Stewart is indeed excellent in it.
Now, I like The Inner Light. I’m a sucker for quiet character episodes, and I do like the basic concept .of a civiliation that, upon realising it’s doomed by inevitable natural disaster, decides to tell its story, and do so via someone’s entire every day life, and have that someone not be a leader or mythical hero but a „normal“ citizen. You have to handwave several things about the very premise - if they had tech so sophisticated that it allowed the probe to transmit a life time of memories/virtual reality, why not at least try to build space faring evacuation pods for the people -, but that’s possible; after all, we only see excerpts of Kamin’s life, and it’s entirely possible the people on the council or whoever was governing the planet did attempt to build a spacecraft first, only to realise the next inhabitable planet was too far away and they didn’t have the ability to break the speed of light, or something like that. (Though then you have to question why Picard-as-Kamin, who retains Picard’s memoirs, didn’t share the technical knowledge once he figured out what was going on with the droughts.) That’s not the point of the story, and it doesn’t stop me from enjoying the episode. More enthusiasm-dampening is another bit, which can be summed up as: They didn’t ask. (The people of Kataan who created the probe, that is.)
I wouldn’t go as far as to share the minority opinion I’ve also seen after googling the episode reactions which compare what happens to Picard here with what happens to O’Brien in DS9’s Hard Time; the decades of memories forced on O’Brien were specifically designed to „punish“, i.e. hurt him, whereas the Kamin memories were intended as a gift to their receiver. Memories, or virtual reality; the episode never gets definite as to whether Kamin existed, and Picard was given his actual memories, or whether Kamin’s story was an artificial creation in order to represent aspects of Kataan life and more of an interactive game, i.e adepting to whoever would be accessed by the probe. That Picard is able to make decisions within the story - it takes him five years until he fully accepts Eline as his wife, for example - would argue the later, and I suppose the flute could argue the former - or it could simply be a flute because that was a core element of the story designed by the Kataans. However: in both cases, neither O’Brien and Picard made the choice to receive those memories. They do share that. I suppose partly because Trek in various incarnations has done the „aliens intend to force false reality for sinister purpose on one of our heroes, hero fights back“ story (and will do so again - ask Riker in Frame of Mind) and the writers and producers wanted to mislead the audience at the start a bit when they like Picard expect something like this until realising that no, this is a different story altogether. But still: Picard at the start being told that he’s Kamin and all his other memories were a feverish delirium would be called gaslighting in another context.
If the story had begun slightly differently - the Probe offers their story, Picard, passionate hobby archaeologist that he is, would never forego the chance to learn about a vanished people even at risk to himself and agrees to undergo the experience - and avoided the part where the Enterprise‘ crew’s attempt to interrupt the transmission ends up nearly killing Picard (which implies that the Kataanians were willing to let their future memory host die rather than reject their stories) , it could still have been the same moving tale, minus those pesky consent issues.
On a more flippant note, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the Kamin memories had been given to another Starship Captain. And my conclusions were thusly: Janeway, Sisko and Kirk would have more or less done what Picard did, with varying degrees and lengths of initial resistance to the Kamin identity. (If you think Kirk would have never stopped rebelling, you didn’t watch the episode where he was an amnesiac Native American in Space.) Janeway, because she needed to get her people home, might have held out the longest, but she would eventually have accepted being Kamin. Sisko might have assumed this was another Prophet experience at first and adapted most quickly. With Archer, it would have depended on just when the Proble would have made contact. Season 1 and 2 Archer might have been suspicious of Vulcan or other aliens meddling and a ploy to stop humanity’s space exploration, but eventually, his paranoia would have settled and he’d gone with the flow. Though wondering who’d take care of Porthos would have kept him up many a night. Season 3 Archer, otoh, might have killed every single person in Kamin’s community in order to prove this was clearly just a fiendish simulation by the Xindi. Season 4 Archer is back to being paranoid for some years and then going with the flow.
And Gabriel Lorca? Here’s what Lorca-as-we-knew-him would have done (meaning we never met Lorca Prime, so I have no idea, and am answering for MirrorLorca only): Lorca pretends to accept being Kamin post haste. In a stealth move, he then ousts the Councilman from his job and becomes Councilman himself. Having deduced the oncoming supernova in the meantime, he then pushes forward a space programm by manipulating everyone he can get a hold of to work themselves to death if needs must in order to save their people from extinction. Lorca-as-Kamin’s life concludes, however, with Lorca-as-Kamin using the first finished space craft to escape Kataan on his lonesome and leaving everyone behind to die in the supernova. He promises he’ll tell their story, though. The end of the memories is Eline, Batai, Meribor et al telling Lorca they’re really really disappointed in him.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1301271.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Now, I like The Inner Light. I’m a sucker for quiet character episodes, and I do like the basic concept .of a civiliation that, upon realising it’s doomed by inevitable natural disaster, decides to tell its story, and do so via someone’s entire every day life, and have that someone not be a leader or mythical hero but a „normal“ citizen. You have to handwave several things about the very premise - if they had tech so sophisticated that it allowed the probe to transmit a life time of memories/virtual reality, why not at least try to build space faring evacuation pods for the people -, but that’s possible; after all, we only see excerpts of Kamin’s life, and it’s entirely possible the people on the council or whoever was governing the planet did attempt to build a spacecraft first, only to realise the next inhabitable planet was too far away and they didn’t have the ability to break the speed of light, or something like that. (Though then you have to question why Picard-as-Kamin, who retains Picard’s memoirs, didn’t share the technical knowledge once he figured out what was going on with the droughts.) That’s not the point of the story, and it doesn’t stop me from enjoying the episode. More enthusiasm-dampening is another bit, which can be summed up as: They didn’t ask. (The people of Kataan who created the probe, that is.)
I wouldn’t go as far as to share the minority opinion I’ve also seen after googling the episode reactions which compare what happens to Picard here with what happens to O’Brien in DS9’s Hard Time; the decades of memories forced on O’Brien were specifically designed to „punish“, i.e. hurt him, whereas the Kamin memories were intended as a gift to their receiver. Memories, or virtual reality; the episode never gets definite as to whether Kamin existed, and Picard was given his actual memories, or whether Kamin’s story was an artificial creation in order to represent aspects of Kataan life and more of an interactive game, i.e adepting to whoever would be accessed by the probe. That Picard is able to make decisions within the story - it takes him five years until he fully accepts Eline as his wife, for example - would argue the later, and I suppose the flute could argue the former - or it could simply be a flute because that was a core element of the story designed by the Kataans. However: in both cases, neither O’Brien and Picard made the choice to receive those memories. They do share that. I suppose partly because Trek in various incarnations has done the „aliens intend to force false reality for sinister purpose on one of our heroes, hero fights back“ story (and will do so again - ask Riker in Frame of Mind) and the writers and producers wanted to mislead the audience at the start a bit when they like Picard expect something like this until realising that no, this is a different story altogether. But still: Picard at the start being told that he’s Kamin and all his other memories were a feverish delirium would be called gaslighting in another context.
If the story had begun slightly differently - the Probe offers their story, Picard, passionate hobby archaeologist that he is, would never forego the chance to learn about a vanished people even at risk to himself and agrees to undergo the experience - and avoided the part where the Enterprise‘ crew’s attempt to interrupt the transmission ends up nearly killing Picard (which implies that the Kataanians were willing to let their future memory host die rather than reject their stories) , it could still have been the same moving tale, minus those pesky consent issues.
On a more flippant note, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the Kamin memories had been given to another Starship Captain. And my conclusions were thusly: Janeway, Sisko and Kirk would have more or less done what Picard did, with varying degrees and lengths of initial resistance to the Kamin identity. (If you think Kirk would have never stopped rebelling, you didn’t watch the episode where he was an amnesiac Native American in Space.) Janeway, because she needed to get her people home, might have held out the longest, but she would eventually have accepted being Kamin. Sisko might have assumed this was another Prophet experience at first and adapted most quickly. With Archer, it would have depended on just when the Proble would have made contact. Season 1 and 2 Archer might have been suspicious of Vulcan or other aliens meddling and a ploy to stop humanity’s space exploration, but eventually, his paranoia would have settled and he’d gone with the flow. Though wondering who’d take care of Porthos would have kept him up many a night. Season 3 Archer, otoh, might have killed every single person in Kamin’s community in order to prove this was clearly just a fiendish simulation by the Xindi. Season 4 Archer is back to being paranoid for some years and then going with the flow.
And Gabriel Lorca? Here’s what Lorca-as-we-knew-him would have done (meaning we never met Lorca Prime, so I have no idea, and am answering for MirrorLorca only): Lorca pretends to accept being Kamin post haste. In a stealth move, he then ousts the Councilman from his job and becomes Councilman himself. Having deduced the oncoming supernova in the meantime, he then pushes forward a space programm by manipulating everyone he can get a hold of to work themselves to death if needs must in order to save their people from extinction. Lorca-as-Kamin’s life concludes, however, with Lorca-as-Kamin using the first finished space craft to escape Kataan on his lonesome and leaving everyone behind to die in the supernova. He promises he’ll tell their story, though. The end of the memories is Eline, Batai, Meribor et al telling Lorca they’re really really disappointed in him.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1301271.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.