The Inner Light
First impressions: Snore... What a turkey of an episode!
And then I was surprised to see the tale garner so much support
from vocal fans and rate highly with them. My latest view:
Yep, it's still a turkey.
Mystery's Victim
As one can easily expect, the way into my view of things takes after
the view that our main protagonist Picard presents as the tale gets underway.
We greet a mysterious probe in space with a great degree of curiosity.
Then we get disoriented and find ourselves in a village full of strangers,
hoping to get back to the technological future that we are familiar with.
Like Picard, I greatly feel the need to break out,
discover the bigger picture, confront the forces
that have set the situation up....
and perhaps something more unique to my perspective - find the
futuristic adventure I always hope for when tuning in to Star Trek.
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The "Alternate Realities" box set
features The Inner Light along with:
- "Alternate Lives, Part 1" retrospective production featurette
More info & buying options
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Well, none of that was actually on the itinerary for this episode
in any serious or satisfying way. Here,
Picard seems locked in an episode-long
capture and escape formula, and every time he wishes he were elsewhere,
I wish I was watching another episode... essentially the
"Marco Polo" character motivation mistake.
Even after we learn everything that is going on in the episode,
I still can't get on board with it. There's something very, very wrong
with the concept of this thing grabbing the first suitable man it can find,
and forcing him through a fake life in a virtual world.
I would say the first big conceptual mistake committed by the episode
was to try to make a mystery out of what was going on, while Picard
was the unwilling, non-consenting victim of it. Perhaps the episode
would have fared better had the crew continued with their curiosity
and investigation of the probe, and realized that there was something
to be discovered if someone volunteered to undergo a virtual experience.
We would only have missed a short period of "mystery" that isn't particularly
riveting while it lasts.
When we first see Picard in the second of the five acts, he's had
five years experience-wise to acclimatise to the simulation, but we the
audience have only had ten minutes. He may have been ready to give in
and live the local life, but on my first viewing, I kept hoping for
a good futuristic adventure to open up all throughout the first half.
By the second half, I'd lost hope, realising what this would turn out to be:
Another episode of a crewmember trapped away from the ship for the whole hour,
a very much over-used cookie-cutter formula for Star Trek.
As such, I knew this episode would disappear amongst a collection of others
with similar main plots, all of which I considered very mediocre and below average.
Recycled Culture
I will say, I don't think it's a bad concept to find something left over
from a civilization that used to orbit a star that has since gone supernova.
It's actually intriguing to dig in and find out what they might have been like,
what their culture was.
And part of what disappoints me is that it doesn't seem like Picard actually
found another culture. The people he gets to know could be from Utah or New Mexico
without changing anything significant in the script or on the screen. They have music like ours,
instruments like ours, trees and villages and councils like ours. It doesn't even
seem like anything here is sourced from other cultures or places on the Earth;
it's all American. I'm still not quite sure if the name "Kataan" refers to
the village and/or planet and/or supernova. Not very impressive.
I will give Jay Chattaway a nod for the music on this episode though.
The Lullaby #1 cue for penny-flute (or Theme from The Inner Light as it is perhaps better known)
has become a much-loved fan favourite, and is a nice, enjoyable melody. I like it
even better with piano accompaniment or extra embellishments, as in some of the
other versions it has appeared in over the years. But I expect it stands out
in viewers' minds not because it is so great, but because there is such a strong contrast
between its very defined and deliberate presentation here and the usual bland and boring
sound mush that we viewers had to put up with as the rest of Star Trek TNG's musical output
during these later seasons. I would say that there are many more wonderful examples of
better music during TNG's early years, and had this penny-flute solo featured 2 or 3 years
earlier, it may not have been picked up on so easily or latched onto so tightly by fans.
Essentially letting the theme take the place of dialogue during the final scene also
helped it pop out into fan consciousness also. Well, it's a nice piece of music in any case,
and almost a relief that something with some musical creativity behind it could escape
onto the show at this point. But to return to my main point, it doesn't necessarily
say "alien culture" to me. It still seems very American. This is perhaps the second of the
major conceptual mistakes of the episode - if it's all about a chance to explore
something of a lost alien culture, the show's creators need to really put some
thought and work into creating a more sizeable dose of what it is that makes
that culture unique.
Family Values Marketing
So, why is this episode so popular? I have a theory some may find unusual....
The episode first aired in late spring 1992. Earlier that year I had attended
a seminar where I learned about a survey-based study that broke down the population
of North America into several demographics that indicated some of their core
values and motivations. There were some smaller finely-tuned groups, like the
Societally-Conscious thinkers, or the Achievers who succeeded in business and other areas.
One large group was the Emulators who tried to get somewhere by copying others,
and often missed the mark, or simply were not very original. But the largest group
of all encompassed about 40% of North Americans, and my suspicion was that if
we looked separately at U.S. and Canadian citizens, the percentage would be even
higher in the U.S. alone. This group was labeled "The Belongers", and they were
characterized as wanting to fit in somewhere more than anything else, to be accepted
and loved and raise a family, to lead a solid, hearty life. Well, the signs
were all over that a lot of top marketers got wind of this report, and anyone who
wanted to appeal to the masses began pandering to this largest group as best they could.
I remember the politics of the day featured candidates who all seemed to be trying
to repeat the phrase "family values" more than their opponents, and they all had
different ideas about what that actually meant, if any ideas at all. The U.S. presidential
debate between Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., and Ross Perot
was a classic example of a "family values" soundbite festival.
Well, if you take a good look at "The Inner Light", you will see Picard's virtual life
living out the "family values" ideal of the Belonger fairly accurately, almost as if it too
had been assembled by a marketing committee to appeal to America's largest demographic.
And there's certainly a place for all that family good stuff in most happy lives.
I just wasn't happy about it forcing its way onto Picard uninvited and virtual, and then
replacing all the other things I usually preferred in a Star Trek episode. I think
Star Trek did manage here to nail something special for a very large demographic that
may not normally tune in or warm to its usual offerings, but did so in a way that
missed the mark for some of us who respond better to many of the other things that
were more normal Star Trek.
So, this one seems to me to be a bit of a feel-good episode for North America's Belongers,
those within Trek's usual audience as well as those outside of it, specifically
people who might not mind so much being victimized if it helps them fit in.
I feel I can understand why many people may like it to a certain degree.
But it's such a boring snooze-fest for me, I can't quite grasp what has so
prompted other viewers to elevate it beyond simply good or decent, but in many cases
to swoon and pontificate so much about its supposed greatness, and take that opinion
as a given amongst almost all fans. This one is not universally strong. A couple of
important adjustments might be required for it to pass my tests and work for me,
but ultimately I really do prefer a great many other Star Trek story directions and ideas.
This one, as a take-it-or-leave-it, I'd rather just leave.
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