I don’t hate these kinds of episodes but it’s like somebody was out of ideas and wanted to do an anthology show instead. The connection to Picard and the Enterprise was contrived.
Applies also to the one with Troi as a spy on a Romulan ship.
Was Picard into archeology before “The Inner Light”?
That’s a link that hadn’t occurred to me.
Yup, starting in S3E20, I think, Captain’s Holiday where he meets Vash. I wish they had explored his interest in archaeology a bit more, but, probably I’m a relative few who’d want that. 
ETA: I was curious so I had to look further the earliest reference I’ve found is S2E17, Samaritan Snare where Wesley asked about a subject to talk about with Picard on a trip to Starbase 515, one of the ensigns (Sonya Gomez) replies, “Archaeology.”
Would have been interesting bit of character development if Picard was into archeology BECAUSE of encountering this probe, but I guess not.
They did something similar for an episode of Deep Space Nine in which O’Brien is forcibly implanted with decades’ worth of false memories in a virtual prison.
It would, yeah. But it did get him into playing the flute.
I’m not sure how I felt at the time, but I know that this episode is one of a small handful of NG episodes that I find just randomly pops into my head from time to time (“Who Watches The Watchers” is another one.)
Around the time it aired I remember my roommates father dismissing Star Trek as garbage, mindless entertainment with silly uniforms and funny alien costumes that were little more than a carnival attraction (or something like that)-- I wish he could have seen this episode.
Small consolation for the probe builders.
ALF: We’re going to build a giant space probe to fly to the other side of the galaxy!
ZET: And fix the sun?
ALF: No the sun is fucked. Nothing we can do. But we will TEACH AN ALIEN TO PLAY THE FLUTE!
ZET: Will he found a music school? Will it enrich their culture?
ALF: No turns out they have their own flutes already. But this ONE GUY will play OUR FLUTE.
LOL. Meh, you build a mind-controlling space probe for an unknown alien life form, ya takes yer chances.
This. It’s also a sterling example of what trek does best and why it’s so ill-suited to movies.
Strange how in a sense it’s a typical reset episode but you don’t feel short changed, picard does come out of it a different person - by the standards allowed by episodic network tv back in the day. I’m liking the idea that his love of archaeology came from this though. I think it’d make a good double feature with deep space nine’s season 4 episode the visitor.
ZET: Will he at least tell people where he got the flute?
ALF: Not everyone. But if he tells even one woman he wants to make out with then the whole project will be worthwhile.
Seems strange that there is no mention of this episode’s (conceptual) indebtedness to the “Paradise Syndrome” episode of the original series: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708475/
I didn’t find that as jarring as the one where they discovered that using the warp drive was slowly destroying the universe and then continued zipping around exactly the same as before.
It’s just like fossil fuels and climate change?
So pretty realistic then?
Or the one where they learned that all the humanoid species in the galaxy were not the product of evolution but of intelligent design by Prometheus-style precursor aliens and everyone kind of shrugged off the discovery as an anticlimactic letdown.
Because movies are never interesting or beautiful? Star Trek I think is well-suited to movies, but unfortunately the ones they have chosen to make have been rather pedestrian. Except for The Motion Picture.
Well you answered your own question there i think. Of course movies can be wonderful, i specifically refer to trek movies. They can’t explore to any great depth the themes of a season, they invariably have to contain a conflict/resolution plot given the time constraints. For me trek belongs as a tv show and always will. I’m with keith decandido on this (comment 27 if it doesn’t link).
I remember thinking it was a great episode when it aired. But then again, it can be hard to see how influential something might be until later on.
Because it was kind of obvious, considering that many interbreed?
And of course, if Picard had come to them shortly before the planet went Nova, he would’ve looked from orbit and let them die, because, y’know Prime Directive. Well, depending on the writers’ whims. In Homeward, which came way later than Inner Light, Picard was quite willing to let a species die.
What I was getting at is that the only obstacle to great Star Trek movies has been them being controlled by risk-averse unadventurous people, rather than anything internal to Star Trek stories themselves. But I am aware that Star Trek can be and is many different things to many different people. Something like Inner Light I think demonstrates a great balance between the SF and more character-based aspects. The best episodes - like those @quorihunter listed above - show directions that great Star Trek movies could take, rather than relying upon Federation Drama, revenge, monsters, banter, etc.
IMO even the TNG two-part episodes make more interesting movies than most of the actual cinematic ones we’ve gotten. But that’s a dynamic that I have started to see increasingly playing out in Hollywood - that movies need to be conservative and formulaic, and high-profile television series can afford to innovate. Hopefully Discovery is interesting, but it could be that the franchise has drifted away from what appealed to me over the years.
