Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Inner Light” (June 1, 1992)

The lightning-paced, martial, often terrifying Borg sagas were what finally earned the Star Trek sequel its deserved mantle of critical respect, but its richest legacy rests with the more delicate high-concept outings like “The Inner Light,” in which Captain Picard lives out an entire lifetime in the body of another being.  Zapped by an alien probe, Picard awakens on a relatively primitive planet where everyone knows him as Kataan, an ironsmith.  We, and the rest of the ship’s crew, know that Picard is really just in a trance on the Enterprise bridge, but for him there is no escape from his new surroundings.  Years pass and he grows accustomed to, then enriched by, the road not taken, the simple joys unavailable to an explorer and a man of action: friendship, family, community.  By the time the “real” Picard is revived, Kataan is eighty-five, and our captain will carry a whole second lifetime of experience with him for the rest of his days.  Morgan Gendel and Peter Allan Fields’ elegant script is a moving, mind-expanding delight, and Patrick Stewart nimbly avoids all the sentimental traps as he fills in the image of the Picard that might have been