#6, The Inner Light, season 5
This episode utilizes one of my big bugaboos about alien races having "mind control" technology and no other comparable military technology, or in this case space travel capabilities. I also have to assume that the real Kamin must have been in on the creation of the probe's programming since it's his life that Picard's free-form hallucination takes on, and yet there's no indication of this happening in Picard's experience as Kamin. However, in this case it was the best way to handle a story like this, so I willingly and happily overlook the sci-fi flaws of this beautiful episode.
The Enterprise encounters a probe which makes a connection with Picard and throws him into a state of unconsciousness on the bridge. Meanwhile, in his mind, he's living the life of a man on a dying planet. Unwillingly at first, since he can't shake his identity off instantly. However, this is where the episode takes an unexpected turn. A seasoned Star Trek fan would expect Kamin-Picard to be solving the mystery of his new placement on Kattan within a few hours or days, inadvertently teaching lessons to all the people in town about space travel, how to save their planet, and even finding a way to meet with them for real. But that's not what happens. Instead he accepts his new identity and life believing his vague memories of space exploration to be dreams brought about by illness. Over the course of Kamin's long life, Picard gets the whole domestic and civil experience, wife and kids, joys and woes - a life he'd not chosen for himself in his real world, which is why it's so emotional when at the end he realizes that all of "his" life was a memorial to the extinct planet and their plea to be remembered. I mean, it's the reason we procreate and pass stories and history down through the generations anyway... it's as close as we come to eternal life on Earth. The memories would be with Picard forever.
I consider this episode to be an improvement on "The Paradise Syndrome" in which Kirk, with amnesia, takes on the life of a medicine man and marries with intent to start a family. That life is tragically taken from Kirk and Spock helps him to forget in the end. But in this episode, Picard is allowed to live his alternate life out naturally before he's gently removed back to reality where he then has to live with those memories. And even the writers realized afterwards how an experience like this could deeply change a character even though all they were looking for was just a good hour of T.V. It's every bit as invasive and life altering as his experience of the Borg assimilation. Instead of taking his life as the Borg did, this probe gave him an additional life to cherish, and it's also a lot to work through psychologically. The image of Captain Picard living as an average, "nobody" type of man who is not a leader of anything significant or fulfilling any kind of "chosen one" role had a more powerful impact than anyone could've expected for both the character and the audience. And it wouldn't have worked as well for any other character.
I also have 10 honorable mentions to match my top ten favorites, so I'll throw one in every day that I post a top ten episode. These aren't ranked.
The Gambit, season 7
This episode was so much better for displaying Picard's passion for archaeology than Captain's Holiday. This episode is action packed. They don't spend a lot of time on dialogue and there's no need since the story is pretty straight forward. It leaves you breathless almost from beginning to end. You know Picard can't really be dead but it's an interesting twist when he turns up as a part of the mercenary crew and not a hostage. The name he's using while posing as an archaeologist is enough to give the episode an emotional hook that they don't even have to waste time explaining since Picard's beloved and recently departed mentor, Galen, is still fresh in our memories from The Chase in the previous season. It's another glowing demonstration of how the characters have grown together and work smoothly as a team without having to give a wink and a nudge to make their intentions known to each other and without a need to telegraph to the audience what they were doing like the episode, Allegiance. These interactions are another affirmation of how Wrath of Khan changed the way stories were written. It had all the intensity of an action movie, like Starhip Mine, with a plot that undergoes a couple of twists and ends up exploring the darker side of Vulcan's past as Picard becomes involved in a plot to rebuild a destructive telepathic weapon. It's a really cool episode in the 7th season when you could tell that they were running thin on ideas.
They say the producer felt a little bad about doing this one because it breaks Roddenberry's rule of "no space pirates." But the best work was done outside of Roddenberry's rules. The show would never have matured and we wouldn't have had the deep complexities of DS9 if they followed Roddenberry's rules. It's kind of hard to take "no space pirates" seriously anyway when that's essentially what the original concept of the Ferengi was in the early seasons. This was a great little adventure. And it was more Indiana Jonsey than piratey.One of my personal favorites.
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