Plot
On stardate 45944.1, the Enterprise has just finished a magnetic wave survey of the Parvenium System, when they encounter an unknown probe which scans the ship and directs an energy beam at Captain Picard, rendering him unconscious.
Picard wakes up to find himself on the surface of Kataan, a non-Federation planet. A woman identifies herself as his wife, Eline, telling Picard that he is Kamin, an iron weaver recovering from a feverish sickness. Picard talks of his memories on the Enterprise, but Eline and their close friend Batai try to convince Picard that his memories were only dreams, and acclimate him into their society as Kamin. Picard begins living out his life as Kamin in the village of Ressik, starting a family with Eline, and learning to play the flute. Kamin spends much time outdoors studying nature. As the years pass, he begins to notice that the planet is suffering a worldwide drought owing to increased radiation from the planet's sun. He sends reports to the planet's leaders, who seem to ignore his concerns when, in fact, they already know this but wish to keep it a secret to avoid a panic. A government official points out to Kamin that they only just recently managed to successfully launch artificial satellites using primitive rockets: their race simply do not possess the technology level needed to evacuate even a small colony's worth of people before their planet is rendered uninhabitable.
Meanwhile, on board the Enterprise, the crew continue attempts to revive Picard. They try to block the influence of the probe, but this only makes Picard worse, leaving them no choice but to let it continue.
Years pass and Kamin grows old, outliving his wife. Kamin and his daughter Meribor continue their study of the drought. They find that it is not temporary; extinction of all life on the planet is inevitable. One day, while playing with his grandson, Kamin is summoned by his adult children to watch the launch of a rocket, which everyone seems to know about except him. As he walks outside into the glaring sunlight, Kamin sees Eline and Batai, as young as when he first saw them. They explain that he has already seen the rocket, just before he came there. Knowing that the planet was doomed, the planet's leaders placed the memories of their culture into a probe and launched it into space, in the hope that it would find someone who could tell others about their species. Picard realizes the entire context, saying "Oh, it's me, isn't it? I'm the someone."
Picard wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise to discover that only 25 minutes have passed. While he was unconscious, the crew of the Enterprise tracked the probe's course back to a scorched and desolate planet whose sun went nova 1,000 years earlier. The now inactive probe is brought aboard the Enterprise and the crew finds a small box within it. A somber Riker gives the box to Picard who opens it to find Kamin's flute. Picard, now adept at the instrument, plays the melody he learned during his life as Kamin.
Read more about this topic: The Inner Light (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
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