Over its seven-year run, Star Trek: The Next Generation had no shortage of all-time classic episodes. It had quite a few stinkers too, but hey, that’s how it was back when a show had 26-episode seasons. They couldn’t all be winners. But with 178 episodes to its name, what was Sir Patrick Stewart’s favorite chapter of the show? Well, if you’re a big TNG fan, you might have already guessed. But now we know for certain. Via Slash Film, we learned that Stewart’s favorite outing as Captain Jean Luc Picard was an episode where he (mostly) didn’t even play that character, season five’s “The Inner Light.”
In “The Inner Light,” the Enterprise encounters an ancient alien probe (there’s always one of those) from a long-dead world. The probe scans Picard’s mind and implants the memories of an entire lifetime into his head. Picard awakens on a planet called Katann, now with the name Kamin. On Katan, he married, had children and grandchildren, and grew to old age. He even became an accomplished flute player. Eventually, he found out the life he lived was a simulation. It was a kind of time capsule recording of a planet facing extinction. When Picard returned to his old life, decades had passed for him. Yet only a few minutes had passed in the real world.
Here’s what Stewart said about the experience of making “The Inner Light:”
I become someone other than Jean-Luc Picard over decades of living a different life, and therefore become a different person. A domestic person, not a starship captain. And there is another, personal reason. My son Daniel played my son in “The Inner Light.” That was an extraordinary experience.
While our favorite Star Trek: TNG episode remains season two’s “The Measure of a Man,” we certainly understand why Patrick Stewart would love “The Inner Light” so much. It’s a beautiful episode, and it afforded the classically trained actor to go through an entire lifetime of a character in the span of 50 minutes. It’s one of those episodes that always leaves you a bit teary-eyed at the end. If you plan on doing a TNG rewatch anytime soon, there are far worse places to start than with “The Inner Light.”