Patrick Stewart revealed his favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and his choice shouldn’t come as a surprise to Star Trek fans. Stewart began playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 1987 when TNG premiered and he recently stepped back into the role for three seasons of Star Trek: Picard. Jean-Luc’s story came full circle in the acclaimed Picard season 3, as the TNG crew reunited on the rebuilt USS Enterprise-D. Now 83, Patrick Stewart just released his highly anticipated autobiography, “Making It So: A Memoir,” chronicling Stewart’s life from his difficult childhood, to his career from Shakespeare to Star Trek to superheroes.
In an interview with Wired about “Making It So,” Sir Patrick Stewart revealed that one particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation remains his favorite. Read his full quote below:
“The Inner Light” […] Because 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.
Why “The Inner Light” Is A Standout Star Trek: TNG Episode
Star Trek: The Next Generation season 5, episode 25, “The Inner Light” is widely regarded as one of the series’ best episodes for a good reason. “The Inner Light” opens with a fairly standard Star Trek plot – The USS Enterprise-D encounters a strange probe that proceeds to scan the ship. There, the story becomes a new kind of Trek story as Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s mind is transported to a planet called Kataan. He finds himself living a life as a man named Kamin with a wife and child. He grows old and has grandkids before eventually being transported back to the Enterprise to find that only minutes have passed for the rest of the crew.
Captain Picard’s experiences in “The Inner Light” have a profound effect on him, and the small flute he played as Kamin remains one of his most prized possessions. “The Inner Light” may be a somewhat nontraditional episode of Trek – there are no real moral conundrums or galaxy-saving quests – but the episode still exemplifies what makes Star Trek great. Ultimately, it’s a story about people who lived a thousand years before on the other side of the galaxy but still share the very human desire for their story to be remembered. This standout episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation works as well as it does not only because of Patrick Stewart’s wonderful performance, but also because of the beautiful, heartbreakingly human story.
Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart is available in bookstores now.
