10 Awkward Things That Must Have Happened After Star Trek Episodes

Picard's been through a lot of awful stuff in his life. His mother died when he was young, he was stabbed by a Nausiaan, tortured by the Cardassians, and assimilated by the Borg, to name a few things. Yet, the most traumatic moment in his life was probably the events of The Inner Light.

In this episode he lived entire decades of a life that wasn't his, inside of an alien simulation. The ordeal only lasted a few minutes in reality, but for him it was a whole other life, and the show barely expanded on what this meant to him. Maybe the writers just figured Picard got enough therapy in that episode, Family, after The Best Of Both Worlds.

Still, some time must've needed to pass before Picard was ready to Captain the ship again. He probably spent a lot of time off duty to process what happened to him. He spent so long in the simulation that he likely forgot command codes, regulations, and maybe even some of his crew and friends.

The very next episode is the dramatic two-parter time travel story, Time's Arrow, so we can only hope that Picard had at least a few weeks to sit around and mentally recover before immediately going on to save all of humanity.