This is a 1993 Hugo Award winning episode that can melt the stoniest of hearts. The Enterprise encounters a probe after completing a simple survey mission. As the probe gets closer to the ship, it emits a scanning wave that renders Captain Picard unconscious. When he wakes up, he finds himself on a planet known as Kataan and he has an entirely new life. He is known as Kamin, discovers he is married to a woman known as Eline, is an iron weaver and has friends. While he initially resists this notion, his friends and family affirm to him that he has been sick and is now just beginning to recover. He eventually gives up the idea of trying to find the Enterprise and acclimatizes himself to the new life he has discovered. In the course of his acclimatization, he finds that Kataans sun is emitting increasing levels of radiation and that threatens to render the planet uninhabitable. By this point, Picard/Kamin has raised a family, outlived his wife and has a grandson (interestingly enough, played by Daniel Stewart, Patrick Stewarts son). He even learns to play the flute. After years of sending reports to the government, he finally learns that the government has known of Kataans plight all along and are trying to do everything they can to preserve their culture. He is invited to attend a rocket launch that he was not aware of. At the launch, he sees his wife and friend who passed away years before him, as young as they were when he first met them. They explain to him that the purpose of the probe was to find someone who could remember Kataan and preserve its memory to other species in the galaxy. In a fit of weeping, Picard declares: Oh, its me, isnt it? Im the one who finds it. It is this moment that makes the entire episode. When you consider that in the course of this 45 minute episode, Picard has lived an entire life, raised a family, buried his best friend and wife, seen the birth of a grandson and now has to contend with the extinction of his adopted home on top of returning to a life that he had grown to believe was a fever-induced delusion. This episode is an emotional sledgehammer. When you consider all these things that Picard has to assimilate is truly heart-rending. An entire lifetime of memories is now part of his existence, and epitomized in the moment when Commander Riker brings a box that they discovered in the probe to his ready room. When Picard opens it up, he discovers Kamins flute.
John Kirk is a Teacher-Librarian and currently a History/English Teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
But mostly, John teaches Geek.
Comics, Sci-Fi (Notably Star Trek), Fantasy and Role-Playing and table-top games all make up part of John’s repertoire, There is a whole generation of nerds-in-embryo who rely on him to make sense of it all, to teach that with great power comes great responsibility, that the force will be with us always and that a towel IS the most useful thing to have in one’s possession.
When John isn’t in the classroom, he can be found in his basement writing comic reviews for www.popmythology.com and features for Roddenberry Entertainment's www.1701news.com.
