Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation have often voted The Inner Light as one of, if not THE, best episodes ever, and I've always agreed. Now here are comments by screenwriter Morgan Grendel about how it came to be, and what might have been:
The journey form pitch to script was arduous -- I brought some version of this story to the producers seven times before it was even approved as a story in development. But what each incarnaton had in common was a "mental probe" of some sort that beamed experiences directly in to the recipient's head. Originally, it was a riff on the Fuji blimp -- a 30th century adverstising tool, which Picard and crew didn't realize at first. The tale grew in richness as the "blimp" became a probe whose purpose was to pass along the memory of this dead civilization.As a huge Beatles fan, I thought it would be fun to name this episode after an obscure B-side track -- and (I thought this was obvious) "Inner Light" (I dropped the "the" for the screen title) captured the theme of the show: that Picard experienced a lifetime of memories all in his head.
Incidentally, I later pitched a sequel to this episode that I think fans would have liked to see....
Tip via Trek Today.
Posted by Alan at July 29, 2006 03:24 PM