The Inner Light

The Enterprise encounters an unknown probe, which strikes Picard with a beam of energy and knocks him out. He wakes on the planet Kataan as Kamin, an iron weaver, with a wife, Eline, who tells him he has been ill. Picard resists at first, but over the years settles into this new life. He takes up the flute, has children and grows old. With his daughter Meribor he studies the sky and realises that the sun is dying and that drought will soon end all life on Kataan. Decades later, as the end comes, Eline and his old friend Batai appear to him as they once were and explain: knowing they could not be saved, the people of Kataan sent the probe so that someone would remember them. Picard wakes on the bridge, where only about 25 minutes have passed. In the probe the crew find Kamin's flute, and Picard plays the melody he learned.