I found my favorite Star Trek TNG episode!
Well, I think I just found my favorite Star Trek episode ever … It’s the episode entitled “Inner Light”, and it’s about Picard living an alternate lifetime that spanned more than 40-50 years, yet his “real” unconscious self on the Enterprise only took place for 25 minutes.
The overall effect of living your full lifetime, thrust from your old way of life into an unfamiliar new setting, getting to know new people along the way, attaining love and having a family, and learning to adjust and come to terms with that new way of life – and then realizing, as he regained consciousness abord the Enterprise, that the many years he spent in that world only amounted to several minutes aboard the Enterprise… well, it made me speechless after watching the episode, as I imagined the impact of Picard’s realization.
To quote Cypher from The Matrix: “What a mind job…”