Patrick Stewart portrayed the sort of characters we desperately need more of. A modern day Atticus Finch, in a sense. To boldly speak truth, even when inconvenient, and argue, eloquently, for humanity, even after becoming machine.
I hope our current environment is one that can elevate someone of similar talents to an equivalent stature, but I worry our media is not up to the task.
When I think of our civilization, the Ressikan Flute often comes to mind.
Pour one out. https://picard.ytmnd.com/
> the Ressikan Flute often comes to mind.
What an episode, and what a beautiful, terrible, gift!
It's a beautiful message. It once more takes the sitcom component out of Star Trek and then as we think Picard might actually be dying -- and that is why this episode now is dragging on so long -- it suddenly wraps itself up. And we are left with one message: The ressikan flute being played by Picard. And that is all that the people concentrated their life, their culture, their civilization into. That final message. The music, and the means to that music as a piece that's an original.
It comes down to one single message. It is like my instructor once told me, on how to do classes: You can put maybe one to two messages into the minds of people in an hour of a class. So you can dance around, do the fanciest of shit, jump around, pull down a rocket, and all that you can probably get across is just one message, for them to remember.
So it comes down to a small message, and that is all that there is to it. The resolution where the whole village comes together shows just that: This was just a message.
It's cutting everything down to the bare truth. And the truth is a beautiful thing, the most terrible thing there is.
I think it might be a coincidence, that the ressikan flute kinda sounds to me like the Pierian Spring[1] even 'though it's far from it, isn't it?
And what's odd to me, now, too, is that I want to watch that TNG episode[2] again, not just to remember, not to get the 'rememberries', but what can I learn from it still? -- it's like a beautiful solution, you keep on looking at it. A masterpiece.
Thank you for indulging in the piece.
[1] Pierian Spring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierian_Spring [2] TNG episode: The Inner Light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_%28Star_Trek:_...