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So maybe it's stress, tiredness, illness, a combination or just being an overemotional sap, take your pick - but I've just seen the end of TNG's 'Family'. I spent the last 10 minutes with tears streaming down my face. Fantastic scenes between Robert and Jean Luc, probably some of the best acting I remember from TNG.

How many other scenes are there like that in any of the series? I can't remember any other scene which had the emotional punch of that last chunk of the episode, but I'm open to suggestions!

It's just one of those things. If art didn't have an emotional effect, it probably wouldn't exist.

One episode that had a significant effect on me was the DS9 episode 'Duet'. It wasn't quite as you describe, but I remember well how it affected me. The main scene was the one in which Kira confronts Marritza over his deception (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0jQ-gib6fE). Some excellent acting there.

I cried a lot at the end of DS9 "The Visitor", where Ben Sisko vanishes in some temporal subspace pocket, and we see an alternate future where he's rebounding into Jake's timeline every 10 or so years.
I always found the scenes between Jake and Ben where they could only talk for a brief time before Ben is pulled away again, and the solution to the issue to be very moving.

Edit: Here's the type of scene I'm talking about from the end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozq3_cWia3s.
But I recommend watching the entire episode.

The Inner Light. I won't explain the plot, only to say that Picard playing the flute was haunting and very moving.

The final montage at the end of "What You Leave Behind". As we bid farewell to Odo, O'Brien, and Worf, we see where they and the rest of the senior staff have come in their time on the station. With the melody of "The Way You Look Tonight" playing in the background, I start tearing up. It just moves me and saddens me every time I watch it, knowing that this is the last time we'll see these characters.

tim31 wrote:The Inner Light. I won't explain the plot, only to say that Picard playing the flute was haunting and very moving.

Dude I loved that episode.have you ever had that dream where you dream you wake up and go through the day and then you wake up AGAIN and it never happened? I used to get that all the time, and the idea of living an entire life is just haunting. more so, taking into account the fact that it wasn't just a dream for picard, the people in his dream were real to a certain extent.

tim31 wrote:The Inner Light. I won't explain the plot, only to say that Picard playing the flute was haunting and very moving.

That has to be one of the best episodes of any sci-fi series on television.

And I find it hard to believe that Picard wasn't more fucked up afterward. He loses his life aboard the Enterprise, adapts to life on another world, has a wife, children, grandchildren, friends... and then loses it all and returns to a life he'd all but forgotten. The emotional impact should have been devestating, not to mention the transition from one life to another and back like that.

Frankly, the writers SHOULD have taken that into consideration. Instead, we get Picard playing his flute in a couple of episodes with exactly one throwaway line about how it's precious to him. At least someone remembered it in Generations; the only two things he retrieves from his quarters are his family album and his flute. Whereas he casually tosses aside a priceless relic of a dead civilization that was given as a gift by a friend who died shortly after, which should tell you how much importance Picard places on that flute.

Swindle1984 wrote: Frankly, the writers SHOULD have taken that into consideration. Instead, we get Picard playing his flute in a couple of episodes with exactly one throwaway line about how it's precious to him. At least someone remembered it in Generations; the only two things he retrieves from his quarters are his family album and his flute. Whereas he casually tosses aside a priceless relic of a dead civilization that was given as a gift by a friend who died shortly after, which should tell you how much importance Picard places on that flute.

Oh god no they shouldn't! Picard's character was a stoic explorer who frequently encountered the unimaginable and the profound. For them to keep harping on the emotional impact of everything he's encountered would turn him into... Dr. Who...

From a psychological perspective, i would expect Troi to be constantly encouraging him to lock that shit away and NEVER open it up, you can't even function as a rational adult after that kind of experience if you even think about it for a moment, he had a whole life that just wasn't real!!

The biggest effect any of the TNG esps had on me was the one where data creates another android called Lal, I think it was called "The Child".
Spoiler

'The Child' was the one where Deana Troi is raped and impregnated by a space going alien cloud.

'The Offspring' is the episode you are thinking of: Where Data builds Lal.

'The Child' was the one where Deana Troi is raped and impregnated by a space going alien cloud.

'The Offspring' is the episode you are thinking of: Where Data builds Lal.

Oh yes, my bad. Thank you.

I was close

Themightytom wrote:

Swindle1984 wrote: Frankly, the writers SHOULD have taken that into consideration. Instead, we get Picard playing his flute in a couple of episodes with exactly one throwaway line about how it's precious to him. At least someone remembered it in Generations; the only two things he retrieves from his quarters are his family album and his flute. Whereas he casually tosses aside a priceless relic of a dead civilization that was given as a gift by a friend who died shortly after, which should tell you how much importance Picard places on that flute.

Oh god no they shouldn't! Picard's character was a stoic explorer who frequently encountered the unimaginable and the profound. For them to keep harping on the emotional impact of everything he's encountered would turn him into... Dr. Who...

From a psychological perspective, i would expect Troi to be constantly encouraging him to lock that shit away and NEVER open it up, you can't even function as a rational adult after that kind of experience if you even think about it for a moment, he had a whole life that just wasn't real!!

I was thinking something more subtle, but that would still make sense in the context of the show. Say, have Picard need a period of adjustment returning to his old life for a couple episodes, and reference it more often. Family is very important to Picard (one of his greatest regrets is never having had a family of his own; probably mostly motivated by his experience in The Inner Llight.), and he just lost his. Wouldn't it make sense to at least reference that now and then instead of pretending it never happened?

Besides, Picard has experienced time travel, interdimensional travel, reliving part of his past, meeting his own clone, turning into a Borg and having his identity stripped away from him, forced to hallucinate by aliens, and a god-like being fucks with him on a regular basis. If he doesn't need intensive psychotherapy from all of that, I doubt The Inner Light would change his character much if they at least kept it in mind.

Destructionator XIII wrote:It really is pretty incredible how Brent Spiner made the character work.

With regards to the The Offspring, the most torturing part was that Data would have given anything even to be able to feel the loss, but he was unable to even have that. Spiner's job of conveying this is evidence of the above quote.

At least on memoery Alpha, they have a number of comments from the production staff saying that they were really caught out by The Inner Light, agreeing there should have been follow up with Picard over it, but in the end, all they could do was a few bits in 'Lessons'.

And yes, The Inner Light was really one of the best TNG episodes, Stewart pulled it off brilliantly. Funny thing, that flute was auctioned off at the Its a Wrap sale.

Initially the price was $300. They then decided that was a little silly and put it up to $1000 or so.

It sold for $40,000...

I wonder how much that priceless archeological prop Picard fawns over in 'The Chase' (then tosses away at the end of 'Generations' like it was garbage) went for.

I must be the only person that hated Inner Light. I feel about it the way Chuck does Janeway's Jane Austinish holodeck programs.

DS9 did an episode where O'Brien essentially did a life sentence in prison in his head and then was returned to his regular life. He should have been pretty screwed up for a while from that. They dealt with it a little, probably more that what TNG did with Picard in regards to the Inner Light but less than what TNG did in regards to the impact of BoBW on Picard.

Besides the emotional reasons that Picard (in the Inner Light) and O'Brien (from his prison stay) went through they should have both been relieved of duty and probably not been on their shows again if they were really going for realism. Unless both situations were intended to have great emotional impact but not interfere with the person's real memories it would have been like each of them took a multi-decade break from their Starfleet jobs and then were dumped back in them. I don't know about everyone else but it would take me a long time to get back up to speed in doing a job I did 20 years ago and I was at the peon level in the Navy at that time. I wasn't some wonder tech Chief of Operations, or the Captain of the Federation flagship.

Not that I wanted them to get rid of either character.

I'll admit it, I still get tears in my eyes when I watch TWOK.

Spock's death scene is just too much for me, and the funeral just nails it in. Spock gave his life for those around him without a second's hesitation.

From 'Offspring'. Start at 3:45. When was the last time an actor managed to make you die on the inside with TECHNOBABBLE?!

Both Picard and O'Brien experiencing subjective decades of hyper-realistic simulations is pretty problematic in how it flows into the rest of their character arcs and the rest of the episodes; you could chalk it up to the alien computer simulation technology being able to acclimatise the users back into the real world or it's just the dreaded Reset Button.

I liked the scene from TNG's "Brothers" where a mortally injured Dr. Soong comforted Data, which stuck with me long since then, as did "Family". I was also genuinely appalled at Gul Dukat's half Bajoran daughter getting brutally murdered by Damar in DS9. I was also liked the EMH and Seven singing "You are My Sunshine" in VOY.

Lal reminds me of Dorothy from Big O.

I know it's sacrilegious to bring a VGR example into this, but...

I get emotional anytime I watch the end of "Lineage", when B'Elanna breaks down in front of Tom. Then she confesses her guilt and belief that she drove her father away from their family. I had a similar experience with my Dad and struggled with it for a long time, so that scene always hits home for me.

Going through Memory Alpha. There is some interesting background information on The Offspring. I love this piece of dialog.

"Then he is questioning my ability as a parent."
"In a manner of speaking..."
"Does the Admiral have children, Sir?"
"I believe he does. Why?"
"I am forced to wonder how much experience he had as a parent when his first child was born."

- Data and Picard

I forgot the name of the ENT episode, but seeing Trip stand there watching the woman he loves, T'Pol, married off to someone else always makes me sad.

"Home". A pretty good moment in Enterprise, and also the moment when Enterprise became good.