So much praise has been deservedly heaped on this episode that it seems almost pointless to add to it, so I want to mention one thing that isn’t discussed as often (at least not where I’ve seen it), and that’s the episode’s embrace of the importance of storytelling. We’ll see this again in “Birthright” next season—the foundation of civilized culture is the stories that it tells, and in the end the whole point of the probe making Picard live the life of Kamin is so that he can then go forth and tell the story to other people. I love the fact that the Kataan people thought that the best way for their civilization to be saved was, not to evacuate and hope to find another world or send genetic samples into space (both suggested by Kamin in the episode), but instead for someone to simply tell their story.