In the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians during a secret mission to Celtris III. Early on in the second episode of the two-episode arc, the Cardassians use a truth serum to interrogate Picard on the details of his mission.
Gul Madred ostensibly wants cooperation; information about the defense strategy for the Minos Korva planetary system. When the serum does not give him the results he desires, he implants a device in Picard’s body that, when activated, produces excruciating pain. “From now on, I will refer to you only as ‘human,’” Madred tells him. “You have no other identity.” They strip Picard naked, hang him from his wrists, and leave him there overnight.
In the morning, Madred is unctuous, measured, unflaggingly polite. He drinks from a thermos like a weary bureaucrat. He turns on a string of lights above him, flooding Picard with illumination. Picard flinches; holds his arm like a wounded velociraptor. Madred asks him how many lights he can see.
“Four,” Picard says.
“No,” Madred replies. “There are five.”
“Are you quite sure?” Picard asks.
Madred presses the button on the device in his hand; Picard buckles, staggers, and drops to the ground in agony. The scene is a pastiche of one from 1984, but there are also some beats lifted, very lightly, from The Princess Bride. Madred is inordinately fond of his machine. That was the lowest possible setting.
“I know nothing about Minos Korva,” Picard says.
“But I’ve told you that I believe you. I didn’t ask you about Minos Korva. I asked how many lights you see.”
Picard squints upward. “There are four lights.”
Gul Madred sighs like a disappointed parent. “I don’t understand how you can be so mistaken.”
Picard squints against them and says, “What lights?” He spasms so hard his body leaps from the chair, strikes the floor.
Lying on the floor, Picard mumble-sings a French folk song from his childhood. “Sur le pont d’Avignon, on y danse, on y danse.” On the bridge of Avignon, we’re all dancing, we’re all dancing.
“Where were you?” Madred asks.
“At home. Sunday dinner. We would all sing afterward.”
Madred opens the door and tells Picard he may go. But as Picard prepares to leave, Madred tells him he’ll torture Dr. Crusher instead. Picard returns to his chair.
“Are you choosing to stay with me?” Madred asks.
Picard is silent.
“Excellent,” Madred says. “I can’t tell you how pleased this makes me.”
Later, Madred feeds Picard. Boiled taspar egg, “a delicacy,” he says. When cracked open, it is an undulating, gelatinous mass with an eye at its center. Picard sucks the contents from the shell. Madred has his own meal; shares a story of his own childhood as a street urchin in Lakat, on the Cardassian homeworld.
“In spite of all you have done to me,” Picard says with clarity, “I find you a pitiable man.”
Madred’s cordial attitude vanishes. “What are the Federation’s defense plans for Minos Korva?” he shouts.
“There are four lights!” Picard says.
Gul Madred turns on the device, and Picard begins writhing. “How many do you see now?”
Picard screams, weeps, sings. On the bridge of Avignon, we’re all dancing, we’re all dancing.
Back on the Enterprise, the crew has negotiated Picard’s release. In the final scene between Picard and Madred, Picard grabs the device that controls the pain, smashes it against a table. Madred calmly tells him it doesn’t matter; he has many more.
“Still,” Picard says, “it felt good.”
“Enjoy your good feelings while you can. There may not be many more of them.” Madred goes on to explain that a battle has commenced, and the Enterprise is “burning in space.” Everyone will assume you’ve died with them, Madred says, and so you will stay here forever. “You do, however, have a choice. You can live out your life in misery, held here, subject to my whims. Or you can live in comfort with good food and warm clothing, women as you desire them, allowed to pursue your study of philosophy and history. I would enjoy debating with you; you have a keen mind. It’s up to you. A life of ease, of reflection and intellectual challenge. Or this.”
“What must I do?” Picard says.
“Nothing, really,” Madred says. He glances upward, like he’s looking for rain before stepping out from under an awning. “Tell me … how many lights do you see?”
Picard looks up. He is unshaven, unkempt, covered in a glaze of sweat. His face is a rapidly shifting picture of bafflement and denial, of confusion and agony.
“How many? How many lights?” Madred repeats. Off-screen, a door opens, and Madred’s face gets a little frantic. “This is your last chance. The guards are coming. Don’t be a stubborn fool. How many?” It is the first time he’s seemed weak; exhibited a real need.
Something in Picard’s face shatters. He screams: “There—are—four—lights!”
Every time I watch this climax, something inside me grinds a little, like the unglazed edges of a broken mug being shoved together. It is not a triumphant scream. It is broken, humiliating. It cracks like a boy’s. The final word, lights, is practically oatmeal in his mouth.
Later, safe on the Enterprise, Picard talks with Counselor Troi about his experience. “What I didn’t put in the report,” he tells her, “was that, at the end, he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights when, in fact, there were only four.”
“You didn’t say it?” Troi asks.
“No. No,” he says. “But I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.” His gaze rests, lost, in the middle distance.