Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek Universes Beyond set is drawing inspiration from across the sci-fi franchise’s 60 year history, including references to all of its shows and films. Some of the most iconic episodes are brought to life as sagas, like “The City on the Edge of Tomorrow” and “Amok Time” from the original 1960s series and “In the Pale Moonlight” from Deep Space Nine. Polygon can exclusively reveal nine new cards, including two sagas that spotlight Jean-Luc Picard and the best hours of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
"Sagas have emerged as an exceptional design tool for presenting story arcs from other universes because of their episodic nature," senior editor Matt Tabak told Polygon. "Each chapter of a Saga can focus on an individual story beat, so when you put them together, you get a great overview of an entire episode in only a few abilities." The Inner Light is based on the season 5 episode of the same name, where the USS Enterprise encounters a probe that fires an energy beam at Picard. The captain wakes up on the planet Kataan, where he’s told he’s been ill and that his memories of Starfleet were just a fever dream.
While his body lies unconscious on the floor of the Enterprise bridge for 25 minutes, he lives an entire lifetime as the humanoid alien Kamin. He goes on to have children and even grandchildren and eventually learns that the planet is dying and its people lack the technology to evacuate. Their only real option is to launch a probe containing an imprint of their memories so that someone might carry on their legacy.
Picard wakes up with the memories of living on a planet that died 1,000 years ago. He learned to play the flute as Kataan, and he discovers the probe contains that same flute. The beautiful, bittersweet tale manifests as a green-white (Selesnya) saga.
The first chapter returns a green or white creature from your graveyard to the battlefield, representing the return of the people of Kataan through their probe. The second gives one of your creatures the ability to allow you to draw cards equal to the combat damage it deals to a player this turn, which is meant to be the knowledge Picard gains as Kamin. The final chapter allows you to gain life equal to the greatest power of a creature you control and gives you a treasure token.
That represents the lifetime Picard experienced at the flue he comes to treasure. It seems like a particularly good fit for an enchantress deck led by a Commander like Yuna, Hope of Spira, reanimating your best enchantment creature and using it to draw cards. All Good Things… is named after the TNG series finale.
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