[admiralspoo]

"All he has to do is say there are five lights"

[gameswithgo]

it would be interesting to redo that episode, where there ARE actually 5 lights but picard keeps insisting their are 4 out of spite

[doubleunplussed]

Fwiw at the end of the episode Picard says to Riker: "You know, I really did see five lights".

[hawkice]

At the end, wasn't the comment that he believed he _could_ see five lights?

It's possible this is a deliberate grammatical ambiguity, but I think it could also be read as "I was not just willing to say it, my reality was being destroyed".

[crooked-v]

PICARD: I, er, I don't know where to begin. It was...

TROI: I read your report.

PICARD: What I didn't put in the report 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.

TROI: You didn't say it?

PICARD: No, no, 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.