I have a complete different take on this. And it deals with the Nexus. The Nexus makes you THINK you're living in a Heaven, but you're not. Guinan does say, you can go back and see you kids births, or even in the future and see your grandkids born etc. etc. But that was the thing. I think the Nexus gives one the chance to have what you want, but never what you need, and never really satisfy the person either. Think about it. Soran's echo was stuck in the Nexus, and whatever his visions were, he was dead set on going back, thinking it was better than not having his family anymore. (At the end of VI, Kirk was able to 'go on' concerning blaming the Klingons for the death of his son...) Soran was not able to 'go on', thus his obession, and in a real way it was the Nexus driving him.
Now lets get back to Kirk's Nexus... always wanting to please the woman, but never.... having her. Kirk had a constant need for 'the thrill', it was a lame example we saw, but with something as safe as the Nexus, Kirk would never have a sense of thrill or the intense desire for risking his life for the goal (whatever that goal may be)to 'know he's alive by extreme risks'. Yet, in all 3 scenarios he 'never got the girl'....
Picard has just dealt with the death of his brother and nephew. I'm taking a large guess, the Nexus knew EXACTLY the hole in Picard's life and gave it to him, his nephew back, and a complete fake family he'd never had, BUT I'd wager it would have never given him the Enterprise nor a 'crew'. So had he not been distracted by the death of an M3 planet in the Viridian sector on his mind, we might have seen something along those lines. And despite Picard's own distraction...the Nexus was trying its might to pull him into his own fantasies with idea of his own family. I believe the Nexus is a stream of living conciousness designed to make the victim's "Chase the rabbit" so to speak in order to be trapped in it while giving the victims a false sense of Heaven continuously being swept from emotion to emotion to keep you from being distracted from leaving. You can leave it on your own, but it takes a large amount of will to do so. And Picard, despite everything he 'wanted' - not needed, knew he'd be trapped forever if he didn't simply have the high morales he had to save, Viridian III. At the time he didn't know the Enterprise crashed unless there was another scene/script we never saw, Picard watching his ship fall to the planet would have been a nice touch, but we never got that. Plus Picard is a man who can manage distractions better than any captain compared to all the other shows, in my opinion, so the Nexus had a hard time distracting him to stay.
We have to take Guinan's warning to heart that she gave Picard before he the Klingon sisters transported him to the surface. The Nexus was the real 'villian' here, but they never really got beyond more than just calling it an 'energy ribbon'.
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