By Emma Sarappo
Sir Patrick Stewart—an officer of the Order of the British Empire, a Laurence Olivier Award–winning alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the owner of an era-defining voice—was not ashamed to be most famous for being the lead on a 1980s science-fiction spin-off television show. As he wrote in his 2023 memoir, “I shall forever be known first and foremost, by most people, for playing Jean-Luc Picard”—the stern and steely captain of the starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
This wasn’t always the case: “There was a time when I was uncomfortable with this reality, when it seemed incompatible with my background and reputation as a serious stage actor,” he wrote. But by the time he walked onto the stage for his first-ever appearance at a Star Trek convention, and faced a crowd of thousands of fans all thrilled to see him, that sense of wounded pride had vanished. The actor, who died on Wednesday at 86, knew that the material on The Next Generation didn’t measure up to the verses of the Bard, but his attitude toward that role—the lack of chest-puffing ego, the pride in a job well done—echoed the virtues of his best-known character, who was distinguished by wisdom and sophistication, not virility and brawn. Those virtues, now falling out of fashion, are worth celebrating.
When The Next Generation was first coming together, Stewart was a journeyman actor who’d performed on Broadway and scored some roles in BBC miniseries; he didn’t know anything about Star Trek. The idea was to revive the 1960s space-adventure show, about an intergalactic federation attempting to reach new planets and species, with a new ensemble cast and new dilemmas. Success was not guaranteed: Although it had become a cult classic with an outsize pop-culture footprint, the original Star Trek ran for only three seasons. And Stewart—unmuscled, bald, middle-aged—was a strange choice for the revival’s main character. Although the first show had envisioned an egalitarian future without money or scarcity, it was still in large part a story about a good ol’ boy from Iowa, Captain James Kirk (played by a dashing young William Shatner), shooting cool aliens with laser guns and bedding the ladies.
