Patrick Stewart embodied the role of 35 years “Enterprise”-Captains Jean-Luc Picard. Not anymore. He leaves a big void.
“Make it so” – in German: “Do it like this!”: It is the legendary saying of the “Star Trek”-Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the order he gave to his helmsman, the spaceship “Enterprise” to accelerate to superluminal speed. British actor Sir Patrick Stewart has now said goodbye to his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard – after more than 35 years in the “Star Trek”-Universe. And you want to call out to him: “Do it like this! – one last time. Because with the last episode of the third season of “Star Trek: Picard” ends at the same time a TV era, with Stewart Picard from the “Star Trek”-Universe disappear.
With the conclusion of his performance as Picard, Steward leaves a huge void in the sci-fi world that will be difficult to fill.
“Star Trek” is an American franchise that now includes eleven series and thirteen movies. More have already been announced or are in production. In 1964, the pilot episode with Captain Pike flickered on American tube televisions for the first time. After that went “Star Trek” Starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock in series.
At the core of their adventures are stories of tolerance, teamwork, knowledge and responsibility, and they use imaginative future technologies such as phaser energy weapons, photon torpedoes or teleporters that can be used to beam objects and people from one place to another in a matter of seconds.
The story of a new age
The starting point of the story: A third world war wipes out most of humanity in the early 21st century. Ten years later, a chaotic engineer succeeds in the first superluminal flight using an old war rocket. Aliens notice the successful experiment and welcome humanity to the League of Spacefaring Civilizations. A new age of knowledge acquisition and collaboration begins. The people found the United Federation of Planets and henceforth explore space.
Almost a hundred years after Kirk, Picard is in command of a new one “Enterprise”. Unlike his predecessor, Picard is neither a daredevil nor does he stumble from affair to affair. Instead of using phasers and photon torpedoes, Picard solves conflicts through morality, humanism and diplomacy – and beams these values into the living rooms of all social classes.
In a previous interview, Stewart revealed that as a successful Shakespearean actor with a British accent, he was cast to play the French captain by accident. Actually, the series shouldn’t run for more than a year. Stewart added Shakespeare’s works to his role and repeatedly quoted passages from them. In doing so, Stewart bridged the gap between classic theater and sci-fi, giving Picard even more depth.
“An unusual, savage, childish race”
In addition to extraterrestrial beings such as Borg, Klingons and Romulans, Picard repeatedly has to face the god-like being Q, representing all of humanity – and for the viewers. Q criticizes human arrogance and misguided self-understanding: “An unusual, savage, childish race.” They would not learn from mistakes and would still face challenges in wars and conflicts. Picard proves Q wrong, overcoming his own prejudices and mistakes.
