Tonight, generations of Star Trek fans are mourning their captain, while remembering the extraordinary life of the man who brought Jean-Luc Picard to the bridge.
Not “celebrating.”
There will be time to celebrate the remarkable life and career of Sir Patrick Stewart. There will be time to rewatch the episodes, quote the speeches, remember the laughs and appreciate just how absurdly fortunate we were that one of Britain’s great Shakespearean actors somehow ended up sitting in the center chair of the Enterprise.
But tonight?
We’re mourning our captain.
Patrick Stewart died at the age of 86 at his Los Angeles home on October 28. His spokesperson said his death followed a “brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. [apnews.com], [cbsnews.com]
Those are the facts.
But facts don’t quite explain why this one hurts.
For Trekkies, He Wasn’t Just Another Actor
I’m not writing this because Patrick Stewart happens to be in the news today.
I’m writing it because we’re Trekkies.
The real kind.
We’ve made the pilgrimage to the enormous Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, wandering around the Nevada desert with thousands of other people who completely understand why seeing a Starfleet uniform doesn’t require an explanation.
We’ve watched these characters for decades. We’ve argued about captains. We’ve rewatched episodes we could practically perform ourselves. We’ve lived with this ridiculous, wonderful universe long enough that its people start occupying a strange little corner of your life.
And Patrick Stewart occupied a very big one.
For a generation of us, Captain Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t simply the lead character on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
He was the captain.
William Shatner, himself forever Captain Kirk to generations of fans, perhaps put it best in his tribute. He remembered Stewart as a friend, colleague and magnificent actor who brought “intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity” to his work, adding that Captain Picard “stood for the best of us.” [apnews.com]
That last part is what gets me.
Because he did.
Picard Made Intelligence Look Heroic
Picard didn’t need to be the loudest person in the room.
He listened.
He thought.
He wrestled with the moral consequences of decisions. He loved archaeology, Shakespeare, history and Earl Grey tea. He could command a starship without behaving as though leadership required constantly reminding everyone that he was the leader.
And when diplomacy finally failed, you knew things had gotten pretty goddamned serious.
That character worked because Patrick Stewart made him believable.
Before Starfleet, Stewart had established a formidable stage career and spent years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Somehow all that classical training wound up aboard a fictional starship in 1987, and science fiction was immeasurably better for it. [time.com], [consequence.net]
There are plenty of actors who play heroes.
Stewart made reason, curiosity, diplomacy and basic human decency seem heroic.
That’s different.
And Somehow, He Became Family
That’s the weird thing about being a fan for this long.
We didn’t know Patrick Stewart.
Most of us never met him.
But we knew that voice.
We knew the posture.
We knew the little tug of the uniform.
We knew that moment when Picard would stand up from the captain’s chair and you knew somebody was about to receive either an inspiring speech on the fundamental dignity of sentient life or the worst performance review in the Alpha Quadrant.
And eventually the actor and the character became intertwined with memories of our own lives.
That’s fandom at its best.
Not celebrity worship. Not collecting autographs just to prove you stood next to somebody famous.
It’s recognizing that another person’s art traveled alongside you for part of your life.
Stewart did that for millions of people.
And judging by the response from the people who actually knew him, that warmth wasn’t limited to the screen. Tributes have poured in from friends and colleagues including Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, William Shatner and George Takei. [yahoo.com], [avclub.com]
Hugh Jackman said simply, “I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days.” [apnews.com]
That’s grief.
There Will Be Time to Celebrate
And yes, eventually we will celebrate him.
We’ll celebrate a career that stretched from Shakespeare to the Enterprise to Professor Charles Xavier. [time.com]
We’ll fire up The Next Generation.
We’ll watch Picard face down the Borg again.
We’ll watch him argue that humanity might actually be worth saving.
We’ll probably watch The Inner Light and then pretend somebody has been chopping onions aboard the Enterprise.
We’ll laugh at the memes.
We’ll quote him terribly.
We’ll raise a glass.
Or perhaps a cup of Earl Grey.
And we’ll be grateful that Patrick Stewart took a role that could have been just another television captain and turned Jean-Luc Picard into one of science fiction’s enduring characters.
But that’s later.
Tonight the news is still fresh.
Tonight, somewhere, another Trek fan is turning on an old episode because they don’t quite know what else to do.
Tonight, people who haven’t spoken to each other in years are probably sending one another the same message:
Did you hear about Patrick Stewart?
Yeah.
We heard.
And this one hurts.
Goodnight, Captain
Star Trek has always been about looking forward.
Beyond the next planet.
Beyond the next crisis.
Beyond everything we currently understand.
George Takei, remembering Stewart, said that he inspired “a whole next generation of star-gazers who looked longingly ahead to a brighter future for all humanity.” [cbsnews.com]
That’s a pretty extraordinary legacy for an actor playing the captain of an imaginary spaceship.
So yes, we will celebrate Sir Patrick Stewart.
Just not quite yet.
Tonight, generations of Star Trek fans are mourning their captain.
And from a couple of Trekkies who once traveled all the way into the Nevada desert just to be surrounded by thousands of other people who understood exactly what all of this means:
Thank you, Sir Patrick.
For the stories. For the memories. For showing us what leadership could look like.
And for taking us boldly forward for all these years.
Goodnight, Captain.
