Ode to the Captain

 Patrick Stewart had a long and varied career, but I imagine a lot of people of my generation and thereabouts first knew him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

That show was truly formative for me as a kid - it came out when I was only a year old, so I started watching it after it had been running for a few seasons. It was the first "grown-up" TV show I ever really watched.

Stewart brought a gravitas that I know the rest of the cast talked about, pressuring them to step up their game, so to speak. A Shakespearean, former member of the RSC, Stewart had a classical style to his acting that afforded him immense statue on the screen (fitting for Star Trek's more traditionally stagey acting style).

But I think what really sticks with me is the way that he crafted this character who felt like what a man and a leader should be. The show experimented with making him kind of gruff and impersonal, but as the show evolved, this emotional distance was transformed into, instead, a kind of perfect professionalism.

There was something very traditional, in a sense, of having this wise older white man in charge of things, Stewart's baldness lending him an air of sagacity (despite the fact that he was only in his 40s when he started the role). But if we have (or at least some of us have) spent the last couple decades awakening to the dangers of patriarchy, Picard offers an alternative: a man who leads with confidence and wisdom, but the humility to respect and honor the strengths of those whom he leads and value their contributions to the team rather than lord over them with his position of authority.

Star Trek was always meant to portray a utopian future, where humanity had solved the institutional evils of greed, poverty, bigotry, and could turn our attention to higher goals, most notably a form of exploration built to avoid the evils of colonialism through safeguards like the Prime Directive.

In Picard, I think, Stewart built a character who embodied this hopeful future. A kind of platonic ideal of the worthy authority figure, who, among other things, knows precisely where his authority ends and does not overstep that line.

Stewart played many other roles, of course, even if Picard is probably his most iconic given how long he played him. While my family was in town for my college graduation, we saw him in Macbeth, where he gave a fantastic performance as the spiraling tyrant.

He was also an advocate for women, having survived a household with an abusive father, and worked to fight domestic abuse through philanthropy. Generally, it seems like he was a very kind and good person in addition to being a force on screen and stage.

He and Picard were both role models, and I'm sad to hear of his passing.