Why Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard Felt Like A Real Person

Since the passing of Patrick Stewart at the age of 86, Star Trek fans have had deeply emotional reactions, even for a man many of us never met or knew. At 86, he lived a rich and full life, and it would seem any of his suffering is thankfully over. And yet, for millions, the loss feels more personal. I’ve written countless obituaries for folks in the science fiction and fantasy space, and I’ve been moved by most of those passings. But I, too, was gushing tears as I wrote about Patrick Stewart. Why?

I think the answer is that, at least for Star Trek fans, we’re mourning the loss of the idea of Jean-Luc Picard. More than most Star Trek characters, Picard felt like a real person, and that’s because, in defiance of TV norms of the time, Picard actually did change quite a bit as a person through the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And, in this way, Picard may be the singular, most well-rounded leader in the entire franchise.

Star Trek is a fairly unique fictional phenomenon for a lot of reasons, but one of its most interesting and somewhat unique features is its constant creation of new major characters. While the Marvel and DC rosters have very deep benches, many of those characters have been around since the 1960s (like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men) or, in the case of Batman and Superman, since the late 1930s. But in 1987, Star Trek did the impossible: It replaced its all-star line-up with new characters, and those characters ended up sticking in the public consciousness just as strongly, if not stronger, than the cast of the original series. It’s hard to top Kirk and Spock in terms of famous Trek duos, but The Next Generation proved that Picard and Data come pretty damn close.

Picard, however, is unique among Star Trek characters for one clear reason: He’s not the same man from Season 1 to Season 7. Hell, he’s not even the same man from Season 1 to Season 4. Some of these changes are somewhat obvious: His assimilation by the Borg collective in the 1990s, “The Best of Both Worlds,” permanently scarred the hero and created a stain on his legacy that followed him late into his life. From Ben Sikso (Avery Brooks) to Liam Shaw (Todd Stashwick), the audience has been made aware that several characters found it hard to forgive Picard for his actions when he was brainwashed by the Borg. In Season 4, the episode “Family” also made it clear that Jean-Luc found it difficult to forgive himself.

We could continue to list traumatic events as proof that Jean-Luc’s character continually evolved, but the evolution of Picard was more than just trauma. His frustration with Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) eventually turned to paternal pride. His guilt over the death of Beverly’s (Gates McFadden) husband, Jack, created a complex romantic tension throughout the series, which, arguably, wasn’t fully resolved until Season 3 of the spinoff series Picard in 2023.

But the most interesting evolution of Picard was the idea that a distant, somewhat lonely hero could gradually grow closer to his crew. Today, the final scene in “All Good Things...” in which Picard joins the crew for poker is iconic. But in 1994, it was a payoff of an emotional journey fans had been watching for seven years. And what makes this change, this shift in Picard’s emotions, so believable is that Patrick Stewart was able to carry the character’s memory convincingly throughout the show, even though the vast majority of the episodes were stand-alone adventures.

William Shatner’s Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock evolved and changed throughout the Trek canon, but those changes mostly occurred in the films, not in the series itself. Picard was different, which set a standard that other Trek heroes, from Sisko to Burnham, were able to follow: A shift in emotional status quo over the course of several, several episodes. Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t the only Trek character to grow and evolve, but the fact that he did so at all is a minor miracle. And that miracle is largely thanks to the subtlety and magic of the man who played him.