I also want to mention his hilarious role as bullock in American dad, the way he takes a role both so seriously and ridiculously makes him so fantastically hilarious.

I love him and will miss him.

Really high quality writing for its time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlnZKTXKidU

The original Star Trek was Roddenberry's vision of utopia. The benevolent dictator always makes the right decisions. He's surrounded by his loyal band of perfect lieutenants, who apparently have zero desire to advance, and have no flaws at all. Any and all of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for the others. None do anything bad (unless it's a plot device with an explanation that absolves them).

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed watching ST very much. Just keep in mind that that it's a fiction.

Utopias used to be the most common scifi futures. This is what the so called Cyberpunks (Sterling, Gibson, Cadigan, ...) rebelled against.

It used to be all about what wonders technology will bring us. By the time of the 70s it became clear that technology doesn't necessarily make everything better, but can be a burden in itself, or even widen the gap between the haves and haves not. And that is what they wrote about. It turned out to be the most popular scifi with audiences deeming it more believable.

Some say it was the last sci-fi utopia in modern pop culture.

They mostly just said it was all great and fair and nobody needs money and is somehow trying to be their best selves… nevermind the numerous examples to the contrary.

They weren’t really post scarcity. They never explained how they’re not in a constant state of rioting when a weird government/military decides what everyone can have or do.

You just go with it, because that’s the backdrop. You have to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the story.

But also, Picard is the best Captain, by far.

What would the effects of growing up in a post-scarcity utopian society be on a human? To never fear poverty or hunger? To be sure that no matter what they do (or don’t) they will be housed and cared for as long as they live?

I assume the people in Starfleet would be the ones who are most inclined to work for their betterment, with no fear of competition, with the drive to do The Right Thing. Outside the organisation there would be people who would be totally happy in doing nothing.

This one is pretty famous I think and I enjoyed it a lot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

(I just read that James Cameron held the screen production rights and was planning a series, but it never happened)

Or if Comic Books are in scope, obviously the "Miracleman: The Golden Age" is a utopia. Explicitly so. It is about the ways people are still people in a utopia.

Less mainstream, Greg Egan's Amalgam is also clearly a utopia. The couple in "Riding the Crocodile" choose to die at the end of that story, more out of some sense that stories need endings than because of any outside force.

It was actually quite pleasing to see the subplot of them them repeatedly failing until they got out of their predicament by other means.

It's a rarity to see something like that in fiction.

(That one, at least, has Geordi literally saying, "that's impossible", but comes up with a solution. Apologies if that's not the one you're thinking of.)

   > LAFORGE: Captain, we can do it. We can modify the transporters.
   > PICARD: Excellent.
   > LAFORGE: It'll take fifteen years, and a research team of a hundred.
   > PICARD: Mister La Forge, I believe we will postpone.
   > LAFORGE: Yes, sir.

I don't think TNG is as simple as you make it out to be. All of the characters have serious flaws. Picard does make mistakes (including some very serious, consequential ones). Characters do get angry, jealous, etc. and do bad things. Sometimes their friends help them overcome it, other times they figure it out on their own, etc. It's episodic so it usually goes back to the status quo, and that can feel kind of trite through today's lens. But it's exactly that ability to solve problems (technical, emotional, organizational, etc.) as a team that's so compelling for many of us.

Most of the characters in Star Trek are members of the military. So of course, there's a chain of command and orders have to be followed.

The Federation of Planets wasn't a dictatorship.

And they aren't even really members of the military. Starfleet is canonically not a military force, its purpose is exploration, science and diplomacy. It just happens to have a military chain of command, and ships with military designations bristling with planet-cracking weapons. That get into battles and fight wars a lot.

No, he wasn’t. He was a B-17 pilot in the Army Air Force.

The clips that the channel puts out... are... let's say interestingly timed.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheWestWing

For example, https://youtu.be/LwNtZgLPCpg was posted 13 days ago (October 16th).

https://youtu.be/qYWBBFJKlPM

https://youtu.be/NMcLXG6PXto

Also from Andrew Sorkin...

    • Joshua Malina: Jeremy Goodwin (Sports Night) / Will Bailey (The West Wing)
    • Janel Moloney: Monica (Sports Night) / Donna Moss (The West Wing)
    • Felicity Huffman: Dana Whitaker (Sports Night) / Ann Stark (The West Wing)
    • Clark Gregg: Calvin Trager (Sports Night) / Mike Casper (The West Wing)
    • Timothy Busfield: Director (Sports Night) / Danny Concannon (The West Wing)

Ursula K. LeGuin

Whereas Voyager, which was written after Roddenberrys passing, leaned heavily into inter-crew disputes.

I have a feeling this might be no small part in why TOS and TNG are the two ST series that contain 90% of the "only comes up once" sci-fi plots / concepts / worldbuilding that people ever make reference to when talking about "things from Star Trek" rather than when talking about Star Trek. TOS and TNG, while definitely soft sci-fi, were to some degree trying to create 22-minute-long works of literary Speculative Fiction, modelled after the sort of things you'd read in serial SF magazines of the 1950s. Later ST series are emphatically not that, and nor do they try to be.

But as you said, I think it ends up with a higher quality show.

The difference was that rather than turn it into soap opera porn, the characters actually tried to behave professionally (most of the time).

I really enjoyed TNG as well, and DS9 probably wouldn't have even happened if not for TNG's excellence. I never really felt like the writers gave Picard's character a lot of room to change, though. A lot of the time, he was almost like the sitcom dad who was mainly there to teach the kids a lesson at the end of the episode. That's not a knock on Stewart's acting ability; I'd say he was almost certainly the best actor on the show.

Also agree about Bashir.

• DS9 only had a little soap-opera drama, serving as almost a kind of fanservice sprinkled judiciously into otherwise-thematic B-plots.

• VOY had more, with entire B-plots of episodes now being character-focused, including a few arcs that would have worked just as well if transplanted into some modern-age military drama with no SF elements.

• Drama-as-the-A-plot episodes were appearing by ENT.

(After that I stopped watching, but I've heard the trend has just continued from there.)

An annoying facet of ST episodes is the morality lessons they push, like on every episode of The Brady Bunch.

It’s nice to watch something that highlights the best of humanity in a future setting.

Almost everything else in SciFi is dystopian. But ST is a rarity. And it’s all the more beautiful for it.

The best dialog ever:

Lawyer: Mr Spock, I understand you know something about computers?

Spock: I know all about them.

Always makes me laugh.

That's why Orville is my favorite of the newer ST series. It has the high moral standards of the original series, but with characters who are far from perfect, who make mistakes, and who are sometimes even a little weird.

In other words it only works because it ignores basic human nature. Which is one reason why Star Trek's utopia isn't really tractable. The others being the technology that completely ignores the laws of physics. Free energy, warp drives and magic boxes that grant wishes.

If people want a science fiction "utopia" I'd say look at Babylon 5. It certainly has its flaws but its Utopia isn't real (because they never are,) it's an ideal that people are always struggling towards.

Picard viewed the power of leadership as, foremost, a responsibility. Every action was careful, deliberate, and well advised. Some later Trek shows (e.g. Voyager) turned captains into geniuses who knew more about everything than all of their underlings. Picard was not an expert in most things and needed his staff to advise him. Once he knew the options and consequences, he shouldered the responsibility of the outcomes, but as a leader of a crew, not a genius with compatible lackeys and minions around him. It was a realistic take on leadership that simply doesn't appear often in television or movies.

Stewart, of course, was not Picard. It's too easy to conflate actors with their roles. However, actors do often help shape their characters, and Stewart's ability to give a thoughtful, diplomatic, and prudent character such incredible power and presence is likely what made Picard possible. The showrunners didn't need to strap a phaser to his thigh and drop him into every away mission to make him compelling because of what Stewart was able to accomplish as an actor sitting behind a desk.

Not everything. Picard was command track his whole career, I think the same was true for Sisko. But Janeway started as a science officer before switching to command, and Archer was a test pilot. Their experience in those fields would sometimes be useful. It's similar to how Picard's interest in archeology was sometimes useful.

I imagine they'd also conclude Picard is a loser.

Roddenberry was after someone younger. There’s even a casting show reel of Stewart wearing a toupee and speaking with a very bad French accent.

Basically the reverse of mirror universe meme.

[0] https://youtube.com/@theartofstorytelling1

Really high quality writing.

Patrick Stewart modeled how a good man should act and you could tell that he acted from a place of wisdom he understood through experience.

Wonderful contribution to humanity and truly saddened by this loss.

Extrapolate from that and it becomes a easier to make the right decisions.

https://youtu.be/yZ3ityRPQp8

I see him in this episode:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xA6QbwPGlgk

I've read both Suetonius and Tacitus on the subject of Augustus and the Julio-Claudian dynasty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio-Claudian_dynasty

Those who lack this family knowledge would want to start with the first episode of I, Claudius.

I'd also recommend the recent Domina for Livia's perspective.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlwzDYw6zp2D6DxLR8zGz1i_7...

The episode is classic sitcom "wrong conclusion escalates out of hands" so I highly recommend watching it in full instead of the clips but if it's not on your streaming platform, Stewart's scenes are cut together in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDnGJcDglw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhGQgbXWo4I

Not to say they're comparable - both characters and actors are much loved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-y7mXqECE&t=174s

Ever since I watched it, I half jokingly suggested that it should be a mandatory watch before you're allowed to join the workforce.

I have the same attitude with House MD lead actor Hugh Laurie: the actor played the role greatly, but the actor was not the fictional person of the role.

Don't forget he voiced the Poop emoji in that movie. If only we could tell his younger, Shakespeare-acting, self.

Incidentally, this is one of those times when the comment section of YouTube becomes the most wholesome place on the net.

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, touches McKellan's 1995 Richard III in my eyes, for Shakespeare in cinema. Although calling it Richard III is a bit of a stretch. How about Richard III: The Greatest Hits?

https://youtu.be/tSukMQHQLIs?t=172

To be an actor of that level, yet still have so much fun in American Dad! is so cool. He will be greatly missed.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Patrick-Stewart-Performs-the-Comp...

Good startup advice. Good life advice.

You're the captain sir, you're entitled

Hmmm, I'm entitied to ramble on about something everyone knows

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise

Make make make make it so

Good life advice as well

Anyway, it's a sad day, but I do appreciate that both his work and the influence he's had on people like me live on.

Some of the best television ever made if you ask me.

I was surprised by how many of my friends considered the character 'hot'; on paper, one would expect young people to write him off as a balding goody-two-shoes.

To have a character whose main traits included compassion and reason was a good influence on my generation of men.

My condolences.

I've got fond memories of visiting in the summers as a kid and watching TNG episodes he'd taped on VHS.

Shakespeare effectively changed his life, and it's incredible to think that you could map everything he did and his success to his love of the bard.

If I had to take a lesson from his life, it's to have something you love, even if it isn't trendy (especially if it isn't) because most good things flow from that.

Godspeed, captain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mfw63

(not sure if it is regionally restricted) also:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZsy4Rj7uAiT2NL8RIgH0...

His performance (as well as how the character was written) still today illustrate what I view as an ideal male archetype. Fair, honest, in control of his emotions yet passionate. Thank you for the gift your performance has given me Mr Stewart. My life would likely have turned out a lot worse without a solid example of that a good man could be

I hope our current environment is one that can elevate someone of similar talents to an equivalent stature, but I worry our media is not up to the task.

When I think of our civilization, the Ressikan Flute often comes to mind.

Pour one out. https://picard.ytmnd.com/

He was host at an academy awards event for technical achievement a few years back. Usually they send some random actor who jokes about how nerdy everything is. Having Patrick Stewart there was very popular he was 'one of us' even though he said himself he knew very little about tech. Had a chance to talk to him a bit afterwards and got to tell him how well appreciated he was by that audience. Gracious and funny, exactly how you might imagine he would be.

A sad loss.

Lewy body dementia was what Robin Williams had but they didn't discover until after his death and I guess he was misdiagnosed during life.

https://lewybodyresourcecenter.org/robin-williams-lewy-body-...

Rest in peace captain :(

That page talks about what to do if somebody with LBD is thinking about suicide. After seeing what that disease does, interfering with those plans seems inhumane to me.

I watched a parent die of LBD.

After that experience, I'd also be inclined to go with "let them" as the most-correct solution to that particular dilemma.

And to think he was filming Picard just a few years ago.

Star Trek TNG + Captain Picard acted as a male role model, a different moral philosophy, and a celebration of nerdy people as competent and important in the world

Shatner is doing remarkably well for 95 years of age, I saw him performing with a band at a rock show just this summer!

Oh, any links?

"Seeking Major Tom" might be of interest to you.

Google sez:

William Shatner’s heavy metal album, titled What the F Is Heavy Metal?, does not have an exact release date yet, though it is tentatively scheduled for winter 2026 or 2027 via Cleopatra Records.

Album Details

• Title: What the F Is Heavy Metal? • Band Name: The *uckers • Expected Release: Winter 2026 / 2027 • Label: Cleopatra Records • Format & Content: Features a mix of original tracks and heavy metal/hard rock covers (including Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica, and Ozzy Osbourne). • Notable Collaborators: Rob Halford, Tony Iommi, Zakk Wylde, Brian May, and Dave Lombardo, among dozens of other rock and metal musicians. • Live Debut: Shatner and his band debuted songs from the project live at Riot Fest in Chicago in September 2026. • William Shatner on Instagram Ladies, gentlemen, SWs fans… I have explored space. I have explored time. Now… I explore distortion. Yes. You read that correctl... • USA Today William Shatner debuts heavy metal band at age 95 At 95, William Shatner is starting a heavy metal band Greta Cross USA TODAY Sept. 17, 2026Updated Sept. 18, 2026, 9:14 a.m. ET Wil...

It's really enticing to think that there's some nice controllable reason why some people live longer (assuming you don't smoke, do drugs to excess, etc.) but really it's mostly genetics and chance.

I visited a cardiologist today, who has seen thousands of patients. He remarked that two big factors in staving off heart disease are staying slim and long term aerobic exercise.

Those two factors are under one's control.

(Nobody said it was easy, though.)

These seem within one’s agency.

We may not live long enough to know who wins.

This was a person who from a relatively young age looked old, but more importantly behaved with a sort of dignity and thoughtfulness that projected way beyond his years. I'm not really sure how to assimilate the news because on the one hand obviously this was going to be happening sooner or later. He has always just felt old. But on the other, he's felt old for my whole life, so why shouldn't he just continue on that way without bound.

Edit: Oh man, I can't believe I'm crying at work over an actor.

Of course, he could probably make reading the tax code sound pretty interesting.

It might of been Im not sure, not the case? But perhaps against a white wall it was clear we were the only ones standing for the performance and in turn it felt he was performing for us. It just felt like that.

I ofcourse have no idea if he was just looking in our general direction but it weirdly felt like it and I thought it was kind.

Ive never had such a "he was doing it for us" self centered view of any other performance Ive ever been to, but I always remembered this, and like to believe it was true.

The play itself was about him being an old dying forgetful man. It was so convincing I somehow left thinking that surely he was but ofcourse it was just excellent acting.

(I looked up the original script, it’s “Kiazi’s children. Their faces wet.” But I’m gratified that you knew what I meant.)

William Shatner was just on earlier this month, incredible he's still going strong at 95.

Really enjoyed his stuff. Always enjoyed that he could do both the grand and the silly with equal aplomb.

You might also have missed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfmAY6M6aA

I met Patrick when we organized a Star Trek convention. He was even kinder and gentler in person than in his role as Picard.

But he start losing his hair at 17 and really struggled with it. A turning point came when a friend (a Hungarian judo black belt) and his wife wrestled him down and physically cut off his toupée with scissors.

His agent even had him do the Star Trek audition in a wig, but luckily the crew had better ideas.

https://www.facebook.com/teamcoco/videos/sir-patrick-stewart...

Now cheer up me lads, t’is better to have loved and lost, than never have loved at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZn6c4CeJCc [The one on Pogo’s channel doesn’t include clips of Stewart, just his voice. This is a reupload of the original]

I’ll be re-watching The Inner Light in his honor tonight.

1. The Drumhead

2. Tapestry

3. The Inner Light

4. Chain of Command

5. Darmok

I know a lot of people would put "Family" on that list, I just can't say I enjoy that one too much. I also like his dialogue in "Yesterday's Enterprise", but I wouldn't call it a Picard-focused one.

He really was able to translate the literature to acting relevance for me (as a lit person)

This must have gone largely unnoticed... all but 35 comments here on HN spread out of 11 articles reporting on his passing. Sad.

Thank you, Patrick. Rest in peace.

PS. Something that's really sad (at least here in my Scandinavian country) is that it's currently completely impossible to stream TNG anywhere at all. No idea of the situation is the same elsewhere in Europe and the rest of the world. Thank goodness I found the complete DVD collection in a thrift store earlier this year. But the saddest thing of all is that the current generation of young people miss out on experiencing the feeling of hope that Jean-Luc Picard and the rest of the TNG crew gave us through their story. And miss out an important vision showing the possibility of a positive and bright version of the future, where humankind has grown into a mature and competent version of itself. Especially now in these dark and uncertain times.

He was a wonderful actor and by all accounts a wonderful person.

One of the things I particularly liked is that he admits to the mistakes he made, and the times when he wasn't the human being he strived to be.

I was fortunate enough to get to chat with him and some of the lead crew of ST:TNG while at a local convention. He was exactly how I imagined he would be in "real life", such a clever and well-spoken class act. RIP <3

A little off topic, but are there any modern utopian/positive sci-fi shows still being released? I feel like ST:TNG was the last of its kind?

See: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/phwFI-n-big

Closest i've seen is The Orville which I found best described as McFarlen using his money to pay for his Larping (in a good way), but was pretty much just copy pasting.

It was such a fascinating show and handled issues with a tact and nuance you're lucky to get today.

I was more of a Shatner movies Star Trek kid but I remember watching The Next Generation when it first came out and liked it. RIP to a legend.

So - when TNG began airing, I would have been about 15 - right squarely in the perfect formative timeframe - it was "ours" more so than the original series ever was.

100% agree. I watched all the originals too, and enjoyed them, but they absolutely felt like an earlier generation, building on a culture that did not match how I felt. As you say, TNG was all ours. <fist bump>

From 2000s, culture has been more diluted across the medias.

So it's the passing of real talent without replacement. I think we live in a pretty dead culture now. Just my opinion of course.

But if you dont know any better I guess its fine

— Picard in TNG episode Night Terrors

I didn't bother him, as much as we both wanted to (he looked busy), what struck me was how casual Sir Patrick Stewart was in his faded sweatshirt talking to some awestruck kid and his mom.

(Highly recommended.)

Sir Patrick, my captain, you will be sorely missed.

Vivaldi's poetry ... left something to be desired (think Vogon), but Patrick Stewart made it noble.

[0] https://open.spotify.com/album/024X8FW18wEjWTwiHjcSrR

Let me go and fix that.

Extremely sad day for the geeks in us. Good bye professor X.

The original incarnation of Android's voice assistant was codenamed after her.

Never too late to do the other thing. Keep going.

I also really liked him in a Christmas Carrol (1999). I thought he played the role really well.

It was inevitable, though you always hope for an exception. I don't think I've ever seen any work of his I didn't deeply appreciate.

Angela Collier did an extensive bit[0] on that. Although she left out several of the canon-breaking details in the series.

That said, Patrick Stewart nailed it. Every. Single. Time. Despite the awful plotting/writing of Star Trek: Picard.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdLHKdn0JTY

I can still hear the voice: "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

echo $'\U1F596'

Absolutely.

> I would like to understand though since Stewart was filming up until this year? What was the time frame like, was it a more sudden onset or was he able to manage somewhat while continuing to film and work?

AFAIK, his last role as a film actor was in Doomsday, which comes out in December 2026 but filmed late last year. The timeline does seem incredibly quick for a natural death from Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia if he wasn't somehow secretly and very effectively hiding it for the past near-decade.

I suspect (but obviously don't know) that he may have checked out on his own terms rather than literally dying due to the disease progression. I understand why people don't like to talk about it, especially given legal issues faced by anyone who may have assisted in many jurisdictions.

In California it can be legal to assist but technically only if a doctor decides you will live less than 6 months, which IMO is an awfully narrow requirement. I wish people could be more open about it (and that the laws weren't so stupid).

In any case, shocking and sad news. I never would have guessed we'd lose Patrick Stewart before William Shatner. 86 isn't exactly young or anything, but he seemed to still be incredibly vibrant in very recent productions.

I've found no evidence of this ... can you confirm?

I did notice that in the latest Wolverine he seemed to be doing not so well with his physical status, looking quite frail and his voice was also no longer strong as it used to be (that was in Logan 2017, so already 10 years ago). Dementia is kind of eating away at the neurons.

~ Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Generations

I didn't know anything about him other than his work, which is perhaps as fine an epitaph as any man could have.

RIP a legend

I'll never forget this line, and what it means. I think of it often.

Wait, was that a Picard quote, in fact? It has the right tone. (Nope, looks like it's from Age of Ultron.)

No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another, but yesterday we lost someone very important.

I often think of Picard looking down at us, through a force field in the Enterprise D, sees our wars, our inequalities and slowly shakes his head: "Savages". In his role as Picard he was a bit of a teacher to me.

Watching Star Trek TNG episodes when they first aired in the late 80s had a powerful effect on my imagination as a child. It would not, and could not, have been the same show without Patrick Stewart. RIP.

Never have I seen such presence and charisma squeezed into so short a scene.

RIP

Wow, what a loss. So many iconic characters, so much inspirational

more of us men should be like him and who he was and what he stood for

instead: https://archive.is/sTC3D

Rest in peace, Picard.

non-x Alt text:

We announce with great sorrow the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart yesterday at his home in Los Angeles, in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny, following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia. He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter, and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all. We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace.

A son of Mirfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, he travelled from the Royal Shakespeare Company to an equally acclaimed career spanning six decades on Broadway, the silver screen and television.

His sonorous voice and singular talent will forever be synonymous with indelible performances in every genre. He explored the human condition in all its poetic complexity and brought hope not only to the far reaches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but into science fiction's most iconic final frontier aboard the Starship Enterprise.

His professional accomplishments were humbly matched by his philanthropy and activism on behalf of human rights, survivors of domestic violence, global refugees, veterans' mental health services, and animal welfare, particularly his cherished foster pitties. He was a Knight, Chancellor, motor sport enthusiast, and lifelong Huddersfield Football fan. He will be remembered for the dignity, compassion and humanity he brought to every role - in his art and life.

"Like me, Jean-Luc has lived an unusual life that has taken him far beyond the bounds of normal human experience. But he is also someone who has remained true to his earthbound roots, for they are what gave him his identity. In the end, he feels the call of home, as do I." - Patrick Stewart, Making It So: A Memoir

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to:

Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund https://alzresearch.org/giving/

Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources https://alzfdn.org/donate/

He wasn't an engineer or scientist but I'd wager a majority of the readership of HN, at least those over 35 or so, grew up inspired by Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.

Yes, mostly.

Star Trek (particularly, but not only, TNG) was seminal sci-fi entertainment in the childhood, teen or young adult eras for many now-40+ nerds who went on to work in tech.

Patrick Stewart has done a lot of other great work as well, and should be remembered for that, but his role as Picard in Star Trek: TNG makes him highly relevant to this site.

There is just something about character driven shows, where you have the time to grow with 24~26 episodes per season. What gave us so many good episodes to develop characters that did not feel rushed.

We old geezers have found memories of TNG, DS9, Voyager (and so many other good series like SG, Farscape, Babylon 5, etc).

But i hardly see the same cultural impact from the new ST series and sci-fi shows. Battlestar Galactical maybe but that is already a 20 year old show also. The expanse is the only new thing ...

Beyond that just recycled 9 to 13 episode shows trying to use the old ST, StarWars names and milk it dry. With tons of memberberies to the point of insanity.

What is left for the teen or young adults these days? What will be their Scifi shows in 20 a 30 years from now to remember.

Actors like Patrick Stewart are those who came to the TV screen (or movies) often with a strong theatric background, and it allowed them to put forwards strong characters. But its easy to tell we are not getting this type of actors anymore.

Man, i an talking like a old guy. lol

Nah, it's SciFi. They'll find a way of writing them back in. Won't they?