Back in the early ’90s I checked Walter Koenig (Mr Chekov to the Luddites) in at the front desk of the Holiday Inn City Center in Peoria, probably in town for a convention. He was pleasant and quiet, with that poofy hair, colored and held up with product. All I could think was, here’s a guy with real stature, and just like the rest of us, he’s worried about his hair. Must be a “Generations” thing (get it?!?!?). Don’t get me started on Shatner’s hair.
We are a Trek household, but I did not feel the need to make a note about Koenig… Patrick Stewart is different. And yes, I know making a famous man’s passing about my living in Champaign or driving to Florida feels a little narcissistic. I have belabored that point in other posts. But this blog is half opinion and half me hanging on to memories, and this one’s a memory-packed, so I felt it worth sharing.
Patrick Stewart died last week. I’ve been thinking about him for days, and I’ve noticed this is a celebrity loss that stings. It feels like losing a a guy who I admired and who was simply there, in the background of my life, from the time I was a teenager until now.
I did not dig Stewart early on. When I was a kid, my idea of a starship captain was Shatner tearing around in The Wrath of Khan: bold, a bit obnoxious, a cowboy who got the job done. Tim watched the original series on WCIA in reruns, but to me it was just whatever was on some obscure channel late on a Sunday night. So when Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987, I was 16, and sitting in front of network TV was the last thing on my mind. A bald Englishman on the bridge? I was not culturally tuned in at that time. It was a snooze fest. Funnily enough, I’d already seen him without realizing it, as a knight in Excalibur, a film I loved. He just hadn’t become known to me yet.
That changed around 1993?!?! I’d moved back to Illinois and was sharing an apartment in Champaign with my buddies Scott and Bob, and Next Generation was always on. There’d be a rerun, and then the new episode, and we watched them all: three nearly grown-up men on a swaybacked couch, taking in Next Generation’s final seasons. What hooked me was the ensemble. The original series leaned on Kirk and Spock; Next Generation gave you a whole crew, and a future you could actually believe in, one where people were better. Picard was at the center of it all, leading with calm and reason instead of his fists.
Then came the first Star Trek movie with the new cast, Generations. My old hero Kirk and the new captain, side by side, (on horses at one point!) taking on Malcolm McDowell (Another favorite actor! . If there was one moment when Picard truly became a man with personality. (The nephew, Renee, and Christmas part inside the Nexus still gets me.)
Stewart found his way into my married life, too. Angela and I got married in 1995, and for the first few Christmases we always drove down to Fort Myers, 21 hours in our ’93 Celica. Our tradition was Patrick Stewart’s one-man A Christmas Carol, the double CD, playing on a Sony Discman stuck to the top of the dash, cords everywhere, as we raced south. Thank God we had those discs, because they knocked about three hours off that drive. I can still hear Marley’s chains coming up the stairs, clang, clang, clang, clang, echoing around the car somewhere in Georgia at midnight. I talk alot about regrets and not seeing live performances. Stewarts One-Man-Show is another one I should have made the trip for.
I had to google it, but it looks like it was 2000 when he started playing Professor X in the movies. I was a Wolverine guy in my young, impressionable comic book youth; in the comics, I found Xavier dull. All that brain stuff never did much for me. (Shocking right?) But Stewart made him something else. It was hard not to see Picard in that wheelchair, but it really was a new character, with the same care, grace and compassion. It’s funny to me: the Wolverine fan in me ended up treasuring the bond between Logan and Prof X.
Stewart was more than this character, but its still worth noting that him being torn apart by Jean Grey plays heavy on my mind. It’s the most horrible moment I remember from any X-Men film, because I thought it meant we’d never see Patrick Stewart again. He’s getting old! Which looked realistic when he came back for Logan gave us an older Prof and a deteriorating Wolverine looking after him. Its a great flick if you like the genre.
Oh, Stewart in the Piccard show… Loved him. Cant believe I waited so long to see it, but I think it was on a streamer I don’t follow. Paramount? We subscribed for a few months and binged the show. Great to see all the old characters come back, but I was happier to see the Piccard character played by this older actor who seemed to carry urgency with his age.
Now I want to go back and watch them all again: Generations, Logan, the X-Men films.
I have to think I’m not alone in this…
Picture the bridge of the Enterprise as your government.
The trusted advisors are all in the room, but in the end there’s one person giving the orders. You put that person in the chair because you trust them.
Picard earned that trust. He surrounded himself with thoughtful people who could make course corrections when they were needed, and he listened to them. Not always, mind you. Sometimes he heard everyone out and went his own way anyway, and that was part of it too. But the listening came first.
And when he was really ticked off or upset, he’d look around at everybody and head for his ready room, that little hidey-hole just off the bridge, and leave Riker in charge. Tea, Earl Grey, Hot… That must have been like a cigarette for him… Because it was his go-to when stressed. That’s another one of my favorite lines from the show BTW, and it’s what I posted on Facebook last week as a nod to the man. Not fair to tie a career to a role, but its my blog post. (I do what I want!)
I’ve always thought that was what good leadership looks like. (Sans cigarettes and tea) In a lot of ways, Stewart and his characters always exude steady confidence. Kirk taught me that a leader could be bold. Picard taught me that a leader could be calm, thoughtful and kind, and still be the strongest person in the room. Next Generation offered all of us a dream of a future worth working toward, and Stewart was the face of that dream. He was the right guy for the role.
I watched and learned from the captain. I grew to admire the leadersership style with that professor. Somewhere along the way, without my noticing, he became part of how I think a good man carries himself. (I hope stoicism is not dead!)
Thank you, Captain.
Engage.
Or, Shut Up Wesley… Thats also a favorite line! (Sorry Will Wheaton!)
It’s worth noting that one of the greatest failures of my entire life is tied to Patrick Stewart.
Sometime after the show ended, they aired a special with Shatner and Stewart, two captains sitting around talking Star Trek. Back then it was over-the-air TV, no streaming. If you wanted to watch something again, you had to get a videotape in the VCR, fast. I remembered it was on about ten minutes in, reached under the entertainment center, grabbed a cassette and hit record. The signal was terrible, mostly static and white noise, shhhh, but I could make out what was going on. Good enough.
I don’t remember how long it was before we discovered the horror I’d inflicted on myself for the rest of my life. That tape wasn’t labeled very well, and it definitely didn’t have the little tab punched out. It was our wedding video. Angela’s and mine, from 1995.
My Aunt Carla diligently put that whole thing together. I think she might still have some of the raw footage on cassettes somewhere, and I should probably score those from her. Maybe new technology can bring it back, in 4K even.
Regardless, it’s one of my biggest shames. In its place, a fuzzy Patrick Stewart in a lounger, talking nerdy Star Trek stuff. Something I could probably stream at the click of a button right now.
Shame on me.