{"id":672654,"date":"2026-11-02T12:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/672654\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:40:11","slug":"patrick-stewarts-captain-jean-luc-picard-beamed-into-a-dull-1990s-ireland-when-nerds-needed-him-most-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/672654\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Stewart\u2019s Captain Jean-Luc Picard beamed into a dull 1990s Ireland when nerds needed him most \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were a geeky teenager in early 1990s Ireland, then Patrick Stewart<\/a> and Star Trek: The Next Generation will have beamed into your life at precisely the right moment.<\/p>\n

How grey and dull Ireland was at that moment \u2013 and what a dash Stewart cut as The Next Generation (TNG) materialised one random Saturday evening in 1990, played on by that stirring theme tune and all ablaze with its whizz-bang special effects.<\/p>\n

These were tough times for dorks. At school you would be picked on and ridiculed \u2013 and that was just the teachers (at least it was in my case). Even if people weren\u2019t laughing at you, they had no idea what you were banging on about when you talked about the Lord of the Rings<\/a> or Ursula Le Guin. You were out there all alone in a void of nerd-dom.<\/p>\n

And then came Stewart\u2019s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, at the helm of the shiny, slimline Enterprise-D \u2013 a vessel so sleek and minimalist it looked fabulous even when the Borg were trying to smash it to smithereens. <\/p>\n

Stewart, who has died at 86<\/a>, brought something new to science fiction \u2013 dignity and decorum. Until then, sci-fi on the telly had arrived slathered in cheese. Yes, we all loved the original Star Trek \u2013 but you did have to make peace with William Shatner\u2019s<\/a> overcooked acting. And sure, we adored Doctor Who \u2013 but even as 10-year-olds, we could tell the monsters were made of pipe cleaner and bin bags.<\/p>\n

TNG was different \u2013 it looked great, and Jean-Luc Picard excelled as the stern yet understanding commander you could imagine real people following into a sticky situation. He was rational and even-tempered, and his voice had the quality of carved granite. When he said \u201cmake it so\u201d, you knew his crew would jump to obey. <\/p>\n

What an aura he brought. Even if many Star Trek fans in Ireland could not at that time have told you the difference between Bosco and Macbeth, there was no mistaking his thespian superpowers \u2013 every time Picard ordered a \u201ctea, earl grey, hot\u201d from the Replicator in his quarters, it was as if he was delivering a soliloquy at the Royal Shakespeare Company.<\/p>\n

Stewart was 46 when he was cast as Picard and from the start had a clear understanding that the character\u2019s gravitas as a Starfleet captain was bound up in his decades of experience as an actor. \u201cThe fact is all of those years in Royal Shakespeare Company \u2013 playing all those kings, emperors, princes and tragic heroes \u2013 were nothing but preparation for sitting in the captain\u2019s chair of the Enterprise,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Patrick Stewart brought ironic wit and a statesman-like quality to his defining roleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

That he was prepared to give his best to science fiction was more novel than we might think today, when big names jostle to be in the next Marvel<\/a> caper or Game of Thrones<\/a> spin-off. Back then, many actors of Stewart\u2019s stature would have thought sci-fi beneath them.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine Richard Burton<\/a> in Doctor Who? Anthony Hopkins<\/a> (future Marvel star) guest-starring in The Six Million Dollar Man? But Stewart appreciated that, if he was going to do Star Trek, then he had to accept it, and its audience, at face value. This was significant as it meant that no matter how ludicrous Next Generation\u2019s storylines (and they could be silly, especially at the start), you could count on Stewart to elevate the material.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ian McKellen leads tributes to Patrick Stewart: \u2018The most respected and beloved actor of his generation\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Some celebrity deaths hit harder than others \u2013 and for Trekkies Stewart\u2019s is one such case. He took Star Trek seriously at a time when few outside the fan base did \u2013 and for that, all of us geeks, no matter where in the galaxy we reside, owe him an enormous debt. Let us all together raise a cup of \u201ctea, earl grey, hot\u201d in his memory. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were a geeky teenager in early 1990s Ireland, then Patrick Stewart and Star Trek: The Next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60,2563,105412],"class_list":["post-672654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marvel","tag-patrick-stewart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}