Patrick Stewart, renowned actor and ‘Star Trek’s’ Captain Picard, dies at 86
I keep thinking about the casting story, that he originally saw Picard as a "safe pair of hands" backup if the first choice didn't work out. He almost said no, and then he turned a bald, cerebral captain into the most beloved starship commander in television history. That's the detail I'd want any obituary to linger on: the man who didn't think he belonged in sci-fi became its most enduring voice of measured reason.
The real loss, though, is what Picard represented at the moment we needed him. The Next Generation aired while the Cold War was thawing, and here was a French captain speaking Shakespeare, offering diplomacy over phasers, believing the borg could be reasoned with sometimes. Stewart carried that moral gravity on screen and then lived it off screen too, campaigning, using that voice for causes bigger than box office. We don't get figures like that often in genre work, people who understand the burden of being a symbol and carry it with grace.
I'd want to know how he felt about the man Picard became in his final series, the weary old captain with regrets. But I suspect he played that version with just as much conviction, because Stewart never phoned in a single scene. He knew the words mattered. Now the words pass to us.