Star Trek’s Patrick Stewart Filled In The 20-year gap Between TNG & Picard Himself

[ad_1]

Patrick Stewart revealed that it was Alex Kurtzman, the executive producer of all things “Star Trek,” who asked him to fill in the missing 20 years himself:

“I think it was Alex Kurtzman who said, ‘Look, 20 years have passed, and in those 20 years, surely a lot has happened to you, Patrick. I know enough about your life to know there have been upheavals and changes. Surely, the same has happened to Jean-Luc Picard. What might those things be?’ Well, I actually invented a whole story about those missing years.”

Stewart’s approach to Picard’s backstory wasn’t so much driven by storytelling, but by character. How did Jean-Luc Picard, he pondered, get to be in the emotional state he appears to be in at the start of his series? For Stewart, it was more important to think of the things that hadn’t happened to Picard than construct a scripted backstory. The most notable feature of the 2399 Picard was that he was neither married nor coupled. Picard, Stewart felt, should begin with shattered dreams:

“[T]his may sound a little pretentious, but to create that past — which I assume will never, ever be known — was very intimate, and it influenced me when we began shooting ‘Picard.’ Because I knew he had needs, longings, desires that were not being fulfilled. Disappointment that things had not gone the way he had hoped. Loneliness. Separation from these people he had loved and admired.”

It wouldn’t be until the show’s third season that audiences would learn of an ill-fated affair with Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and a long-lost son he never knew about. This is in keeping with Stewart’s ideas.

[ad_2]

Source link

Comments are closed.