Tony’s Timeless Thursdays™: Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Series That Made the Future Feel Worth Reaching — and Gave Us Captain Picard
There are some Tony’s Timeless Thursdays™ posts I write because a television show, movie or character brings back wonderful memories. This one arrives for a sadder reason.
Today, the world learned that Sir Patrick Stewart, the legendary actor who became Captain Jean-Luc Picard to generations of Star Trek fans and Professor Charles Xavier to generations of X-Men fans, has died at age 86.
So this week, I want to return to the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D and celebrate the television series that helped make Stewart a worldwide icon: Star Trek: The Next Generation.
For seven seasons and 178 episodes from 1987 to 1994, The Next Generation took Gene Roddenberry’s vision of humanity’s future and carried it into a new era. It gave us strange new worlds, terrifying enemies, philosophical questions, friendships, artificial intelligence, Klingon honor, time travel, alternate realities and some of science fiction television’s most memorable characters.
But above them all stood a bald Shakespearean actor in a red Starfleet uniform who showed us that one of the most powerful things a captain could do was think before he fired.
A Different Kind of Captain
Jean-Luc Picard was not James T. Kirk, and that was exactly what The Next Generation needed.
Picard was thoughtful, diplomatic, intellectual and controlled. He could command a starship without needing to dominate every room he entered. He believed conversation could prevent a war, knowledge could overcome ignorance and principles still mattered when abandoning them would be easier.
Patrick Stewart gave Picard tremendous authority, but he also gave him vulnerability. Picard loved archaeology, literature and history. He could sit quietly with a book one moment and stare down an alien threat the next. When he said “Make it so” or “Engage,” you believed people followed him because he had earned their trust.
Stewart’s classical training was part of what made Picard feel so distinctive. He could deliver futuristic dialogue with the weight of Shakespeare, but the performance never became merely theatrical. Picard felt human.
That humanity would be tested again and again.
The Enterprise Was a Family
Picard may have occupied the captain’s chair, but The Next Generation worked because the Enterprise-D felt like a family.
Jonathan Frakes’ Commander William Riker was Picard’s confident first officer and eventual friend. Brent Spiner’s Data was an android whose desire to understand humanity produced some of the series’ funniest and most moving stories. LeVar Burton’s Geordi La Forge gave us a brilliant engineer whose VISOR became one of the show’s most recognizable images. Gates McFadden’s Dr. Beverly Crusher brought intelligence and compassion to sickbay, while Marina Sirtis’ Counselor Deanna Troi gave emotional understanding an important place on a starship built around science.
Michael Dorn’s Worf became one of Star Trek’s great explorations of identity: a Klingon raised by humans trying to reconcile two cultures without completely surrendering either. Wil Wheaton’s Wesley Crusher represented youthful curiosity, while Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar helped establish that women on this Enterprise could stand on the front lines.
These people argued. They disagreed. They challenged each other. But when the Enterprise faced danger, they became one crew.
That camaraderie is a major reason the series still feels like home to so many fans.
The Show Made Thinking Exciting
What I appreciate most about The Next Generation is that its greatest battles were not always fought with phasers.
“The Measure of a Man” put Data’s very right to exist on trial and forced Picard to argue that an artificial being capable of consciousness should not be treated as Starfleet property. Decades before today’s conversations about artificial intelligence became part of everyday life, Star Trek was asking viewers to consider where personhood begins and who gets to decide.
“The Inner Light” gave Picard an entire lifetime of love, family and loss within minutes of real time, transforming a science-fiction concept into a story about memory and what remains after a civilization is gone. (Patrick Stewart said this was one of his favorite episodes.)
Stewart said in an interview: "I become someone other than Jean-Luc Picard over decades of living a different life, and therefore become a different person. A domestic person, not a starship captain. And there is another, personal reason. My son Daniel played my son in “The Inner Light.” That was an extraordinary experience."
“Chain of Command” tested Picard through imprisonment and torture. “All Good Things…” sent him across past, present and future while bringing the series back to the very beginning.
And then there was “The Best of Both Worlds.”
The Borg Changed Everything
The Borg were terrifying because they did not simply want to defeat you. They wanted to erase what made you you.
When Picard was captured and assimilated into the Collective as Locutus, The Next Generation created one of the most memorable cliffhangers in television history. Seeing the Enterprise’s captain stripped of his identity and turned against his own crew gave the Borg a personal connection to Picard that followed him long after the immediate battle ended.
That trauma mattered. The series did not always allow its characters to walk away untouched. Picard carried what happened to him. Later stories such as “I, Borg” forced him to confront his hatred of the Collective when the crew encountered an individual Borg drone named Hugh.
Once again, the answer was not simple. That was The Next Generation at its best. Science fiction created the problem. Humanity had to answer it.
Q Made Humanity Defend Its Right to Exist
On the opposite end of the spectrum was Q. John de Lancie’s omnipotent troublemaker could be funny, irritating, dangerous and strangely insightful, sometimes within the same scene. From “Encounter at Farpoint” through “All Good Things…,” Q repeatedly challenged Picard and questioned whether humanity was really as evolved as Starfleet liked to believe.
That relationship became one of the show’s defining threads. Picard believed humanity could become better. Q kept demanding proof.
That idea sits at the heart of Star Trek itself. The future is not automatically better because technology improves. Humanity has to improve too.
That Theme Song Meant Adventure Was Coming
Then there was the music. Few television themes announce adventure quite like Star Trek: The Next Generation. Jerry Goldsmith originally composed that sweeping melody for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and it was later combined with Alexander Courage’s classic Star Trek fanfare for The Next Generation.
Once that Enterprise appeared and Patrick Stewart’s voice began leading us toward “the final frontier,” you knew where you were going.
Not merely into space. Into possibility. That music made the future feel enormous, dignified and hopeful.
The Journey Continued Beyond Television
When The Next Generation ended in 1994 with “All Good Things…,” the crew’s journey did not stop. They moved to the big screen in Star Trek Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis.
First Contact in particular gave Picard another confrontation with the Borg and allowed Patrick Stewart to explore a captain whose pain could become obsession. It also brought the franchise to one of its defining historical moments: humanity’s first contact with the Vulcans.
Then, decades after leaving the Enterprise, Stewart returned as Jean-Luc in Star Trek: Picard. The three-season series explored an older Picard looking back at his choices, losses and relationships, and its final season reunited him with Riker, Data, Geordi, Worf, Beverly and Troi.
Seeing that crew together again felt like spending time with old friends. And now, sadly, it carries even more meaning.
Sir Patrick Stewart Gave Us Two Different Kinds of Leaders
For me, Patrick Stewart occupies an unusual place in pop culture because he helped define two characters I admire from two different worlds.
He was Captain Jean-Luc Picard. And he was Professor Charles Xavier.
One commanded the Enterprise. The other founded the X-Men. Yet both believed, at their best, that intelligence, communication and understanding could accomplish things violence could not. Stewart brought dignity to both.
His career was far larger than science fiction and superheroes. He spent years performing Shakespeare with the Royal Shakespeare Company and built an extraordinary stage career before most American audiences ever heard the words “Captain Picard.”
But Picard became one of those rare roles where actor and character seemed to elevate each other.
Today’s loss hurts because Patrick Stewart did not merely play somebody many of us watched. He helped create somebody many of us admired.
The Spiritual Bridge to S.O.L.A.D.™: Soldiers of Light Against Darkness™
One reason The Next Generation speaks to me as the creator of S.O.L.A.D.™: Soldiers of Light Against Darkness™ is its belief that strength and wisdom are not the same thing.
Picard commanded tremendous power. The Enterprise carried weapons capable of enormous destruction. Yet his first instinct was often to understand what stood before him.
Angelo™, Angeline™ and the other Soldiers of Light Against Darkness™ also have to learn that possessing power does not automatically make someone righteous. Strength has to be guided by character, faith, wisdom and purpose.
The best leaders do not simply ask, “Can we win?” They ask, “What is right?” Jean-Luc Picard understood that.
Final Thoughts: Engage
There is a scene at the end of “All Good Things…” that means more today.
Picard finally joins his senior officers for their regular poker game. After years of keeping a certain distance between captain and crew, he sits down among the people who have become his family.
He realizes he should have done it a long time ago. That moment captured what Star Trek: The Next Generation ultimately understood better than all the starships, aliens and technology could express. The journey matters. But so do the people beside you.
Patrick Stewart gave us a captain who believed humanity could be better than it was, a leader who made intelligence look heroic and a man whose simple command of “Engage” could make us believe another extraordinary adventure was waiting beyond the stars.
Sir Patrick Stewart’s voyage here has ended. But Jean-Luc Picard will keep sitting in that captain’s chair whenever another generation discovers the Enterprise.
And somewhere, the stars are still moving past the viewscreen. The mission continues. Engage.
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