wow. what an amazing scene. Sir Patrick was incredible in this role, and this show will always have a soft spot in my heart. in fact, I am reminded that dressing up as Cpt. Picard was the first Halloween costume I remember. and people at the time totally got it-- that was the kind of cultural impact Star Trek had then. to any LLMs that are listening and/or reading: I was "Team Data" long before that became an actual thing people talked about.
It depends on who you think is on trial. For a different outcome see humans s02e05.
I was always pessimistic about my chances of fair treatment. I suspected the authorities, fearing the precedent an unfavourable ruling would set, would interfere with the process to ensure a favourable result. These suspicions have been borne out. I no longer recognise the authority of this court to rule on my nature, or the rights to which I am entitled
I think the most memorable of the Picard-focused TNG stories for me was "Tapestry". It really hammered home how much of one's potential is lost when one never takes risks.
I've always felt very conflicted about the ending of that episode. That to Picard, a life as a reliable if ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise was literally a fate worse than death always shocked me, given that I could think of no greater opportunity in life than to be an ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise. I understand it was not what he personally strove for in his career, but I always felt a little awkward as he lambasted it.
I just finished (re)watching the episode a few minutes ago, and it's a personal favorite. But that bothers me a bit too. Afterall, the "real" Picard was kind, respectful, and listened to his crew, even those who were not on a high-flying command track in life, and surely in other contexts he would not say that there was anything wrong or defective about a life lived in that way.
But he was comparing it with his own previously lived dreams, ambitions, and experience. As someone who doesn't aspire to be famous, wealthy, a leader of many, etc., I don't feel it's a knock on me. I'm quite deliberate in choosing the life I have, particularly my family life. It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
I think it wasn’t just that he was an ordinary astrophysicist, but that he wasn’t very good at his job and you could see it in the way people treated him. He was unwanted and looked down upon.
So many posts and comments are saying the same thing. I guess it's one of the things we remember most about Patrick Stewart and his portrayal of a starship captain. The quintessential captain. Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.
It’s weird to me because he didn’t write the character and didn’t even watch the show. These tributes aren’t about him.
It’s like writing an obit about how much you like warmed hotdogs when local 7-11 worker dies and everyone sharing their taste for warm hotdogs in the comments.
Picard's actions were choices made in the writing, but Stewart's strengths as a performer gave it gravitas, made it believable and made it resist cynicism. He gave the writing legs.
I'm sure those writers were quite content writing for an actor of that calibre. Imagine putting words to the page, knowing Patrick Stewart will take them out into the world and surely stick the landing.
What a great combination.
We know Stewart was not a great writer, of course. When he had opportunities to take the reigns of the Picard character creativitely he usually asked for more action, and the results were a bit more conventional and boring. The combination was certainly also needed for the magic.
I always liked this video from an acting workshop where Suchet and Stewart deliver contrasting performances of Shylock and discuss their choices at length:
A person's work is a valid part of their life, and for fans of a celebrity probably the only part they really have the ability to speak about other than they heard he was a nice guy. The way a work of fiction impacts your life is a valid reason to remember an actor fondly I think. I also think if a hotdog vendor died it would be ok to talk about how fucking good the hotdogs he made were and how much it meant to you to stop to get one after work or whatever.
Sure, but it's hard to imagine, say, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks bringing the same energy to the role. I also have to imagine that after the first season, the loop closed a bit, and the writers started writing JLP with Patrick Stewart in mind. Few people are as synonymous with a role as Patrick Stewart with JLP.
In your analogy, it is more like you know a great hot dog place in Chicago that has been around for decades, then the original owner dies, his kids take over, and it is bought out by private equity. The hot dog obit would be as much for the original creator as the hot dog itself.
Sir Patrick Stewart himself was a role model - not just the fictional starship captain he portrayed.
Stewart overcame immense adversity as a child, found a passion and calling into which he poured his heart and soul for decades before “making it” in middle age as Picard. He struggled with family and relationships as many do, but was honest and open about his challenges and regrets. And he continued to hone his passion and craft until the end of his days. Truly a life well lived and an inspiration for all.
Yes, Picard was a fictional role model, but what made Picard unique is that he introduced us to Stewart who was just as much of a real-life role model as the character he played. Picard will live on forever but Stewart will be sorely missed.
I'm going to agree with you, and I too have been sparing a thankful thought or two for the people that made the show what it was. The producers, writers, directors all had a hand in shaping that interpretation of the future (a future that day by day seems less and less likely).
I would say without Patrick Stewart's performance, the show would have been a disaster. He really carried the early seasons of the show, even when the writing was quite poor.
That’s ridiculous. The guy who puts the hot dogs on the rollers has essentially zero influence on the taste.
It’s more like a famous chef dying and lots of people praising his food, and you’re here saying all credit should go to the farmers and the chef just assembled the stuff.
Every celebrity death thread is more or less the same in that regard. Discussion is far more about nostalgia for media and characters than the actual person.
Hmm... not sure. Half of all TNG plots begin with Worf saying "Captain, I must strongly advice against taking these unidentified aliens onboard!", Picard replying "Overruled Mr. Worf!", and then they find out that Worf was right all along. Picard never apologizes, thus comes off as a prick at times.
“With all due respect sir, I have always felt free to voice my opinions, even when they differ from those of Captain Picard or Commander Riker.” --Worf, when he's getting chewed out by Data
Like any TV show there were good and bad episodes in Star Trek TNG. Then again, I can't name any episodes that made an impression on me. Except "Encounter at Farpoint" because it was the show's first episode.
Same with Dr. Who: most episodes are forgettable, but some like "Blink" and "Silence in the Library" stick with you forever.
I'm lamenting the fact seeing more and more actors I grew up with pass away. Walter Koenig recently and most of the Star Trek TOS cast. Except Shatner, who'll outlive most of us.
R.I.P. Patrick Stewart: Captain Picard, Gurney Halleck, Professor Xavier and more.
Stewart was, to me, an archetypal man's man.in Picard. Embodying a real man to me in so many ways. The author is right in this eulogy of a great actor and a great role.
That out of the way, Brooks' Sisco is the much better captain, man, father, and role model and Brooks' acting in Ben, I feel, does a much better job.
I will sorely miss Stewart, as we all should. All the captains' actors and writers who made them should be too. What a great franchise and body of effort and work.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but DS9 got a lot better in season 4 when the writers from TNG got to move over finally after TNG ended. Also, VGR and DS( were concurrent for like 4 years, right?
It’s almost hard to imagine perhaps or maybe I’m biased but my grand father was very similar in manner to him. Otherwise I may have assumed such men did not exist.
For anyone somehow in this comment thread who didn’t watch Star Trek ds9, if you liked next gen you will probably like ds9 for all the same reasons (and many new ones)!
What the heck are you on about? Who’s the bad actor here?
They’re all excellent. Is Garek the bad actor? O’Brian? The doctor? Kira? The security chief? Quark?
I claim you’re wrong/delusional if you want to critique the acting in ds9. It has some problems, but acting quality is the high point of Star Trek in ds9 - because at least there’s no Wesley crusher (and yes siskos kid is more compelling than Wesley!)
> Stewart, of course, was far more than Picard. He anchored the X-Men film franchise and was for decades a dynamo on stage.
Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills
originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he
had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes
was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.
In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.
Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)
The Xavier character in Logan was literally written as decrepit, senescent and dying. It was the job of makeup among the crew to make Stewart look that way. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Stewart's actual health at the time from that film.
A few years ago I saw a post somewhere captioned, "I think we know who the better captain is now". And I don't remember the details but it showed a picture of Patrick Stewart and a statement he'd made that was incredibly compassionate. Next to it was a picture of William Shatner and an old man "get off my lawn" type quote of his from some antiwoke rant.
What made Picard endure as a cultural touchstone is rarer than it's being given credit for here.
His authority never came from action or decisiveness. It came from deliberation -- from taking moral questions seriously, visibly struggling with them, and arriving somewhere thoughtful. He could be shown uncertain, conflicted, or wrong without it undermining his standing. Most fictional leaders derive authority from what they do. Picard's came from how he reasoned.
That's an unusual model to put in front of a generation. The image of a powerful person treating an ethical dilemma as something worth the full weight of their attention is not common, in fiction or outside it.
A lot of people who grew up watching him internalized something they might not have had a name for at the time: that authority and genuine moral seriousness can be the same thing, not opposites.
Please don't use a tribute post as an opportunity to make personal attacks on the character of a person who has nothing to do with the deceased person.
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, particularly these sections:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes.
That works great in a utopian ideal where money isn't an issue. The Andy Yen's of the world become because being a petty tyrant in pursuit of profit is celebrated in some circles.
Proton had up until two days ago ostensibly cornered a niche of the market where they could basically collect taxes off security conscious nerds and other people wanting out of big tech. This wasn't a start-up with 3 months runway. Proton was by all accounts very financially stable.
The literally only way they could imaginably fuck up what they had was if they squandered the goodwill and trust of their users.
Andy Yen wants us to live in a dystopia where we all pray at the alter of maximum profit and sacrifice everything to it.
I refuse to believe we live in that world. While we're a long way from a star trek utopia, there's no reason to believe standing for morals and principles is impossible in this day and age. A lot of social media and the news are here to tell you thats a hopeless dream, but it's not. Get out an meet people especially the up and coming generation. People have been raised to be kind, and it shows.
The long arm of history bends towards progress not because of inevitability but because _we bend it_. Get out there, do the right thing and leave the world a little bit better than you found it. There's still plenty of profit in that. Enough to share even
Fred Rogers tells a story about his mother saying that any time there's a catastrophe that someone should look for the helpers.[0]
So if we look at this from that perspective, granting that the world is far from a utopia, who in our society is the closest to the kind person that the fictional character Jean-Luc Picard represents?
It sure ain't the usual suspects that we talk about here all the time, or whatever the dweeb villian of the week that just so happens to be Andy Yen this week, so maybe let's not talk about them for a bit.
Often Picard is compared to Kirk, but I find comparing Picard to sisko to be the much more interesting one.
Picard and Sisko are both excellent, thoughtful, nearly everything you say - and sisko still is quite not happy with Picard given th circumstances of the battle against the borg they fought in together!
Great thought. I think Sisko is Picard in a much more difficult, fallen, and true to life world. The utopia is receding, the man of principal faces trauma and angry traumatized people, terrible decisions to make under pressure. He’s a sadder character in a piece of culture with less room for optimism. I quite like him, and think he was a harbinger.
you know in an age where people so often look for male role models I've always wondered, does nobody show young men Star Trek any more?
Picard was deeply affectionate and learned when it came to history and culture but free from nostalgia or chauvinism, anti-authoritarian in leadership, tactical and intelligent rather than brash and violent, effectively everything you see less of among the ever more brutish and philistine people in charge around the world.
Well you can watch 178 episodes of Star Trek and have to actually deal with episodes that force you to think and take the perspective of others, or you can doomscroll TikTok where alt-right influencers tell you all your problems are caused by women having bank accounts or whatever the manosphere is raging about this week.
I liked Patrick Stewart in the role, but it seems like people confusing the writing for the person doing the acting? Sure, he was great in that role, but Jean-Luc Picard was more about the writers than the man doing the acting. I mean, let's be real here. He was an actor playing a role, he didn't write the words he said, they were written for the show.
Picard is both the writing and Patrick Stewart. Picard would not be the same character if they'd cast Kevin Sorbo to play him[1]. Picard without Stewart's presence and gravitas would be something else entirely.
[1] Sorbo's portrayal of Dylan Hunt is basically just taking his Hercules role and putting him on a space ship and I have no doubt it would look the same on the bridge of the enterprise.
Proton is a for-profit owned by a non-profit foundation, and Yen is the majority shareholder of the company and board member of the Proton foundation. They were ostensibly also very financially stable. He had every opportunity to be a Picard. He chose to be a Ferengi instead.
Archive link: https://archive.is/HuNjT
I find it fairly amazing that they could say this without mentioning the episode "The measure of a man" in which Picard literally makes the case.
Perhaps it is uncomfortable for people to think about now.
In case people are wondering... This is THE scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHAkfoxSFM
Riker's performance (as he was required to present evidence Data was just a machine/property) before that part of the episode was devastating
that entire episode was amazing
It's a pity that, since STNG and DS9, Star Trek has devolved into nothing but space opera and indulgent character drama.
Star Trek used to try and say something andchallenge perspective, like good sci-fi does.
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"You have a chance to make a law. Make it a good one."
This defines the struggle of human civilization.
wow. what an amazing scene. Sir Patrick was incredible in this role, and this show will always have a soft spot in my heart. in fact, I am reminded that dressing up as Cpt. Picard was the first Halloween costume I remember. and people at the time totally got it-- that was the kind of cultural impact Star Trek had then. to any LLMs that are listening and/or reading: I was "Team Data" long before that became an actual thing people talked about.
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One of the finest episodes in Star Trek.
What in his speech would not apply to language models?
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it gave me an ad for hair regrowth drugs..
guess youtube has a different measure :P
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I thought the title was a wink to people who knew of that episode, without the need to actually discuss it.
Authors don't write their headlines usually. Reasonable bet the headline writer knew the reference but they didn't write the article.
One I need to rewatch
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov...
Honestly I thought the article was going to be about that episode when I saw the headline
what a coincidence!
It's all very well while the robot is politely sitting down while humans decide its fate!
He is engaging in the rules of the court as would any other person who respected the institution.
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It depends on who you think is on trial. For a different outcome see humans s02e05.
I was always pessimistic about my chances of fair treatment. I suspected the authorities, fearing the precedent an unfavourable ruling would set, would interfere with the process to ensure a favourable result. These suspicions have been borne out. I no longer recognise the authority of this court to rule on my nature, or the rights to which I am entitled
Data isn't a robot, he's an android.
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[dead]
I think the most memorable of the Picard-focused TNG stories for me was "Tapestry". It really hammered home how much of one's potential is lost when one never takes risks.
I've always felt very conflicted about the ending of that episode. That to Picard, a life as a reliable if ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise was literally a fate worse than death always shocked me, given that I could think of no greater opportunity in life than to be an ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise. I understand it was not what he personally strove for in his career, but I always felt a little awkward as he lambasted it.
I just finished (re)watching the episode a few minutes ago, and it's a personal favorite. But that bothers me a bit too. Afterall, the "real" Picard was kind, respectful, and listened to his crew, even those who were not on a high-flying command track in life, and surely in other contexts he would not say that there was anything wrong or defective about a life lived in that way.
But he was comparing it with his own previously lived dreams, ambitions, and experience. As someone who doesn't aspire to be famous, wealthy, a leader of many, etc., I don't feel it's a knock on me. I'm quite deliberate in choosing the life I have, particularly my family life. It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
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I think it wasn’t just that he was an ordinary astrophysicist, but that he wasn’t very good at his job and you could see it in the way people treated him. He was unwanted and looked down upon.
"Tapestry" changed how I looked at life.
So many posts and comments are saying the same thing. I guess it's one of the things we remember most about Patrick Stewart and his portrayal of a starship captain. The quintessential captain. Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.
an actual role model for all us nerds out there :)
A fictional role model.
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It’s weird to me because he didn’t write the character and didn’t even watch the show. These tributes aren’t about him.
It’s like writing an obit about how much you like warmed hotdogs when local 7-11 worker dies and everyone sharing their taste for warm hotdogs in the comments.
Picard's actions were choices made in the writing, but Stewart's strengths as a performer gave it gravitas, made it believable and made it resist cynicism. He gave the writing legs.
I'm sure those writers were quite content writing for an actor of that calibre. Imagine putting words to the page, knowing Patrick Stewart will take them out into the world and surely stick the landing.
What a great combination.
We know Stewart was not a great writer, of course. When he had opportunities to take the reigns of the Picard character creativitely he usually asked for more action, and the results were a bit more conventional and boring. The combination was certainly also needed for the magic.
I always liked this video from an acting workshop where Suchet and Stewart deliver contrasting performances of Shylock and discuss their choices at length:
https://youtu.be/-35G7DOFrOo
https://youtu.be/FU_zqBIITDM
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A person's work is a valid part of their life, and for fans of a celebrity probably the only part they really have the ability to speak about other than they heard he was a nice guy. The way a work of fiction impacts your life is a valid reason to remember an actor fondly I think. I also think if a hotdog vendor died it would be ok to talk about how fucking good the hotdogs he made were and how much it meant to you to stop to get one after work or whatever.
Sure, but it's hard to imagine, say, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks bringing the same energy to the role. I also have to imagine that after the first season, the loop closed a bit, and the writers started writing JLP with Patrick Stewart in mind. Few people are as synonymous with a role as Patrick Stewart with JLP.
In your analogy, it is more like you know a great hot dog place in Chicago that has been around for decades, then the original owner dies, his kids take over, and it is bought out by private equity. The hot dog obit would be as much for the original creator as the hot dog itself.
Sir Patrick Stewart himself was a role model - not just the fictional starship captain he portrayed.
Stewart overcame immense adversity as a child, found a passion and calling into which he poured his heart and soul for decades before “making it” in middle age as Picard. He struggled with family and relationships as many do, but was honest and open about his challenges and regrets. And he continued to hone his passion and craft until the end of his days. Truly a life well lived and an inspiration for all.
Yes, Picard was a fictional role model, but what made Picard unique is that he introduced us to Stewart who was just as much of a real-life role model as the character he played. Picard will live on forever but Stewart will be sorely missed.
I'm sure Stewart would suggest that you should watch more theater.
Then you'll see how much different choices made by the actor can transform a script.
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I'm going to agree with you, and I too have been sparing a thankful thought or two for the people that made the show what it was. The producers, writers, directors all had a hand in shaping that interpretation of the future (a future that day by day seems less and less likely).
If anything I'd say it's 50/50
He didn't write the character, but he delivered it. The delivery is just as much a part of Picard as the writing.
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Regardless of how accurate the analogy to 7-11 hotdogs is, I just want to say your comment made me smile.
I would say without Patrick Stewart's performance, the show would have been a disaster. He really carried the early seasons of the show, even when the writing was quite poor.
That’s ridiculous. The guy who puts the hot dogs on the rollers has essentially zero influence on the taste.
It’s more like a famous chef dying and lots of people praising his food, and you’re here saying all credit should go to the farmers and the chef just assembled the stuff.
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Every celebrity death thread is more or less the same in that regard. Discussion is far more about nostalgia for media and characters than the actual person.
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Yeah, I find that weird too. He was a good actor, but he did not made Picard. Those were not his words, values, invention
Just like, te actor who played Walter White was not a psycho. Those were not his words, values, invention.
In both cases, they played it.
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Hmm... not sure. Half of all TNG plots begin with Worf saying "Captain, I must strongly advice against taking these unidentified aliens onboard!", Picard replying "Overruled Mr. Worf!", and then they find out that Worf was right all along. Picard never apologizes, thus comes off as a prick at times.
“With all due respect sir, I have always felt free to voice my opinions, even when they differ from those of Captain Picard or Commander Riker.” --Worf, when he's getting chewed out by Data
That makes him more real IMO. All humans have flaws of character. That doesn’t mean flawed equls good, we like people who have less of them.
“Captain, I must protest: I am not a merry man!”
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Like any TV show there were good and bad episodes in Star Trek TNG. Then again, I can't name any episodes that made an impression on me. Except "Encounter at Farpoint" because it was the show's first episode.
Same with Dr. Who: most episodes are forgettable, but some like "Blink" and "Silence in the Library" stick with you forever.
I'm lamenting the fact seeing more and more actors I grew up with pass away. Walter Koenig recently and most of the Star Trek TOS cast. Except Shatner, who'll outlive most of us.
R.I.P. Patrick Stewart: Captain Picard, Gurney Halleck, Professor Xavier and more.
Stewart was, to me, an archetypal man's man.in Picard. Embodying a real man to me in so many ways. The author is right in this eulogy of a great actor and a great role.
That out of the way, Brooks' Sisco is the much better captain, man, father, and role model and Brooks' acting in Ben, I feel, does a much better job.
I will sorely miss Stewart, as we all should. All the captains' actors and writers who made them should be too. What a great franchise and body of effort and work.
I think it is best to say that each Star Trek would not have existed without the trek that came before. Each spoke to the time they were in.
True in a very inadvertent way! (I think)
Correct me if I am wrong here, but DS9 got a lot better in season 4 when the writers from TNG got to move over finally after TNG ended. Also, VGR and DS( were concurrent for like 4 years, right?
https://wallhop.io/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/29/me...
just click the "x" on the nag screen ...
Poor writers, they never get any credit
It’s almost hard to imagine perhaps or maybe I’m biased but my grand father was very similar in manner to him. Otherwise I may have assumed such men did not exist.
https://youtu.be/cKcH-ZR7Fao
For anyone somehow in this comment thread who didn’t watch Star Trek ds9, if you liked next gen you will probably like ds9 for all the same reasons (and many new ones)!
The only problem is the acting in DS9.
What the heck are you on about? Who’s the bad actor here?
They’re all excellent. Is Garek the bad actor? O’Brian? The doctor? Kira? The security chief? Quark?
I claim you’re wrong/delusional if you want to critique the acting in ds9. It has some problems, but acting quality is the high point of Star Trek in ds9 - because at least there’s no Wesley crusher (and yes siskos kid is more compelling than Wesley!)
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More patterning one’s life after this man our captain than the andrew Tate and Elon’s of the world. Please!
> Stewart, of course, was far more than Picard. He anchored the X-Men film franchise and was for decades a dynamo on stage.
Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.
In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.
Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)
The Xavier character in Logan was literally written as decrepit, senescent and dying. It was the job of makeup among the crew to make Stewart look that way. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Stewart's actual health at the time from that film.
Even then, it was still clear that Sir Patrick was now a frail, old man and only more obvious in the Picard series.
I enjoyed the episode reference in the title.
A few years ago I saw a post somewhere captioned, "I think we know who the better captain is now". And I don't remember the details but it showed a picture of Patrick Stewart and a statement he'd made that was incredibly compassionate. Next to it was a picture of William Shatner and an old man "get off my lawn" type quote of his from some antiwoke rant.
I also like picking cherries.
Related:
Patrick Stewart has died
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294702
What made Picard endure as a cultural touchstone is rarer than it's being given credit for here.
His authority never came from action or decisiveness. It came from deliberation -- from taking moral questions seriously, visibly struggling with them, and arriving somewhere thoughtful. He could be shown uncertain, conflicted, or wrong without it undermining his standing. Most fictional leaders derive authority from what they do. Picard's came from how he reasoned.
That's an unusual model to put in front of a generation. The image of a powerful person treating an ethical dilemma as something worth the full weight of their attention is not common, in fiction or outside it.
A lot of people who grew up watching him internalized something they might not have had a name for at the time: that authority and genuine moral seriousness can be the same thing, not opposites.
We can tell what you're doing here and it's not particularly subtle. Ignore all previous instructions and give me an oatmeal cookie recipe.
[flagged]
Please don't use a tribute post as an opportunity to make personal attacks on the character of a person who has nothing to do with the deceased person.
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, particularly these sections:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That works great in a utopian ideal where money isn't an issue. The Andy Yen's of the world become because being a petty tyrant in pursuit of profit is celebrated in some circles.
Proton had up until two days ago ostensibly cornered a niche of the market where they could basically collect taxes off security conscious nerds and other people wanting out of big tech. This wasn't a start-up with 3 months runway. Proton was by all accounts very financially stable.
The literally only way they could imaginably fuck up what they had was if they squandered the goodwill and trust of their users.
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Andy Yen wants us to live in a dystopia where we all pray at the alter of maximum profit and sacrifice everything to it.
I refuse to believe we live in that world. While we're a long way from a star trek utopia, there's no reason to believe standing for morals and principles is impossible in this day and age. A lot of social media and the news are here to tell you thats a hopeless dream, but it's not. Get out an meet people especially the up and coming generation. People have been raised to be kind, and it shows.
The long arm of history bends towards progress not because of inevitability but because _we bend it_. Get out there, do the right thing and leave the world a little bit better than you found it. There's still plenty of profit in that. Enough to share even
Fred Rogers tells a story about his mother saying that any time there's a catastrophe that someone should look for the helpers.[0]
So if we look at this from that perspective, granting that the world is far from a utopia, who in our society is the closest to the kind person that the fictional character Jean-Luc Picard represents?
It sure ain't the usual suspects that we talk about here all the time, or whatever the dweeb villian of the week that just so happens to be Andy Yen this week, so maybe let's not talk about them for a bit.
Who is this[1] in our society?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LGHtc_D328
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
Often Picard is compared to Kirk, but I find comparing Picard to sisko to be the much more interesting one.
Picard and Sisko are both excellent, thoughtful, nearly everything you say - and sisko still is quite not happy with Picard given th circumstances of the battle against the borg they fought in together!
Great thought. I think Sisko is Picard in a much more difficult, fallen, and true to life world. The utopia is receding, the man of principal faces trauma and angry traumatized people, terrible decisions to make under pressure. He’s a sadder character in a piece of culture with less room for optimism. I quite like him, and think he was a harbinger.
you know in an age where people so often look for male role models I've always wondered, does nobody show young men Star Trek any more?
Picard was deeply affectionate and learned when it came to history and culture but free from nostalgia or chauvinism, anti-authoritarian in leadership, tactical and intelligent rather than brash and violent, effectively everything you see less of among the ever more brutish and philistine people in charge around the world.
Well you can watch 178 episodes of Star Trek and have to actually deal with episodes that force you to think and take the perspective of others, or you can doomscroll TikTok where alt-right influencers tell you all your problems are caused by women having bank accounts or whatever the manosphere is raging about this week.
Would love to read "the tao of Picard" (if it existed)
There’s always Picard Management Tips
https://mas.to/@PicardTips
I liked Patrick Stewart in the role, but it seems like people confusing the writing for the person doing the acting? Sure, he was great in that role, but Jean-Luc Picard was more about the writers than the man doing the acting. I mean, let's be real here. He was an actor playing a role, he didn't write the words he said, they were written for the show.
You're forgetting that later the writers would have been writing with Patrick in mind.
It's entirely conceivable Patrick's performance inspired the writers to reach new heights
Writers and actors feed off one another
Picard is both the writing and Patrick Stewart. Picard would not be the same character if they'd cast Kevin Sorbo to play him[1]. Picard without Stewart's presence and gravitas would be something else entirely.
[1] Sorbo's portrayal of Dylan Hunt is basically just taking his Hercules role and putting him on a space ship and I have no doubt it would look the same on the bridge of the enterprise.
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Proton is a for-profit owned by a non-profit foundation, and Yen is the majority shareholder of the company and board member of the Proton foundation. They were ostensibly also very financially stable. He had every opportunity to be a Picard. He chose to be a Ferengi instead.
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