With the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard underway and receiving strong notices, Patrick Stewart finds himself in a reflective mood. In a recent interview, the iconic actor spent time looking forward to the show’s remaining episodes while also reflecting back on fond memories from his nearly four decades playing Jean-Luc Picard.
As Stewart sees it, Star Trek: Picard executive producer and showrunner Terry Matalas (12 Monkeys) has put his character in a unique position as the Paramount+ series heads into its homestretch. “We’ve never seen Picard like this before,” Stewart explains. The show’s final episodes force the former Enterprise captain to boldly go back into space in search of his former colleague and lover, Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), after she sends an ominous, encoded message that warns him to trust no one—especially Starfleet.
That call for help sends Picard on a mission unlike any he has ever faced, which compels him to mount a reunion tour with his old Star Trek: The Next Generation shipmates as they take on a mysterious new threat. In doing so, Picard complicates and explores the TNG characters’ emotional lives in unexpected and rewarding ways.
Stewart says he had specific thoughts on what he wanted Picard to do this time around—and what he didn’t want the character to do. “What I said to Terry in our initial conversations [about season three] were: ‘Okay, if I do this, then this is what I don’t want to do,” Stewart explains. “And I had a list: I didn’t want to wear a traditional uniform, or continuously say ‘engage’ or ‘make it so’ for the sake of it.”
Stewart was pleased to hear that the new season wouldn’t confine Picard to a captain’s chair or an admiral’s desk. Instead, he would play a detective of sorts, trying to solve the mystery behind why someone he hasn’t spoken to in at least 20 years has contacted him under such dire circumstances.
“That opened so many doors to me on where Picard might be after all those years,” Stewart explains, “because I know what I had experienced and how much those experiences had affected and changed me. And Terry and his team [of writers] assumed, as I asked them to, that a similar impact was had on Jean-Luc Picard as well. And I have to say, they did extraordinary work.”
Stewart, whose journey as Picard began when The Next Generation premiered in syndication in 1987, is nostalgic about his time playing the character across 36 years, 10 seasons of television, and four feature films. One moment that stands out for him in particular, dating to his early days in the Star Trek universe, occurred when Stewart directed his first episode of TNG, “A Fistful of Datas” in season six.
The episode, a fan-favorite homage to classic Westerns, celebrated its 30th anniversary late last year. It pits several iterations of Data against Worf and Troi when a holodeck program (shocker) malfunctions. The irony of having a Brit direct a piece of television celebrating a cornerstone of American pop culture was not lost on Stewart.
“I was well aware of certain reticence and perhaps envy of those around me that I was directing this episode. At the time, there wasn’t really anything I had done in my career at that point that came close to the thrill of directing a Western like that,” Stewart says.
“As I recall, I almost didn’t get the chance to. Another director was assigned to make the episode, but, thankfully, there was a switch and it worked out in my favor. I am often asked about this episode, about directing it, and I have to tell you it was a delight. I was able to use a megaphone, and instruct the actors through that, on the Warner Bros. lot of all places! It was a very memorable time and I’m so grateful that the episode has endured for as long as it has.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Picard stream Thursdays on Paramount+.