{"id":1091,"date":"2026-10-30T10:26:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T10:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1091"},"modified":"2026-10-30T10:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T10:26:17","slug":"brilliant-patrick-stewart-was-star-treks-all-time-greatest-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1091","title":{"rendered":"Brilliant Patrick Stewart was ‘Star Trek’s all-time greatest captain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sir Patrick Stewart, the incomparable actor who died Wednesday at age 86<\/a> after a brief battle with Alzheimer\u2019s disease and Lewy Body dementia, had an Alpha Quadrant-sized task ahead of him back in 1987.<\/p>\n

\u201cStar Trek,\u201d initially a canceled TV show that grew into a hugely popular and culturally influential franchise, had been synonymous with one man for more than\u00a020 years: William Shatner.<\/p>\n

By 1987, Shatner had boldly gone as Captain James T. Kirk across three television seasons and four major films. And now \u201cStar Trek\u201d was coming back to TV after a two-decade hiatus \u2014 without him.<\/p>\n

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Patrick Stewart has died at age 86. Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new man in the U.S.S. Enterprise\u2019s captain\u2019s chair was to be Patrick Stewart, a 46-year-old classical actor from Britain\u2019s Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Most contented as Shylock or Titus Andronicus, he had appeared on a few UK TV shows in the 1970s and \u201980s, like \u201cI, Claudius\u201d and \u201cTinker Tailor Soldier Spy.\u201d But Stewart had done nothing on the scale of the daunting mission he was about to embark on. Many people thought the series would flop. And next to nobody in America knew who he was.<\/p>\n

What was clear is he certainly wasn\u2019t James T. Kirk. Unlike Shatner\u2019s thick blond hair, Stewart was fully bald. Shatner played a rule-breaking lover and a fighter, Stewart was an erudite Brit who exuded raw authority and spoke with a sonorous baritone. How could this possibly work?<\/p>\n

When \u201cStar Trek: The Next Generation\u201d premiered on Sept. 28, 1987, audiences finally got to hear Stewart as their new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, speak that famous phrase: \u201cSpace, the final frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was perfect \u2014 dashing, funny, powerful and paternal in ways both warm and scary. As far as I\u2019m concerned, Stewart is simply the best to ever do it.<\/p>\n

Yet his almost-40-year association with \u201cStar Trek\u201d was not writ in the stars. He worked hard to get there.\u00a0Stewart endured a difficult upbringing in a house with no hot water or indoor toilet. Born in 1940 in Yorkshire, England, to a very poor family with an abusive father, young Stewart used books, movies and eventually theater as an escape.<\/p>\n

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Stewart played Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on the TV series \u201cStar Trek: The Next Generation.\u201d Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The actor got his start onstage at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A life-changing moment came when he was 12 years old and\u00a0a teacher he adored had the class read aloud \u201cThe Merchant of Venice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI barely understood a word, but I loved the feel of the words and sounds in my mouth,\u201d the actor told The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d go on to speak them all his life, and his classical training and rich life experience are what made him the superb actor he was. Stewart studied at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 1957 and joined the RSC in 1966. He was there at the same time as fellow future luminaries Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Judi Dench and his lifelong friend, and the Magneto to his Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen.<\/p>\n

And, after being cast in \u201cThe Next Generation\u201d in 1987, Stewart moved to LA assuming he\u2019d soon be back onstage in London with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

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The cast of \u201cStar Trek: The Next Generation\u201d \u00c2\u00a9Paramount Television\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But not only did the show Klingon \u2014 it was a big hit. \u201cTNG\u201d lived long and prospered. It was\u00a0the top-rated syndicated show on TV, and in\u00a01994 its series finale was watched by 30 million people. It spawned four movies throughout the 1990s and aughts.<\/p>\n

\u201cStar Trek: The Next Generation\u201d remains the greatest \u201cTrek\u201d series of all time, in large part because of Stewart and how\u00a0the show\u00a0played to his extraordinary abilities as an actor.<\/p>\n

In one of its finest episodes, \u201cThe Best of Both Worlds,\u201d for example, the terrifying hive-mind villains the Borg are introduced and Picard is captured and assimilated. \u201cI am Locutus of Borg,\u201d he chillingly says with a face drained of blood and covered in freaky wires. Later in the excellent 1996 movie \u201cStar Trek: First Contact,\u201d Picard is still dealing with the psychological scars of that ordeal and the result was incredibly moving. Human drama was a place where no \u201cTrek\u201d had gone before \u2014 until Stewart.<\/p>\n

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The actor is also famous for playing Professor Charles Xavier in \u201cX-Men.\u201d \u00c2\u00a920thCentFox\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The actor\u2019s other huge contribution to the world of science-fiction was as Professor Charles Xavier in the \u201cX-Men\u201d films beginning in 2000. Twenty-six years later, he is still so associated with his \u201cX-Men\u201d performance in the minds of fans that his final big-screen part will be Xavier in \u201cAvengers: Doomsday\u201d this Christmas.<\/p>\n

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Like \u201cStar Trek,\u201d that was a chancy move at the time, too. Comic books on the big screen mostly meant \u201cBatman.\u201d Tobey Maguire\u2019s \u201cSpider-Man\u201d was still two years away, and had you floated the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a bartender, he\u2019d cut you off.<\/p>\n

But, reuniting with McKellen, Stewart brought gravitas and real dramatic chops to the role. \u201cX2\u201d is still one of the better comic-book flicks in existence.\u00a0The actor\u00a0never turned his nose up at any material, and lent the same skill and commitment to Professor X and Picard as he did to Macbeth and King John.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2013, Stewart married Sunny Ozell. REUTERS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a roundabout way, Shakespeare also helped Stewart find the love of his life.<\/p>\n

Stewart had married twice, sharing a son and daughter with his first wife, Sheila Falconer. But while Stewart was performing \u201cMacbeth\u201d in 2008 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, he met singer Sunny Ozell, who was a waitress at a nearby restaurant. He bought a home in Park Slope in 2012, and the pair wed in 2013. They remained married until he died.<\/p>\n

One of Stewart\u2019s last screen roles was donning his old captain\u2019s uniform on \u201cStar Trek: Picard.\u201d In its wonderful final season in 2023, his \u201cNext Generation\u201d crew reunited. At the end, they\u2019re all gathered at the bar, and in a full-circle moment, Picard recites Brutus\u2019 \u201cThere is a tide in the affairs of men\u201d speech from Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cJulius Caesar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Frakes\u2019 Captain Riker raises a glass and says, \u201cWe\u2019re grateful to have ridden the tide with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so are we.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See more of our coverage in your search results. Sir Patrick Stewart, the incomparable actor who died Wednesday at age 86 after a brief battle with Alzheimer\u2019s disease and Lewy Body dementia, had an Alpha Quadrant-sized task ahead of him back in 1987. \u201cStar Trek,\u201d initially a canceled TV show that grew into a hugely<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}