The very first thing to note about Patrick Stewart was at all times his voice. Clear and spherical, it had a depth and weight to it with out rumbling or growling, and it was so wealthy and full that it gave the impression to be mysteriously amplified even when he whispered or murmured. It was a voice made for giving speeches, for rallying the troops, and for inspiration; it was a voice designed to undertaking throughout theaters and ship bracing soliloquies. It was not a voice designed for tv, or not less than not the sort of science-fiction franchise tv that existed in 1987 when Star Trek: The Subsequent Era premiered. The Star Trek units had been small, particularly in contrast with TV a number of a long time later. Regardless of its sweeping celestial setting, the entire collection was constrained, counting on face-to-face conversations in tiny places of work to convey plot, and motion scenes that usually seemed like scuffles in a blocky, darkish, half-convincing cave. Stewart’s voice was too large and plummy for strolling alongside these repetitive beige corridors or for arguing with an alien baddie over a video display.
The magic of Patrick Stewart, who died this week at 86, was that his voice and presence as a performer by no means felt uncomfortably shoehorned into the little stage of the Starship Enterprise’s bridge set or misplaced in a chintzy space-themed convention room. His performances by no means felt like he was dialing himself right down to TV measurement. It was the opposite method round: The Enterprise felt greater, grander, and extra intrepid as a result of it existed on the identical scale as Stewart’s exceptional, clarion voice. His presence was transformative; Stewart made the goofiest, most simply disregarded TV franchise for nerds and nobodies into a piece full of heat and gravitas. He took it critically, and by extension, he made it doable to take TV critically, too.
Stewart, who was born in Yorkshire in 1940, was skilled as a Shakespearean actor from his adolescence, working his method by college and turning into a member of the Royal Shakespeare Firm in 1966. He was provided the function of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Subsequent Era after being scouted throughout a Shakespeare performing workshop at UCLA, and he was unsure about taking the job, which could pay higher than the theater however would take him away from the profession he’d been constructing for many years. His colleague and later shut good friend Ian McKellen famously suggested him towards accepting the function. “After I instructed him I used to be going to signal the contract, he nearly bodily prevented me from doing so,” Stewart wrote in his 2023 memoir. “‘You may’t throw that away to do TV!’” he recollects McKellen saying.
Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry was simply as involved as McKellen. Roddenberry’s most well-liked Picard would’ve been a reiteration of William Shatner’s James T. Kirk within the unique collection, a captain who was youthful and extra swashbuckling, with extra swagger and bravado. TNG’s producers Robert Justman and Rick Berman had been satisfied that Stewart was the correct selection, however Roddenberry conceded solely after, as Justman put it, they’d “exhausted the availability of accessible captains” in Hollywood. However it’s not exhausting to think about why casting Stewart would’ve felt so towards the grain. If Shatner’s Kirk was the best, Stewart was working in a wholly completely different key. He was older, extra restrained, and extra honest. Shatner’s Star Trek captain was your barely drunk uncle, at all times deciding the foundations by no means utilized to him and winking rapaciously on the nearest horny alien. The worry needed to be that Stewart’s Star Trek captain, by comparability, would really feel like your stern and authoritarian father had lastly come dwelling to close down the social gathering and inform everybody they had been grounded.
There are hints of that in Stewart’s efficiency. His Picard is authoritative, with not one of the pleasant push and pull together with his underlings that Kirk had. There’s additionally no shut partnership to reflect the one in TOS, the place Spock is there to consistently yank Kirk again in line. Picard is the implacable chief who says “Interact!” every time he needs the ship to fly away someplace, however his extra telling catchphrase is “Make it so,” which he says every time he points an order. That phrase shapes actuality to match the image he’s already envisioned. He’s heard the arguments from his crew, Riker and Information and Dr. Crusher and Worf; he’s listened to the factors and counterpoints, and he’s determined what the longer term ought to change into. There’s an implied subsequent phrase sitting proper beneath the floor of “Make it so”: Don’t fuck round.
However Stewart’s commanding method to Picard by no means made him really feel pinched, small-minded, or like he wasn’t serious about being playful. Particularly as TNG developed, Stewart’s Picard grew extra versatile and paternal, in a position to maintain that very same firmness whereas vying with the collection’ puckish house trickster Q who’s perpetually making an attempt to get beneath his pores and skin, or telling the story of the epic of Gilgamesh whereas sitting subsequent to the hearth with an enemy alien, or getting caught within the ship’s Holodeck within the character of a noir detective. The mere reality of his presence grounded the collection, permitting it to develop stranger and extra experimental with out betraying its basic earnestness. In one of the crucial exceptional episodes, season 5’s “The Inside Gentle,” Picard is struck by an inexplicable power beam that forces him to reside out 4 a long time of life whereas the remainder of the crew solely experiences twenty-five minutes of time. The idea needs to be absurd. As an alternative, as Picard realizes he’s lived and now misplaced a complete lifetime, Stewart provides that episode an nearly excruciating sense of tragedy and exhaustion. Within the moments after he wakes up once more on the Enterprise, simply earlier than he pulls again in reduction, there’s a protracted second the place he stares at his crewmates, horrified and shocked. “Twenty-five minutes?” he whispers. The shock of his diminished voice alone conveys a lot worry and awe.
“Make it so” is a directive to comply with an order, but it surely’s additionally a phrase with an inherently theatrical flip. Standing on a stage and convincing a theater stuffed with those that they’re witnessing a battle scene, loss of life, or fairy turning a person right into a donkey requires prepared an viewers to imagine one thing foolish and faux is definitely actual. As a Shakespearean actor, Stewart’s voice was skilled to undertaking out right into a theater and persuade a crowd that they had been guards shivering on a citadel wall or a normal standing in the course of a shipwreck. Within the context of tv, Stewart’s catchphrase additionally meant that viewers at dwelling, watching a tiny cathode-ray-tube-sized display in 1987, may look previous the low-resolution photographs, onesie-style uniforms, and “Beam me up” SFX that had been simply glitter in a tube and see all of it as as an actual and plausible universe. Greater than that, they might see Picard’s world, and TV itself, as one thing value valuing. Stewart made it so.
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