Patrick Stewart wrote a letter in '88 about his ideas for Picard

It is a four page letter to Gene Roddenberry from Stewart:

http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/patrick-stewarts-thoughts-on-developing-picard/

 

Reminds me of something he told TV Guide: "You know, the Captain doesn't get near enough sex and shooting."

 

It was this letter that led to episodes like Captain's Holiday. Mission Log discussed it in one of their podcasts a while ago. Maybe one of the supplementals.

 

^
They definitely mentioned it in their interview with Wil Wheaton, because they mentioned this part:

All in all, after reading the letters, I admire Sir Patrick all the more. It shows a deep respect for everyone involved and I love how interested he is in developing Picard.

 

^ I agree. An utter class act, all around. It's awesome when your hero on TV can also be your hero in real life.

 

This is great. All good ideas, and you can see some things were followed up - especially Picard and Worf.

He's right about Picard and Crusher. It was obvious when I rewatched season one on blu-ray that they were playing up the flirtation whenever possible. It's probably why The Big Goodbye is my favourite first season episode. It's a crying shame that relationship was rarely touched upon, because the actors clearly relished those scenes, and it was a chemistry that worked. I know they wanted to keep Picard free to have other women of the week, but how often did that actually happen?

 

I really liked the scene of Picard and Riker on the firing range, having a discussion while honing their phaser skills. Interesting that the scene likely came from this letter and was Stewart's original idea.

 

Actors always seem to know what's wrong with a scene, but not many know how to make a show better. Sir Patrick Stewart has always had very good instincts. As to Beverly & Picard hooking up, they should've become a regular relationship, to further seperate TNG's format from that of The Classi Series. I wouldn't have cared for them getting married, though. At their age, where was the hype? Roddenberry, et al, could've gone much further than what they did in giving TNG its own identity, especially in that first season. But it's great to see that Sir Patrick Stewart was as concerned about the product as he seemed to be.

 

The physical stuff is interesting because Stewart was very keen the films were not like the series and thus a lot of the action stuff is down to his influences...

 

Well, said. I also appreciated the letter for the whole tone it conveyed. It was both thoughtful and very respectful at the same time. Clearly concerned for the character, his suggestions were on point, well written, and I am sure - because Roddenberry came from an era of typewritten words, inter office memos, and hard copy letters - very well received. I don't think you'd see much of that today.

 

I never really thought about it, but TNG had two couples with existing relationships that the writers never wanted to touch, but the actors loved, and tried their best to keep alive by playing scenes with subtext.

Then in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, the characters are seemingly always trying to get off with each other: Dax and Worf, Kira and Odo, Bashir and Dax, Bashir and O'Brien, Torres and Paris, Kim and Seven, Paris and Kes, Chakotay and Janeway, Seven and the Doctor, Seven and Chakotay.

Was Roddenberry the obstacle?

 

Everyone repreats it as "Sex and shooting," but when I interviewed Ronald D. Moore in summer 1990 he related it to me as "screwing and shooting." The ST:TNG Magazine editors saw fit to replace "screwing" with "sex". I think I may still have the original transcript of the full interview somewhere. There was more to it than got printed.

That same interview is when he told me the writers joked that O'Brien's first name was "Aloysius", which got edited out of the interview but used an a news blip in some issue of Starlog.

 

I am beginning to wonder ...

 

Yeah, a lot of this letter seemed to be taken very seriously in later seasons. You can see elements that he mentions all over the place. Well done!

 

I met Patrick Stewart briefly on set in February of 1990 - just after they'd shot "Captain's Holiday." I was anxious for other reasons, intimidated and I think (knowing only the character onscreen and making a naive mistake) expected him to be cool-tempered and solemn. One of the first things I remember him saying was that he was having a wonderful time with recent shows, declaring enthusiastically "Last week I finally got laid!"

 

As it turns out, Maislizh (sp?) was the culprit for a lot of that.

 

But wasn't he long gone by the third season?

 

^By that point, the tone of the show had been set and Berman, who saw his role as basically "keeping it Gene" as he perceived that idea to be wasn't about to depart from it.

Berman was not a creative's producer. He was a studio's producer. Keep the budget under control, don't take too many risks and deliver a "consistent" product was his mandate and worldview.