Patrick Stewart's performance
- Thread starter Frontis
- Start date
But enough about Season 2.
Some interesting quotes from Sir Patrick that make for amusing reading in retrospect.
FROM SFX MAGAZINE - 1999
"I think we should pass the mantle on to the Deep Space Nine characters," he says. "We don't want to become The Rolling Stones of the Star Trek films."
"I was very happy to see the series end," he admits. "It had reached the point where I felt I had given it just about everything I could."
From the LA TIMES 2022:
"Oh, so different. I turned it down at first. And then I thought about the offer and decided I would do it, but I made two conditions. I didn’t want to wear a uniform, and it must not be a series that is fundamentally a sentimental reunion of “The Next Generation.”
" have to admit that when we got into Season 5, 6 and 7 [of “The Next Generation”], there were days I wished I could be doing something different — when you do 178 episodes there's bound to be repetition. "
Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist said in 2020 that the plan when designing the series was that “It was not ever going to be The Next Generation Part Two.”
Let's be honest, for the majority of people, Season 3 is The Next Generation Part 2, and Sir Patrick and Chabon were both misguided because, again, for the majority of people that's what they liked. I don't think Picard as a character works without the rest of the cast. Just like I don't think Shatners Kirk worked in Generations without McCoy and Spock.
RT audience scores
S1: 52%
S2: 30%
S3: 89%
FROM SFX MAGAZINE - 1999
"I think we should pass the mantle on to the Deep Space Nine characters," he says. "We don't want to become The Rolling Stones of the Star Trek films."
"I was very happy to see the series end," he admits. "It had reached the point where I felt I had given it just about everything I could."
From the LA TIMES 2022:
"Oh, so different. I turned it down at first. And then I thought about the offer and decided I would do it, but I made two conditions. I didn’t want to wear a uniform, and it must not be a series that is fundamentally a sentimental reunion of “The Next Generation.”
" have to admit that when we got into Season 5, 6 and 7 [of “The Next Generation”], there were days I wished I could be doing something different — when you do 178 episodes there's bound to be repetition. "
Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist said in 2020 that the plan when designing the series was that “It was not ever going to be The Next Generation Part Two.”
Let's be honest, for the majority of people, Season 3 is The Next Generation Part 2, and Sir Patrick and Chabon were both misguided because, again, for the majority of people that's what they liked. I don't think Picard as a character works without the rest of the cast. Just like I don't think Shatners Kirk worked in Generations without McCoy and Spock.
RT audience scores
S1: 52%
S2: 30%
S3: 89%
I like that quote.
I don't think its misguided at all. I think Picard works fine by himself, and actually carried parts of Generations and First Contact and Insurrection on his own because he was able to be that dynamic lead.
Additionally, I don't think Chabon and Picard were misguided. I think they went with what they wanted to make, and the audience responded and they adjusted. I am glad that it got Patrick Stewart back to a certain degree and don't begrudge him wanting to hang it up.
I'd have rather he had gotten his wish of passing it on to another crew and not keep repeating the TNG crew but he went with what worked for him. In the end, he got what he wanted, and the TNG majority fans got what they wanted. Win/win for the most part.
More power to him.
Pretty much. S1 and S2 were the seasons Stewart wanted and S3 was what the TNG fans wanted. Everybody won to an extent. I will give credit to TPTB and pivoting when they realized the first two seasons kind of fell flat and Sir Patrick for playing along when S3 probably wasn't quite what he wanted to do.
Sir Patrick changed his mind repeatedly over the course of making the show - his "no other TNG characters, we're not making TNG 2.0" demand fell when he realized Riker and Troi worked well in that one episode in the first season. His "no more uniforms for Picard" demand fell when he realized that the first season needed flashbacks and for those he had to be in uniform again. And so on and so on. He has admitted by now that his inital demands were a little... extreme. I think part of why he was so adamant about not making TNG again was probably a bit of TNG PTSD from back in the day - the show was his life for seven years, there was little room for anything else and after TNG was done there was a bit of a period of time where he had trouble getting hired for major roles because directors and producers told him "why would I want Captain Picard in my show/movie". This, combined with his credo of "always do something different" really makes it no wonder that he initially said "nope nope nope" to a lot of TNG things.
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