The candidates for Picard are the most interesting. It seems that they were sure that they wanted a middle-aged authority figure, but the candidates are quite versatile. Here's an analysis from another forum:
http://stng.36el.com/st-tng/trivia/misc.html#1
The idea of Lt. Al Giardello (Homicide:LOTS) as Picard is fascinating. Other than Patrick Stewart, Kotto has the strongest presence out of all those candidates. Like Edward James Olmos (mentioned as another candidate for Picard), he can both command respect and intimidate easily while being completely calm, speaking quietly, glaring, or even (in Kotto's case) smiling, but unlike Stewart or Olmos, Kotto is also physically a formidable presence - which could have created problems for the casting of the rest of the characters, as he might have towered over the rest of the cast unless all the actors were tall (though they did end up casting tall actors as Riker and Worf anyway). It's interesting that Trek could have gotten its first black captain lead character right there - and that despite this early casting call that describes Picard as "Caucasian":august said:One thing that fascinates me is that Jean-Luc was clearly intended to be an older authoritarian figure, but not necessarily British. But they were looking at a number of people who had at least some genre background (even if Sir Patrick's was smallish roles in Dune and Excalibur.)
Mitch Ryan was 59 at the time, and we saw him later as Riker's dad. He had been the main romantic lead on Dark Shadows when it first came out, and had a cop series called Chase in the early 70's. Classic tv title - his name was "Chase," plus that's what he did. He was a guest on every tv series ever filmed just about, plus films like Lethal Weapon , Judge Dredd and High Plains Drifter - 131 credits total. He was sort of a cut-rate Charlton Heston type, slightly rough-around-the-edges. So can't imagine him playing anything other than a very traditional American tough Starfleet type.
Mitch Ryan (in the 1960's)
Roy Thinnes was 49 at the time, and had been the star of The Invaders in the 60's, and likewise a prolific tv guest guest star. (Interestingly, he ended up on the primetime revival of Dark Shadows in 1991.) He could have been a more cerebral captain, as he often played professors and/or society/corporate villains.
Roy Thinnes (also in the '60's)
Patrick Bauchau was also 49, and was Belgian, and at that stage had mainly done French-language movies. His only real expose to US audiences was as one of Christopher Walken's henchmen in A View to a Kill - the main guy Bond fights on the blimp. So the idea of Jean-Luc with an accent was at least considered.
Patrick Bauchau
Yaphet Kotto was Mr. Big from Live and Let Die, and the engineeer on Alien - age 50 at the time and he's 6'4" .
Yaphet Kotto
So it appears that they were sure about the age thing, but not so sure about the background for the captain, and about his style (down-to-earth tough, or suave European tough.)
http://stng.36el.com/st-tng/trivia/misc.html#1
The presence of Patrick Bauchau (Belgian actor who would later star as Sydney on The Pretender and the villainous Professor Lodz on Carnivale, but who was at that time mostly known for his roles in French and German films) shows that they were still considering a French-speaking actor for the role. Roy Thinnes will always be Jeremiah Smith to me, the mysterious Christ-like alien on The X-Files, though he was also memorable in his one-time short guest starring role on Oz as an Aryan Brotherhood leader that Schillinger was in awe of. (If you haven't seen Oz, you don't know how funny and odd it was to see Schillinger being all 'thank you sir, I'll do my best sir' talking to someone.) His Picard would have been cerebral, quietly authoritative figure, and Bauchau's would have been a suave European type, but Mitch Ryan seems, as the poster I quoted said, to be better suited for a traditional American military authority figure.
